We used to giggle together in Quaker meetings and she and her wonderful family became the mainstay of my adolescence.
For her, I will always have a place in my heart.
She called me today from Oxford, where she lives, and we chatted for an hour or so about our lives.
It was so reassuring to hear the voice of an old friend who, even though we have only dipped periodically in and out of each others lives, as the decades passed we maintained a life long love for each other.
It was wonderful to catch up and maybe she will come visit me here in LA.
As you are aware I have still not made any definite plans to deal with the lumpy ball tumor situation.
I have been avoiding doing anything about it.
The emotions I have been going through with Jake seem to take my mind off the critical decisions I have to make.
The bottom line is this: I must go to London and sort it out.
I can’t afford to begin the surgery here and so have no option but to go home. As soon as I move out of my place I can think clearly about taking the next step.
I reread JB’s letter this morning and feel a little less angry with him. He is not a monster, more like a confused kid.
I have to learn to be more compassionate. I have to learn to forgive. I MUST remember that he has been through a great deal. Anyway, I did as he asked and removed all mention of his last name and occupation. It was kinda cruel to have done it in the first place.
I have had an online tantrum and now it’s time to try to put the pieces of the smashed vase back together and hope that we can go our separate ways without derision, scorn or hatred.
I have said and written things that although true were insensitive and unkind. He is just a regular guy with a broken heart. He wasn’t to know that being friends was the last thing I could ever imagining happening after we stopped being lovers.
Resentment, shame and fear (as usual) shape my relationship to the rest of the world.
This morning I tried to be of service to another recovering addict. It made me feel a great deal better about my own situation.
I really, really loved and cared for that timid man. He was quite unlike anyone I have ever loved before. Everyone that met him was delighted that I had found such a normal, sweet man. I think that we had, when we weren’t fighting the best time. We laughed a great deal. We shared a number of the same interests and in a perfect world where two unencumbered men could come together, unfettered and unaligned we could have made something work out.
It is not a perfect world. It is an imperfect world riven with complications and aberrations.
It seems that only the very few get to share their lives with those they love without catastrophic problems. I wish I could be one of those people but I am not, I will never be, I can never be.
That is why I committed to being single. To being alone. To relish and respect a single life.
I am a single man who will not hanker after my own death… because being single is perceived by so many as a crime against humanity.
I have been told that there is something incredibly liberating after the death of a loved one…as there definitely is after the end of a relationship. One can suddenly see everything so very clearly.
The only thing I miss about being in a loving relationship with another person is to check in, to share, to make sense of a troubled world.
Someone who is committed to listening as I am committed to listen.
Since last weeks end of relationship prose I have not only felt creative again but quite by chance have found what I was looking for..to be at peace. It was without doubt the answer to the most nagging of all my prayers. Was I, could I…am I even capable of making a relationship work.
The answer has to be a resounding NO.
I am not sad about this conclusion, in fact I have found much peace from finally answering this most perplexing of questions.
You will have your own ideas about this but for the time being I tell you I have found my equilibrium. It has been a very bumpy ride. Not just the past eight months but the past 50 years.
You see, he thought I was like the man he met on the TV…but I had been edited that way. Compassion and kindness are only a small part of who I am.
I want to write this blog entry just feeling the breeze on my face. Listening to music. There were days when I could not feel a thing I was so distrusting of him and full of fear. Within weeks of meeting Jake I found it hard to trust. Looking over our long email correspondence it is obvious that I become toxicly paranoid with those I say I love. I have felt the same with others..this is nothing new. You have said that he was too young. Well, I am not the sort of man who worries about age appropriateness. But I am the sort of man who frets about appropriateness.
I am blighted with the most gayest of disabilities: always wanting something better then..when something better comes along..strangling it to death.
There is a stigma attached to those of us who finally throw in the towel and accept singularity. Yet, my grandmother was a widow for 40 years. She owned her aloneness and for that I am very grateful. She was not a particularly loving human being, prone to complaint and curmudgeonly conversation yet she taught me that she would rather be alone than have someone in her life who would not compliment it.
I am sick of feeling guilty for the crime of being single.
My mother’s greatest fear for me was that I would die single. Well, baby, most people do. There are retirement homes crammed with human husks who will die today alone. They are unlikely to be missed, there is no hope of an obituary. They will die oblivious that they have been processed (three score years and 10) through the mill of modern humanity. Born, worked, reproduced, ate, died.
I stayed with Jason and Jennifer last night. Their marriage is tight but they bitch and complain like any couple. I watched this morning as Jason was thrown out of the piano room. He moped around for a little while then seemed to forget all about his gripe. I know from recent experience that this is no easy task. When I look back at the time I spent with Jake we seemed more often than not to be locked into some kind of squabble.
So, where have I found this peace and acceptance? Well, knowing, owning, accepting that I will be single for the rest of my life dovetails beautifully into the work I have been doing in therapy. The search for sex or relationships, the intrigue and flirtation and unrequited love has all been set aside. In doing so I have a clear head, clear enough to begin writing the chapter of my last years.
I am not and never have been lonely when alone. I have only ever felt lonely when I am in a relationship with another and they are not there.
Some people have few or no friends, are not connected to community, do not believe in God (I remain nondenominational) and most crippling of all: they are not creative. Without doubt I am most excited about how creative these years will be. If it is only me and my writing then I may as well marry my pen as soon as possible.
To say out loud that one has accepted absolutely ones destiny as God intends it is indeed the first hurdle to making sense of the rest of ones life.
Without Jake constantly in my head, without the fantasy of the great dark man, without the perpetual search for sex or sexual complication I can avail myself of some peace. I am more than middle-aged. I used to sneer at my Grandmother because it seemed to me that she had given up but the truth is: she had only just begun. A healthy relationship with one’s self takes as much time and energy as a healthy relationship with anyone else.
I have given up so much, things that others take for granted to get them through every day: drugs (prescription and recreational), alcohol, television, white flour, career, and now..romance. You’d think life would shrink..but quite the opposite seems to be happening.
The house in Malibu is set above the glorious ocean. The land around begs my attention. Sometimes I do not get further than the first step outside the house. Some days I cannot leave my bed. This is not the sort of life I want. If I am going to be single forever then I must start engaging with the land as I planned many months ago before I met Jake.
I am sure that some of you will think that I am just giving up for no good reason. Well, I am very sorry, I don’t buy your dream that there are ‘plenty more fish in the sea’, that there is ‘someone for every one’ etc. That is your dream. My dream is that I can be alone without resort to catastrophic thinking. I have lived on borrowed time for as long as I can remember. Everyday should be a delight! By cluttering my life with suspect romances I have only served to degrade the quality of the one thing I truly own.
I am grateful that I met Jake because in 8 months he has done more for me than almost anyone could have. Without realizing it he held a mirror to my face for long enough so I could see in startling detail just how ravaged I had become.
Relationships make me so unhappy. They bring out the very worst in me. I don’t like sharing my bed or my head with anyone. If I don’t like me when I am in a relationship how could anyone else?
In the night I think of him but as I have said many times before it is not him. It is the ghost of what never was.
My irritation with Glenn Beck is balanced almost perfectly with my frustration for Barack Obama. It is easier to listen to Glenn’s simplistic message (as it has always been when the right open their stinking mouths) than Obama the intellectual buffoon.
The problem, yet again, when the left of center are swept into power by the cheering crowds (when the pendulum swings) is that they are woefully unprepared to deliver what the people want. When the right get into power they let off bombs and create armies and the fearful are made safe, the patriotic are assuaged, the rich rub their hands in glee.
When the left of center are elected they ‘negotiate’ with their enemies, they want to be ‘bipartisan’ and have absurd ’round table get togethers’ with their opponents to ‘sort everything out’.
Of course I am disillusioned by Obama just like you are. I cried when he was elected. I was so happy. He promised so much and has delivered so little. He and his administration cow tows to the likes of Glenn Beck. Obama moans and whines, he says pathetically that “change is hard”.
Was the only ‘change we could believe in’ the black faces of the first family? Was that it?
For those faces to then be called liars out loud by pasty white-faced congress men? For those same black faces to doff their caps to people like Glen Beck? To be called racists? Obama has not adequately taken the reigns because deep down he fears the consequences, he may be president but he does not behave like a president. His rhetoric is merely that..rhetoric. Hollow promises, empty gestures. He looks haunted, like those negro men and women in the black and white photographs taken in the deep south, covering their heads as the police hit them with batons.
He looks beaten. He sounds washed up.
Yet, all it would take is just one moment of clarity, one moment to take back his power, a moment of shock and awe. It is unlikely to happen. He is just too busy having his photo taken like JFK in the oval office with his little daughters.
Last week a friend of mine confided in me she had heard from reliable sources that Obama would not run a second term and that Hillary would be elected and everything would be just the way we want it. Bullshit. Of course a second term for Obama is unlikely but not because Hilary is waiting in the wings to take the crown that was promised her. The people will choose a simpler message, a familiar message. One that they can understand. Change maybe what they want but they have washed their hands of change. It’s too complicated.
The nation is crippled, the people are meek and fat and stupid and unable to change anything. The nation is crippled by inactivity, inertia, fear.
The banks and their paid friends in government have deliberately crippled the USA. They will do nothing to heal this country until they have an elected government who sees things exactly their way.
When the dependable right get back into power..everything will change. Lending practices, house prices, small business..all will suddenly change and the people will breathe a sigh of relief. The banking reforms will vanish, the Obama health care system will too.
My friends tell me that President Obama has achieved much but they forget that I come from a country where real socialists have changed the fabric of society for the good and the bad. Where the pendulum really swung, where the people were represented and the legacy of that extreme governance is health care, education, infra structure. That’s all I want for you. So I do not have to endlessly put my hand in my pocket for the steady stream of homeless beggars now on every street in America. Millions of desperate unemployed.
Obama has achieved nothing of any consequence, no real and immediate healthcare, no real financial reform. How could he? He surrounded himself with banking insiders. Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner are complicit in the devaluation of your house, the loss of your job and as one government melded seamlessly into another oversaw a massive banking Ponzi scheme: the banks took your TARP money tripled the value of it and with huge grins on their bloated faces returned chump change to you the people.
Nowhere else in the world did this happen so effectively than here in the USA. The Americans tried exercising monetary hegemony in Europe but the European Union is too disperate. There are simply too many politicians from too many fractured political parties to bully and bribe and most of them have more integrity in one member’s little finger than the entire American congress and senate put together.
The European Union cannot be bought. This explains the British ruling elites fear of the Euro, the European Union and everything east of the Channel. Yet, look at what is happening in Europe. The economies are growing, the people did not lose their homes, communities were not compromised.
We have had revolution in Europe. Revolution is essential to destroy the status quo for the status quo is not good for the people. It is good for the few.
The media and Obama hating pundits, as well they might, evoke the ghosts of the French Royal family but Michelle Obama is no Marie Antoinette.
It is easier for us to discuss Michelle’s vacations and high-waisted fashion faux pas than the dead and the maimed and the wounded in our fruitless wars. Fruitless, unless you are the owner of a munitions factory or a service industry dedicated to war. We will never be able to stop profligate war funding because we are coerced by the rich to believe it is our patriotic duty to support our troops by giving them more and more money as our schools rot and our teachers become beggars.
I am eager for revolution in whatever form it may take. The people voted for Obama not to be meek or timid or careful of his enemies but to take back what had been stolen from us during the Bush years. To restore what Glen Beck is now touting..some American honor.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have chipped away at the truth of Barack Obama so that today more and more Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim, that he bailed out the banks, initiated the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
They believe that Obama is not and has never been..is not and has never been a bone fide American. They believe that he is not like them, that he has become president by suspect means. That the good people of America could never have deliberately elected a black man and his descended from slaves wife. How could that have happened?
Their racist outrage has never been stamped upon, outlawed, mocked. Why? Because we were too busy, like bullied kids in the playground, crying and running away after trying to befriend and engage those who are simply incapable of listening.
Jason and Hillary, quite separately, popped by and both brought lunch. Hillary arrived with a friend’s dog called Willy who decided to pee on everything the moment he came indoors.
Hillary made a delicious gazpacho and Jason brough chevre and smoked salmon. Three mad brits eating an Enid Blyton lunch in our tree house over looking the ocean.
I ate bread which I bitterly regret having eaten today. I am bloated and my tummy aches.
The house after dark can be a little noisy. I lay in the dark listening to the raccoons squabble, the coyote’s howl and the owls hoot. The little dog had a restless night, so, of course did I. He was up and down the stairs shouting at anything that disturbed him. After an hour of this nonsense I closed the windows and he slept peacefully.
It was meant to be in the 100′s all week but by last night in Malibu it was colder than Whitstable. I am sure the firemen are very happy as there have been so few wild-fire warnings. Everything is very damp in the morning from the thick mist that rolls off the sea.
Jason left and Hillary and I decided to take the dogs for a long walk along the length of the new road (Rambla Pacifico) that leads to the PCH. The house is now walkable from the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) and since they started building the Rambla Pacifico extension empty lots are now for sale, lot owners who abandoned their lots 26 years ago are on the mountain with contractors discussing driveways and bedrooms with ocean views. There is a certain excitement up here which cannot be ignored.
I applaud myself for paying so little for this house. I just KNEW that one day the road would be built..who knew that it would be so soon?
Apparently I am not the only resident who regularly walks the muddy track which will one day be our new road/life line. We saw a man armed with shopping bags marching over the hillocks. Everyone is so impatient to feel less isolated.
It is only a few weeks until the rainy season starts so they must get a move on and finish this project. The worst that could happen is that heavy rains come before it is finished and all their hard work is washed away.
If only Malibu would buy the road so it can be used by everyone rather than a select few.
Watched TV until midnight…yes there is a TV here and fell into bed. I watch home improvement shows and laugh gently at how cheap and ill-conceived the ‘improvements’ are.
The Lil Dog was exhausted from running after Willy all day and his long walk but not, apparently, exhausted enough.
P.S. The despicable Glenn Beck is holding his reclaim America from anyone who isn’t white rally today in Washington. For those of you who underestimate the ambition of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin I urge you to take notice of their message. They are determined to undermine the goodwill and inclusive character of this great country and, my friends, they will succeed just like their right-wing predecessors. They will use all the usual tactics: fear mongering, false patriotism and the invocation of their malevolent God. These men and women are not clowns, we cannot afford to grandly sneer at their absurd antics. For as the liberal elite laugh in their grotesque faces they are gathering speed. If we are not very careful it will be soon too late for those of us who believe in freedom to stop them for we were too busy laughing.
The fierce sunlight refracting through the pure white cloud is exactly the same light as if it had been snowing.
Yesterday, after making peace with the memory of JB, I met Michael at Solar and discussed scripts. He is a delightful man. I told him that I’d read his script but was loathed to say anything.
People ask for criticism but they only want praise.
I dashed off to see Danielle and she worked through her slate, her list of projects.
We sat opposite Jane Fonda who looked a little frail but still radiant. I was briefly introduced and told her how much I adored Klute. She shared a few anecdotal memories about the making of the film.
Bumped into Degan who is moving in with his younger boyfriend. I didn’t balk. I thought to myself (as the ghost of what could have been passed through me) well, that was then this is now. As I’ve said before it’s quite obvious that I’m never going to have that moving in thing happen to me so I may as well just accept things as they are and get on with it.
There is no room in my life for melancholy. I have devoted too much time to drama, misery and bad choices.
It’s an illusion that the young are happy, an illusion for those who have lost it. The young know they are wretched, for they are full of truthless ideal and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
My meeting with the accountant was fruitful. Apparently life is not quite as fraught as I thought it was.
I met Hillary in Venice and walked the entire length of Abbot Kinney gossiping and laughing.
We ate a light supper at Wholefoods. I’m sorry but eating food outside a grimy supermarket is just too much. I bought a grilled chicken that I shared with the Lil Dog.
BAFTA organized a screening for the members in a small Santa Monica cinema.
It’s a sad film. I identified very much with Kenneth’s sexual anorexia, his inability to form loving relationships with other men and the mask he wore to get through a life he considered useless.
Met the boy who played Joe Orton in Fantabulosa. Kenny Doughty and his wife seem very pleasant.
“It is difficult to know people and I don’t think one can ever really know any but one’s own countrymen.
For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the county in which they are born, the city or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they played, the poets they read, and the God they believed in.
It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can’t come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them.”
It seems so easy, helping my friend in London put his film together without any thought of directing it myself. It has given me a great deal of pleasure. Of course I know how to negotiate the making of a film. A big film or a small film. Films naturally find their own scale.
I’ve no idea yet what sort of film we will make. We are currently looking for a great script.
It was lovely listening to Michael Sheen talk about Kenneth Williams. He obviously developed a profound affection for Kenneth by simply walking in his shoes. I wondered what the similarities were between these two very different men.
Michael talked amusingly at dinner about meeting Tony Blair at Rupert Murdoch’s house. He talked about Polari, the 17th Century gay slang, I introduced to Jake B. He described his friendship with Barbra Windsor.
I hope I helped JB understand the culture and history that precedes him. It’s so important for gay men to own their history, not as prescribed by straight people as they have written us in the pages of their newspapers…but the oral history that may get lost as another generation of gay men grow up. We have such a rich history, such joy and tragedy…but we are loathed to own it.
“What do we any of us have but our illusions and what do we ask of others that we be allowed to keep them?”
When I was a young boy Maugham’s childhood home still stood on Canterbury Road in Whitstable. It was a beautiful Victorian rectory that savage developers later pulled down and replaced with five vile, mock Georgian horrors. Anyway, before it was demolished, I made friends with the owners and every Sunday after church I would sit in the huge conservatory, feed their chickens and look at the goldfish in their pond. They gave me a small piece of amethyst that I still own.
When I went to bed last night I found a poisonous spider folded into the linen. I didn’t kill it. It’s nice to share your bed with something living even if it’s only a spider or a little dog.
As I look back over the past months I understand that one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
In the time that it has taken me to write this blog the mist has magically retreated revealing the ocean. I am going for a long walk.
OK, it’s really time to forgive. It’s so fucking hard to forgive someone you have loved. I don’t know if it’s the right thing? We had such an intense time together.
I dealt with the unresolved financial aspect today but it gave me zero pleasure.
I think..why the fuck should he get away with anything. Here it comes again..the wave of resentment.
I wish on more occasions that I care to admit that I could remove every single mention of him on my blog just like he wanted but now look..the pages are covered with him. Mentions and pictures and insults. I know that it must have hurt him terribly. For what?
Because I loved him. Because I don’t want to love him. Because I want to let him go..forever and this seemed like the only way.
I broke my promise to celebrate every moment of his new gay life.
Two people come together for what ever reason and try to make something happen. The moment the heart is engaged it becomes treacherous.
Toby and I went out last night to WeHo where I thought I wanted to be happily surrounded by own kind. It was GHASTLY! I LOATH mediocrity! Jake wasn’t mediocre. He wasn’t deliberately cruel. He was just confused. I should have known better..but why should I? Why should I know just because I am older? I keep thinking about The Velvet Rage. How we become who we are shaped in a hostile world. Having to invent ourselves as we go along.
I don’t know the answers…why should I?
I tried to be there for him, to help him but I couldn’t help myself..I fell in love. So, every time I eat a tomato I think of him because we bought those beautiful tomatoes in the market in Sanary and ate them like peaches.
Every time I sit opposite another man on a ‘date’ I compare them to him. Every time something good or bad happens I want to share it with him..yet I have no right. I never had any right. You see, he always made it perfectly clear after he left her that he wasn’t leaving her for me. The damage was already done. I was already in love, I believed him when he wrote to me telling me how much he loved me.
Even though I urged him to get honest I think it suited me that he wasn’t. When he finally told her I was in SHOCK. It seemed like the most brave yet foolhardy thing to do. There were other ways of telling the truth. But that’s just my fucked up head getting in the way. He did the right thing.
When I told John the Saturday morning he told her he was gay we both looked at each other in SHOCK.
As we became more involved I couldn’t just continue with things the way they were. I couldn’t bear listening to him tell me about other men and not be profoundly hurt however generous I wanted to be.
I didn’t want it to end but it had no future and if it had no future I couldn’t continue.
I need either to be on my own or to share my life with a man who gives equally, kindly, compassionately.
This will make you laugh: I met a man (my age) at dinner the other night who wanted a date but cancelled after reading my blog. So, it’s just me and my blog.
As for the money? I don’t care about the money, I just care that he’s not getting away with anything. Then of course..I do care. When I am feeling angry or resentful I care so much about the fucking money.
It’s 110 degrees in LA. At the end of the week we return to sultry days and chilly evenings.
Where are the grand romantic gestures? Should I have moved to NYC ? I simply couldn’t. I couldn’t shift my life east because I loved him so much. I always knew that I would eventually have to let him go.
Now look, these pages are littered with every mean thing I could have written about him. But inside my crazy head every mean thing I think about him is balanced with a good thought, a lovely memory, a kind gesture.
I just don’t want you to think I am weak, laying in bed this morning and trying to conjour up good thoughts of Jake, wanting to remember all that was sweet and let the loathing go.
Toby and I went into Weho last night. It was a cluster fuck. The Abbey was throwing a birthday party for its owner. We left a few minutes after arriving. It was shirtless night there. Just more flesh. More male bodies, shaved chests, cropped hair..like walking onto the set of an endless porno shoot. Aspirations reduced to one thing: cock.
When I craved, in the 1980′s, more openness for our gay culture so we were not hidden from those who might harshly judge us..did I ever imagine this:
From the sidewalk we could see into Mickey’s where half-naked men gyrated on podiums with dollar bills stuffed in their knickers. At East West more half-naked men on podiums wearing cowboy hats trying to dance unsuccessfully to country and western music. In Fiesta Cantina karaoke boys sang moody songs very badly and worst of all, just a few doors away in Rage a man was being bound and gagged in the entrance of the bar and hoisted above the audience by a vile, tattooed queen in leather.
I, like the dumfounded straight people around me, looked in at this horrible spectacle. I felt sick that this carnage was the public face of our ‘culture’. The freaks, the mediocre, the wet brains, the fools..and (however beautiful they were) all so ugly..so inauthentic.
That we had all fought so hard to be taken seriously…and crave marriage and equality.
I let the little dog out of the car and he ran like a lunatic around the West Hollywood park and I felt as if in some small way my faith could be restored in the world.
I used to compulsively look at porn. I have not done that for nearly two years.
I have looked at porn but I have not looked at porn compulsively.
I compulsively write this blog. I used to really enjoy it. The blog used to be lively and light-hearted. Of late it has become a tool for me to compulsively work out my problems, my resentments and my fears.
I get up in the morning and compulsively check the numbers of people who read these pages. My breath is shallow and I become pensive, my fingers ache and my mind races. The modern opera that plays almost constantly in my head is, as I check the blog, full volume.
That’s not all I do. I compulsively look at Huffington Post and the BBC then check the MLS and other regular sites. I use the internet as a distraction from living life. Instead of wasting my time I could be writing other stuff or doing more constructive things.
At therapy this morning I talked about being authentic as a way of dealing with my compulsivity but its going to take more than that. What is it to be authentic? For me it’s neither about being bigger or smaller than I am. I need to be the right size.
I ruthlessly seek authenticity in others as well as strive for it in myself. As a result of these unrealistic expectations I am disappointed by those I love then tend to isolate. Risking being seen is just too overwhelming. This accounts for why I felt so let down by him. When you reveal yourself absolutely to another and they have little or no respect or appreciation..well..out comes the great protector who forces me to sweat in the armour of distrust.
It’s bloody difficult when one has acted a convincing role all of ones adult life to be authentic. The role that was assigned to me by my family of origin.
For the time being I have to do the right thing. Be that right guy, avoid difficult or challenging people, strive for a peaceful head.
Peace of mind.
Of course the last few months acting out my love and sex addiction with him may one day be looked back upon as some of the most destructive time that I have ever spent with another being. It may not. I am tied in knots about it.
My part in everything, every situation I am in, it all has to be owned. Owned by me.
If I refuse to take action and stop this destructive behavior then the peace of mind that I crave, that when I first got sober used to be mine…will never, ever be achieved.
Picked four small peaches from the tree. Had date last night. Spent time packing art.
CNN wasn’t much fun this evening. I just wasn’t into it. I was on for the entire programme. I prefer to spar a little and no amount of coffee was going to lift me out of my sowhatness.
What the hell am I doing here having opinions about Tiger Woods?
Therapy this morning. Huge English Breakfast. Chatted with my Mother. Lunch with a friend.
I forgot to mention that yesterday on the way back from letting in the new and adorable renters I chatted with Nicola H all the way from the PCH to Robertson. We hadn’t spoken for years. Lost each other. She lives in France. Dione’s daughter. Trying to have a baby.
She found me via reading my blog. It was a perfect example of just how this blog works for me rather than against me. Occasionally full disclosure has its benefits.
Back to the renters..the ones that left Sunday morning at 10 had broken every single rule but I handed back their deposit. I could have so easily kept it. Smoking, under age, party..etc. I just smiled as they tried concealing their tracks. Nothing broken, no stains. Used their own sheets.
The new renters were charming. A middle-aged man and his wife and small dog. Very sweet. They leave on Thursday. I am going to fill the truck with stuff and take it over there.
Facebook etiquette. Jake’s great hobby (other hobby given his obsession with online hook ups) is Facebook where he regularly trawls through the lives of others, mocking his old school friends and their marriages and babies.
As if to prove my famewhore monika I now discover that pearshaped Jake made the right move by Facebook defriending people he met through me yet, I notice, not everyone..he kept hold of friends of mine on Facebook who he considered useful..including my talented chanteuse friend who, upon meeting him, wondered why I had chosen such a ‘dull man’ to make my lover. Mind you, it was one of those scintillating evenings when he just could not get off his iPod or texting on his phone.
I realize now that when he is so intensely involved with his phone/iPod/laptop he is busy with other fuckbuddies.
HLN again tonight. 4pm my time. Fantasia follow-up and more sex tape discussion, this time about Heidi and Spencer Pratt and my FAVE topic..Tiger Woods. I love going into CNN with my button down and coat to trash talk celebrity. It’s so much fun.
Let me know if you watch it.
Everyday I see who and why people are visiting this blog. Not individually of course but how many people and what they typed into the search engine to get to my blog. Every day people look for Kristian Digby, hundreds of people. It’s lovely that people come to this blog to find the facts about his funeral and where he is buried etc. I feel as if, in some small way, I am being of service.
Which brings me to my next topic. Being of service. One of my commentators very rightly pointed out that I have been less than kind recently on these pages. Very unforgiving. This was an accurate criticism and one that I am going to take care of addressing.
Of course I have forgiven Irene and Jake. Irene because she is so like me and Jake because, poor little lamb, he didn’t have a clue what he was getting involved with. Mostly I have forgiven myself. I loathe being angry Duncan.
I am having a great time NOT having to worry about Jake. He’s going to be just fine. He’ll meet a lovely man (one day) and settle down and do whatever he has to do to make life exciting. He’s good-looking, intelligent, funny..a perfect combination. The other gays seem to get where he is coming from so he’ll get on with his gay life with aplomb.
So, I am sorry for being a knob about you JB but you kinda deserved it.
I have a great deal to be happy about. I forget regularly this very important fact. I don’t have to think about all the shitty times I can remember the good times. The sweet times. What I learned.
Relationships are very confusing. It’s best that I don’t have them or think about them. I lose my balance when I am in a relationship. As for sex? Well, this weekend I am invited to a ‘sex party’ in Long Beach…hahhahaha..yeah right…that sounds like HELL. I would rather have Saudi’s gauge out my eyes.
Spent a lovely evening with a bunch of gay men last night. I have always wanted a group of gay men around me who I like and trust and am inspired by. Last night I kinda found that rather than hanker after a bunch of cool gay friends..I already had them. After dinner we watched The Graduate and then a two-hour long Q&A with Dustin Hoffman. It really was a magical evening.
Read in the Observer yesterday that the Editor of Attitude magazine, a British gay glossy, had written a lively piece about gay men’s mental health and how toxic shame can destroy our lives.
He quoted Alan Downs The Velvet Rage which any self-respecting gay has read a million times since it was published 5 years ago. The editor was concerned that his readers would consider it controversial. It’s about bloody time that we looked at how shame has shaped our lives.
“Yes, we have more sexual partners in a lifetime than other groups of people,” Downs writes. “At the same time, we also have among the highest rates of depression and suicide, not to mention sexually transmitted diseases. As a group, we tend to be more emotionally expressive than other men, yet our relationships are far shorter on average than those of straight men.
“We have more expendable income, more expensive houses, more fashionable cars, clothes, furniture than just about any other cultural group. But are we truly happier?”
Exactly, why bother taking ourselves seriously when there’s stuff to buy?
The reason why so few editors of Gay magazines write about gay mental health is that they are all BONKERS and terrible drinkers and drug takers. A sober gay man is still an anomaly.
Cancer update: Toby Mott just suggested that I ebay my balls.
Calm seas. Usual Suspects. Malibu today. Beginning to take things back there. Who am I writing this blog for? 210,000 unique hits. Probably more now.
The smell of burned coffee in the apartment. Can’t wait to leave this place.
Maybe not so calm. When I write this I start riling myself up. Even when things feel good. It isn’t delivering the peace I used to feel when I used to write it.
It used to be fun to blog but that was before it became an ‘issue’ with him.
I never understood how he could hate it so much? I’m sure that he hates it now..this blog. Why shouldn’t he? As he retreats and I am left up on the mountainside in the ark. The sea retreating, leaving the ark on the side of the mountain. No dove of peace just a little dog.
Michael told me stuff yesterday that I didn’t feel like listening. Would I rather be right or happy? In essence that is what he was saying.
Sunday morning. Helicopters already circling over head.
I think it’s going to be hot today. Hot and dry.
Jennie stopped writing her blog. Perhaps I should stop writing mine. It used to be cathartic. I used to enjoy the validation but of late it feels like all I do is fight the demons..even when there are none.
Deconstructing the apartment. Stacking the art that needs to be sold and I still have more art to hang on every single empty hook. How could one man have amassed so much?
Lunch date tomorrow. Is my heart going to be engaged? Can I be bothered? I seem to know the outcome before I even get there. The script is already written.
There are more creative ways to start the day than indulgently publishing my diary.
New renters arrive today. The penultimate batch before I move back in.
I had a lovely time last night. Dinner with Jane. Duck salad at the Mercantile. The duck was a little over cooked. The little dog ignored the morsel I left for him.
Going to get into the truck and go in minute. Shorts and tee. Little dog. Coffee burned in the pan.
Reading World War Z. It’s about Zombies.
There are more than two positions to take. Happy or sad? I am just here..with more than enough, consoled by faith. Can you believe that I just dragged an almost complete stranger around Europe?
You know what I’m doing? I’m going out! Started the evening feeling sorry myself. Fuck that.
I sent an SOS to Amanda that I may or may not need. But most of all, I am not going to be beaten by 5mm of something black on my balls. It’s not a death sentence. It’s black on the scan. I wonder what color it is in real life?
I’m listening to very loud music.
Old fashioned shit. I know. But I’m allowed to. I don’t have to answer to anybody.
I bought Jasper Conran‘s beautiful book Country. Packed with so many beautiful images. Try looking at THAT on a fucking kindle.
I cleaned the apartment. I sorted my papers. I totally forgot that I had to call the police station in London to deal with the iPod incident. Never mind. I would rather be in a cell than have this maggot growing inside me. It’s all relative. I read Michael’s brilliant script. After I finish writing this I will take the little dog to see the cats on Cherokee so he can squeal like a pig with excitement. Cat! Cat!
I have to submit my HLN idea. I received a lovely text message from an old lover in NYC who is eager to get together..balls or no balls.
Meeting Seb at SHLA at 11pm. Fuck this sitting around shit. I need solution! have I LEARNED nothing from all those years sitting in church halls and masonic lodges reading the recipe of the 12 steps?
Take action my friends! Get out of that shit relationship. Don’t be bowed by illness! Eat! If you feel lonely get out onto the streets! Don’t give in to the furies. TAKE ACTION.
December 21st, 2009-August 12th, 2010
Jake has been in my life..for months…for most of it was an acting out dream come true.
Oh I WILLINGLY gave up my sexual sober time.
We talked almost every day. Why trash those precious few months? For the time being I will celebrate the time we spent together. Although, sooner or later it will just feel…embarrassing.
In the long run it will mean far more to him than it will to me, Try as he might he will never be able to unstitch me from his story. I am, after all, the one who tore him out of the closet and in so doing rescued that poor girl from just one more day of deceit and lies.
I said to him on February 9th:
All I know is as the years pass this will weigh heavier on your mind and every time you look at J your girlfriend/wife/mother of your child you will know that there is a fundamental deceit.
If it is not me or the Hungarian it will be another man..and another and the outcome will always be the same.
One day you will meet a perfect man and then you will resent her, begin to hate her because it is not him…
I am the FUCKING HERO. Beautifully written…don’t you think?
And for all you guys and gals who have been shat on..here is a shitty, campy song for you to remind yourself that we can all laugh at how stupid we have been:
There’s no easy way to say this but the cancer stuff is not turning out very well. Irene will be pleased and so will Jake. They can join the legions of others who wouldn’t mind watching me suffer..
I am going home. There’s stuff here to sort out here. Practical stuff. It may take a few days.
Financially it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
I heard the news this morning.
It’s odd how the news made my balls feel tender. They began to talk to me. Whine and complain.
You know who I wanted to tell first? Well of course I did even though he wouldn’t have given a damn.
This morning I woke up and felt different. Something had happened. It was like waking up after a….catastrophe.
There was an ominous silence. Of course I knew immediately what had happened. Anthony had let off a huge bomb. Destruction all around. Now he was gone.
Anthony has left the building.
How did I know he had even been? I need look no further than these pages.
Oh well, God doing for me what I could not do for myself. Jake is dispensed with. Sad really as he was kinda sweet.
Anthony was right, the kid was not only too young, he is in a different league.
I am in SHLA waiting for inspiration.
Still have not made another appointment or even called the doctor. This entire cancer palaver has just polaxed me.
The Him episode. The cancer scare. The house. The money.
5am Friday.
Hunting around the house for a forgotten smoke. None to be found.
I spent the day yesterday in my apartment. It was brutally hot outside. In the evening I met J and J for a light snack then Will for dinner. Home and in bed before 12.
He and I have spoken nearly every day for the last 8 months. We have expunged every detail of our lives. Even though I cannot have him near me I miss the familiarity.
I made coffee and read over the emails I threatened to publish but they are simply too revealing. About us both! I am shocked by our behavior. The anatomy of a failed relationship. The ups and downs of my mad head and him emerging into the light.
He is indeed a fragile man. He is the first American that I ever really felt I knew. They speak English but they are not like us. They are just wired differently.
I am going to have to let this go. Really!
I found an email that I hadn’t read before. It was his penultimate email. It made a lot of sense.
This is what I think is going on: You are cutting me off because
you’ll take nothing if you can’t have it all I suppose it was naive
of me to believe that we could function as anything in between. You
are a perfectionist.
I wish I had read that email. I just had a lot on my mind. I didn’t read his penultimate 17 emails because I wanted to sort my head, my thinking, my feelings. He sent 17 emails.
Then he sent the final email, email 18 was the very one I decided to read and I couldn’t stop the anger.
I just needed that day, a little bit of solace. To know that he still cared. Like in the endless stream of emails when we first met. When he was wooing and seducing me.
Anyway. Anthony has left the building and at therapy today I shook with fury about addiction and Anthony and wished it wasn’t so…but it is.
Oh dear, he really let off an atom bomb. Oops. Sorry….
Anger disguises sadness. My anger disguises my sadness.
I am trying to forgive him. I know that my anger toward him merely disguises just how rotten this breakup feels. Whilst it is easy to blame him for his insensitivity I will sooner or later have to totally accept my part in this drama. Accept that I wanted him to be something he could never be.
Accept that I chose to overlook his drinking and drugging and manhunting because I wanted him more than I was prepared to know what was good for me.
Forgiveness comes in waves. Acceptance too. I must forgive him and accept that things are exactly how they are meant to be.
The truth is (as per the tenets of AA) sooner or later I will have to totally forgive him and make my amends..a living amends in this case.
I was so happy when I came back from Europe! I felt and looked like a different person. Everybody noticed it and commented. Now look.
I just want to sleep. Get back into my bed and stay there all day long. I have another article to write and a proposal to submit. I have to wrap the art in bubble wrap to take to NYC. I must do these things or he steals even more than he has already stolen.
When we got home all I wanted was an open and honest relationship.
I woke early this morning and drove to the beach where I walked the lil dog for an hour. On the way there I passed a cute man in a sleek convertible and chatted with him briefly at the intersection of Fountain and Labrea. He looked lovely. We continued our chat at red lights on and off until I turned onto the 10.
What must he have thought of my battered truck?
The promenade in Venice early morning is a cess pit of vagrants and drug dealers. Rich folk unlock their homes overlooking the ocean and tip huge dogs into the melee.
Here it comes again: I am so angry with him. Yet, just like I was broken when the big dog was killed and every death and loss and separation came to be healed as I sobbed for her poor broken body so now when the tears come it is for every man I have ever left behind.
No tears yet.
I wish the tears would come. I am dry-eyed, emotionally arid.
When I am not feeling angry, I feel like a fool. It was such a waste taking him home to Whitstable. I thought I was taking someone who would appreciate what he was being given but all he did was lose his iPod and cause trouble and make a fool of me.
He took a huge shit at the very heart of my life. Did you notice that he was always on his lap top when we were in Europe? Couldn’t keep him away from it. He’s addicted to intensity, to fantasy.
Everyone else could see that he was just a using fame whore. I hadn’t had anyone want me just because I had been on TV. I genuinely thought he wanted me.
8 months of Jake.
Last night Michael and I watched Goddess with Kim Stanley. Written by Paddy Chayefsky. It’s a really camp half-telling of the Marilyn Monroe story. One huge, cumbersome monologue after another. There couldn’t have been a single conversation during the entire movie.
The film eerily anticipates Monroe’s demise.
As we lay on his bed watching the film the Lil Dog kept an eye on Michael’s cat who hissed and spat until we left for SHLA stopping briefly at Boa where we met Bryan Singer and Toby. Up in the house we were assaulted by three very drunk people who wanted to be our friends who, in fact, totally ruined our evening so we scarpered.
I had a massage at my house at 11pm..no not one of those…and fell asleep.
I wrote to Jake today telling him to cough up what he owes me. I suppose he will force me to do what I am telling Irene to do. Go to small claims. It’s a fucking bore but I’ll do it.
I want to drop an atom bomb on him for hurting me. I want everyone to appreciate the injustice. That I did nothing to chase him, lost my sexual sober time.. As I look back over the months we spent together every beautiful moment is lost in the dark cloud of resentment that blocks the sun out of my life.
I always assume that anyone I meet is gay, the same way straight people assume (unless a flaming queen) every man they meet is straight. Consequently most straight men I meet are perplexed at the sort of small talk I make with them. Last week for instance someone mentioned that he was meeting his fiance and I said, “He’s a lucky guy to be marrying you.” This caused him to nearly drop his wine glass. He spluttered nervously that he was straight. “Oh!” I said as he dabbed at dribbled wine over his jacket. “What a waste.”
Now, I am NOT the sort of man who thinks every man I meet is gay but I must always assume that he is until told otherwise. It’s the only way these men are going to learn how to be inclusive.
Another funny example: two men having lunch with their small dog. As they were leaving I asked them about their dog and mentioned how, in my opinion, a dog really improves a relationship…were they thinking about having children? They looked increasingly horrified as they realised that I thought that they were a couple. They said, “Oh, we’re not gay. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re straight.”
The reaction always amuses me. Men are still insulted by the insinuation that they might be gay. Pathetic.
Update on Irene the mad woman from Hawaii. Last night she informed me that she had called the Lost Hills Police Department reporting me as a terrorist. I am assuming because my father was Persian? Anyway, so far Homeland Security have not interviewed me about this and I imagine that they won’t be any time soon.
The bottom line: even if I wanted to benevolently return the money she says is owed to her she has caused such internet havoc and destruction I simply can’t. I am not going to. She thinks that her internet attacks on me are somehow going to force my hand. What she simply cannot comprehend is the following fact about me: I do not care about my ‘reputation’. As I mentioned to her last night during one of her frenzied email bombardments the worst has already been said about me, nothing that she says is either new or bothers me.
Finally, last night, her gay friend sent me an odious email mocking my cancer scare. All for $800? They want me dead for $800?
Great morning at therapy today. Wonderful. I am in very good spirits. mainly because I don’t have a blood sucking fame whore at my tit sucking the life out of me. Oh, it’s 4pm on the east coast, he is probably already stoned, on web cam showing off his only asset.
The most annoying thing about Jake is that before meeting him that cold January afternoon in the East Village I had a meeting with agent David Vigliano who was really interested in working with me. Jake called him Vig the pig.
I have a GREAT idea. Irene you should call him, perhaps he’ll offer you and your friend a book deal.
Never assume men are straight until they tell you categorically that they are.
8am. I didn’t go get the biopsy. Something is stopping me. I don’t want to know the truth. Just like I didn’t want to know the truth about him. Some truths are just too hard to face.
I am aware of the dull thump in my ball sack and in my lower back. Like somebody is gripping my left testicle.
One of Jake’s friends wrote to me saying, and even though inaccurate, I really liked the quote, “We have all had diamonds thrown in our face.” It was lyrical and charming. He could have added darling to the phrase. It would have worked perfectly.
Anyway, interesting day yesterday after I published the Irene blog. She, of course, is threatening the IRS and an internet fraud investigation. The problem is..I do my taxes, really thoroughly. It’s not worth doing them any other way. I am not feeling so feisty today.
I remain teachable.
Last night something rather remarkable happened. I met a man a year and a half ago who is perhaps a dream of a guy. That dream of that perfect man. Beautiful in every way. When we first met he explained that he was anxious about his sexuality, we had talked it through but nothing happened. I had wondered about him occasionally, mentioned him to Jake even, but had not contacted him.
Yesterday I received a blunt email from him asking if I wanted to explore his curiosity about men.
I thought about it for a nano second and invited him over.
So, last night we had a very steamy session with each other but I wasn’t engaged. I felt distant, absent..and not really ready to have sex with anyone else. I didn’t even want to kiss him. It is odd this morning to wake up with the smell of some other man on your fingers. I knew that it had to happen sooner or later..somebody else but it’s still too early. I tell you, I don’t envy men like Jake who can sport fuck but the healthy alternative is such a lengthy process. We all agree that if I had been a sport fucker I would have been dead a very long time ago.
Why was his coming to see me last night so remarkable? Because I was always warned in AA to be careful what I prayed for. Getting what you want when God wants you to have it rather than when you want it can be very ungratifying.
Peter Doig painting in my bedroom 1982 Boom Boom Boom (The Sublime)
Is getting to know a man before you sleep with them so bizarre? So when the moment happens, one is present and authentic? After all, Jake and I talked for months before we finally fell into each others arms.
Perhaps he can do that with anyone? Perhaps a period of total abstinence is what I need?
I could have let things just stay the way they were, letting him tell me about his conquests but by the time we returned from Europe I just knew that merely having him in my life would be too disruptive.
I did not want that young man to stick around last night. He left and I lay on the red Victorian sofa I have owned for twenty-six years. I began to doze. There was something very comforting about laying there. The over stuffed arms, the familiarity. The constant presence of that sofa in my life. Dione bought it for me in Edinburgh in 1984. It was on the street outside a junk shop and it was desperate to be loved. I covered it in white ticking, the first of 4 times it has been reupholstered. Jake was three when I bought that sofa. Unexpectedly Dione’s daughter wrote to me yesterday. She’s a sweet heart.
Things have given me more pleasure than the men I have loved.
So, the young man left the house at 2am. I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again.
The picture at the top of the page was taken in my Whitstable house, the house that belonged to Peter Cushing. The red sofa wearing it’s blue slip cover.
I wanted to post a few pictures. I want to remind myself that it has all been an incredible journey.
I wanted to include this one because I have a man’s legs wrapped around my shoulders. He is called Chris Boot. He was in South Africa with Tilda Swinton. Tilda came to the dinner thrown for me at Sundance when AKA played there. She came with Jamie Johnson.
Boom Boom Boom (The Sublime) 1982 Peter Doig
You can see half of the Peter Doig painting I bought at his St Martin’s degree show. It hung in my Furlong Road, Islington sittingroom until I was arrested. At which point Doig decided to snatch it back and I never saw it again. It is probably worth in excess of $1, 000, 000 now.
Matt Rowe and Marie Palmer, we met at the Mercer Hotel in NYC with Mel C from the Spice Girls. Matt had been one half of the duo who wrote all of their best tunes. New Years Eve 1999, Mercer Hotel with Calvin Klein, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Alan Cummings and Fran Leibowitz. A cool very night. Matt is still a great friend.
I’ve written loads about Jay Jopling in this blog. This is the night he met my sister Jessica.
Justin Lee-Aliston was my best gay friend in Whitstable. He was the sweetest boy. He killed himself a few months after he was gay bashed in Camberwell South London. Here he is in happier times with my friend Tracy at the Island Wall, Whitstable house.
Celia Lyttleton, I can’t remember where we met but she is a doll and this picture was taken at a fancy dress party at the artist Glynn Boyd Hart’s house during the 1980′s.
Celia introduced me to the artist Ana Corbero at her Albermarle St gallery. She in turn introduced me to Colin Cawdor , the Thane of Cawdor-Macbeth. Duncan and Macbeth in NYC, in a sprawling apartment in Williamsburg. Long before anybody else was living there.
Our view.
Colin and Anna. Now, Colin lives in the North of Scotland in his castle, a castle he had to wrestle from his step-mother. Ana lives in Spain with her husband. I remember that he dressed Ana in Azzadine Alaia-and the moths ate clean through her fur coat.
After yesterday’s blog purge I felt a whole heap better. I can now concentrate on my lumpy testes and getting my life back in order.
I spent 30 minutes virtually decoupling myself from the timid Beast of Westchester. Facebook, Skype etc. Of course I forgot that he owes me money from the UK tax refund but hopefully he will just do the right thing and send it to me.
The number of people who read my blog doubled yesterday. Why? Very odd.
How exhausting! The entire thing with him from beginning to end was exhausting. Relationships? Who needs them? Well, I for one would like one that works. As I said before, we packed a twenty-five year relationship into the last eight months.
I really had no intention of publishing yesterdays incendiary blog but he sent me such a vicious email the only way I could be assured of never seeing him again was to tell it as it is. He’s an idiot, I was all washed up yesterday afternoon. I really wasn’t feeling very mean-spirited in light of my testicle problem but he riled me into action and out came Anthony (my angry alter ego) to protect my honor.
After I published the blog I met Sharon and we headed over to the Pacific Design Center where the Weinstein Company were premiering their new documentary, The Pat Tillman Story.
.
Good God, if that couldn’t shake me out of my mad head nothing would. What an incredibly sad story.
Pat Tillman the sporting star was used in life and death by the US government to support an unpopular war. As the genius filmmakers made clear, the US Government probably wishes they hadn’t messed with the tenacious Tillman family. You have to love them, the mother and father are probably the most patriotic, considerate, intelligent people you ever met. They were the sort of people you want to believe all American are.
Watching their faces as they testified in congress, tangling with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove and George W at the very pinnacle of government, laughing in the face of the toothless Congressional oversight committee. It was a ghastly example of how ordinary, good Americans have been trampled and continue to be trampled by their very own government.
I will never forget listening to the young man who saw his best buddy Pat Tillman have his head blown off his shoulders just feet from where he stood. The blood trickling out of Tillman’s neck like a drinking fountain.
I chatted with that brave young man after the film and was filled with admiration. I have no reason to complain about anything when I meet a man like that. He had the best line in the film, he said, “Afghanistan reminded me of Arizona but (pause) the people looked a bit different.”
I do hope that you all get to see The Tillman Story, that you get to meet Pat as his parents and friends remember him and hopefully be as inspired as I was after seeing this remarkable film. It was very hard not to cry.
Before I went to sleep last night I thought how beautiful Pat Tillman was, not just his beautiful face but what made him really beautiful was his compassion, sensitivity and unusual intellect..a perfect example of how one can never ever judge a book by its cover.
His beautiful face and brutal death make him an example of what a hopeless, desperate, unnecessary war this is. The waste of life and resources and time and ideals.
Yet, the oligarchs continue sending these young boys to their deaths, profiting from sorrow, emotionally blackmailing an entire nation in the name of patriotism, trading on their love for the American flag and nobody will lift a finger to stop it…this absurd ‘war on terror’. Such nonsense.
Before I got caught up writing yesterdays blog I had planned to write about the people who rent my Malibu house. The good and the bad but after I received his vicious email events overcame me. Here is a snippet of what I will take time writing about at a later date.
The renters. When it comes to renting the house through VRBO there are far more Dodi, Richard or Jan’s (appreciative and complimentary) than there are Irene, Vikam or Dave’s (unappreciative and demanding).
The good renters love the house and realize that they are getting a great deal for their buck. They write glowing reviews in the visitors book.
The bad renters, with exactly the same house, same EVERYTHING seem to feel duped. They think the house is dirty, they complain about the modern art, that the TV is too small. They complain that there are personal effects in the house, that a hose is not wound properly. They demand their money back without ever checking their contract. Worst, is when they break things and never ever like to pay for what has been broken.
They seem to forget that they are getting the house for up to 7 people for $250 a night rather than the houses they can see below them for $3,000 a night. They also forget that I have rented that house to hundreds of renters and most of them are perfectly happy with their experience of the house.
There is one particularly insane woman in Hawaii who tried duping me…bad move. As we know very well I am not easily crossed. Bad boyfriends or bad renters..they are all the same to me. More about Hawaii woman at a later date.
Listen, the complainers, thankfully, are not as frequent as the those who just love it there. Who, when they leave, leave a sweet smell behind them, who obey the rules and don’t smoke or throw clandestine parties or break stuff or try claiming that the house was not as described.
It confuses the hell out of me when people just turn on their heels and leave the house without even staying one night. Thankfully that has only happened twice in the three years that I have been renting.
I slept late this morning, made coffee, took the little dog for a long walk.
Jennie and I had a luxurious conversation. She is in good spirits about getting into University. And so she should be, she is a remarkable young woman.
Oh yeah, before I forget…who is Adam Patch you ask? Don’t worry, I didn’t know either. Check the Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald and you’ll understand the literary allusion. A 1920s socialite and presumptive heir to a tycoon’s fortune…you’ll see that the timid man and I had more in common than even we realized.
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.
Cooking for eight this evening. I’ve not cooked properly for months. I have cooked like an American..thrown things together but not cooked properly..like I am want to do.
I am going to find a huge shoulder of lamb somewhere and stuff it with rosemary and garlic. It has been so chilly here that a good gigot and roasted root vegetables makes perfect sense. Perhaps a summer pudding? I wish I could find gooseberries for a summer crumble. I am going to make custard.
Lunch with Joel at SHLA. I paid. Why? Bumped into Drew Pinsky and Tom Arnold. Lovely to see Drew. I mentioned the CNN thing, Tom said that Montana Fishburne has no money from her father and Drew concluded that her decision to do porn was probably based on her giving her father the finger. Montana on the next rehab show? Perhaps.
After lunch I had a lump on my testicle checked out by a very nice doctor in Beverly Hills. I must have an ultrasound tomorrow. I could be castrated by the weekend if things don’t work out. Hmmm…then I could become a transsexual. My secret desire for so many years.
This morning was, of course, Wednesday therapy at 7.30. I shared that the companion had referred to us as we yesterday in relation to my doctor’s appointment..as in, ‘we’ll get through it’ rather than, ‘you’ll get through it’. I felt a tear welling up in my wizened eye. When I mentioned that to Jon he said, ” A smidgen of compassion? Is that all it takes?”
Strangely it was the companion who mentioned just how cynical, bitter and washed up most of the gay men he met were. He should try hanging out with addicts.
I read a Newsweek article by Howard Fineman that made me so sad. Sad because I agreed with his miserable assessment of America’s standing in the rest of the world. I’m not an idiot, I can see the rich tearing down anything they can lay their hands on, plundering this country while the poor cling to their huge cars and wars and patriotism. Clinging to their tatty bill of rights, their eviscerated constitution.
I was sad because I have never felt more like an American as I do now and wish it wasn’t so that the roads are fucked, that the Christians are in charge, that the gays get infected with HIV because they think it’s like living with diabetes.
I was sad because my miserable and oft mocked USA is a Third World Country prophecy is coming true. That my pessimistic assessment of the American Economy coming back from the brink is even worst than I expected. Please say it ain’t true.
Even my rich middle class manufacturing friends are limping from one foreign order to another, limping but believing (as they have always believed) that the unregulated free market and not government will make everything better.
My point, contrary to the other more morally confused commentators, was that it is perfectly OK for Montana to make a pornographic film. That her father Laurence Fishburne‘s career will not be hampered by difficult questions on the red carpet. That as far as I was concerned Montana’s decision was a ‘feminists dream’. Of course I was being deliberately incendiary but it’s a news entertainment show. That’s my role.
Seriously though, we are only ‘shocked‘ and ‘outraged‘ because a rich girl decides to make a pornographic film. Why are we shocked? Because our preconceptions about pornography and women in pornography are blown out of the water. We still believe that women who make a choice to go into porn have no choice at all. That they are the naive victims of unscrupulous men and to be sure, there is some truth to this on some occasions but not all porn is the same.
I am perfectly sure that when my friend Jenny Ketcham made porn she knew exactly what she was doing.
Montana Fishburn legitimizes pornography and scaily, for some people, may encourage a different sort of woman to make pornography a legitimate career choice.
Montana’s choice blasts the lie of the ‘sex tape’ out of the water. Let’s face it, both Paris and Kim knew exactly what they were doing when their sex tapes were released. They were complicit. The tape would never have been released without their consent. To be sure Rick Hilton never lost any sleep about the impact on his career after his daughter’s tape was released.
We live in Hollywood, fame and celebrity (even notoriety) is the goal for most people who live here. To live in your father’s shadow when you too crave what he has but your options are few…what’s a girl to do?
Porn has become a legitimate way for a starlet to reach a mass audience and become a star. The press is more than willing to collude with the associated lies. That both Paris and Kim shot their sex tapes covertly merely attempts to disguise the truth.
I take my hat off to Montana Fishburne. Let’s hope she makes a whole heap of cash. The kids of the rich and famous are notorious wasters. If this girl is as clever as she seems to be she’ll never ask her father for another cent. For the time being Montana Fishburne will glory in the spotlight that until now has been reserved exclusively for her father and my guess is that more people, in the long run, will see her film work than his.
We say that to each other in the UK all the time. It doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just the way we check in with each other. I check in with you and you check in with me. Even if I am not OK I thank you for asking.
When I taught him, the companion, what it meant he played at asking me if I was OK but the effect was still the same. I felt good, checked in with, placated.
Americans, when you ask them if they are OK, worry that something looks wrong with them. It worries them, disrupts their day.
So, don’t ask an American if he/she is OK unless you think that there is something wrong. You’ll do more harm than good.
It’s Monday morning. I have just been to therapy.
The weekend was a delicious blend of fun, laughter and me feeling better than I have for 8 months. I am just so happy. Happy doesn’t necessarily mean well-behaved. I have been delightfully rude.
Ivan Massow is in town, such an unpleasant man who was the ‘source’ in the Caroline Roux article about me for the Guardian. The source who was too scared to be openly vicious about me. Anyway, there he was yesterday having lunch, slimeing all over my straight friend Ben. Who in their right mind gave that man the ICA to run? WHO in their right mind thought he should stand as Mayor of London? Crazy!
Anyway, supposedly he is sober so I am trying not to hate him too much.
Thankfully he is losing his looks.
Saturday spent nearly all day in Malibu. Lunch in the Lumber Yard with Jon Aubry. I went to bed early Saturday night.
Breakfast on Sunday with Will and his dog Rocco. Stephen popped by at about 11 and then lunch with Sharon Swart. Delightful. She attended a flower arranging class and brought to lunch a huge bouquet of roses and hydrangea.
Sunday night Michael and I went to a party in Silverlake. There was a performance piece for us to watch. Three 10 minute sections of a larger work about a man accused of burning down his house and killing his daughters. The first part was indecipherable. The second and third part, although messy, were much better and had good, strong ideas. The director asked what I thought..so I told him. Bad idea. Nobody wants to hear the truth.
We were meant to meet Jamie Lee Curtis after that party but we did not.
Taka came by late on Sunday. He is a funny one. Editor, Japanese..chatty.
Oh, before I forget..the new Malibu renters arrived on Saturday and are very happy in the house. They are the SWEETEST people from the UK who loved the house the moment they stepped through the door and from whom I have not heard since..no news is GREAT news as far as renters are concerned.
I made a ‘to do’ list for Monday that includes all the boring stuff I have been putting off for weeks but essential if I am going to stay on top of things.
I went to therapy on Saturday morning and shared my good news. My only worry about therapy is that I am surrounded by so many miserable, desperate men.
It’s now Monday morning and I am positioned at my ‘desk’ at SHLA. Papers and briefcase open and ready for action. My list of things ‘to do’ is already half eaten. THICK lines scored through the things already done.
Listen, I have no idea why I am so happy but one thing is for sure..it has nothing to do with anyone else. In fact, I was briefly annoyed by the actions of the other last night but after a few seconds ceased to be. There was a time in the very recent past when the other could ruin my entire evening by being snippy. Not anymore.
Whenever one has a meaningful relationship one tends to ignore when things don’t add up. Denial gluing disparate parts of one story into something believable.
I am not annoyed with him..a little disappointed in me.
Disappointed that I have been so desperate to make our relationship work. Just writing that down makes me feel sick. That I would have done anything to make another man love, want and care for me. For the past 8 months I have devoted my time, energy, love and money to a stranger who bust his way into my life after seeing me on TV. It is a testament to my own low self-esteem just how much I was prepared to ignore in order to feel loved.
I am grateful that I fell in love and really got to know a man, be seen by another man.You may think that I have been foolish but in fact the last few months have been some of the best of my whole life. I miss him. I do. But what I miss doesn’t really exist. I miss being cared about, thought about, fantasized about, included and lastly, but most importantly, I miss being loved.
Every decision I made these past few months has been inspired by my love for him. Consequently I now have to make decisions based on my needs, my desires and my career.
I have vowed not to work out our stuff here in my blog so I won’t.
All you, my readers, need to know is that I am ok..are you ok?
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.
I must lay my cards on the table. I like Naomi Campbell. Perhaps I am indeed the lone member of her fan club as someone suggested yesterday.
I am not in the business of mob justice, or Facebook kangaroo courts. Wether she has been a silly cow in the past or not is none of my business. I am sure that for her past misdemeanors and indiscretions she has paid the price.
Since she hasn’t thrown a cell phone or punched an air stewardess for some time I think it best that we give this woman a break. Perhaps by walking in her stilettos for a mile I might understand where she’s coming from.
Frankly, if I were a model diva on vacation on a yacht in St Tropez forced to fly to a dismal courtroom in the Hague I too might find taking the stand at the war crimes trial of the President of Liberia, as she is now mocked for saying, ‘very inconvenient’. She has been embroiled in a situation that was not of her own making. I, for one, am not buying into this new wave of press generated ‘Naomi is a Bitch’ sentiment.
The way she is described in some quarters one might think that she is the one accused of war crimes, that she is somehow a war criminal by association. Naomi Campell may have briefly accepted a bag of blood diamonds but this does not make her in any way culpable for the crimes of the murderous Liberian President..she is naive at best, greedy at worst. Whatever she is she is totally undeserving of the vitriol presently coming her way.
Whenever I have chanced upon her she has been sweet and kind and desperate to deal with the well documented problems she has with both her temper and substance abuse. When Lee McQueen died she called everyone she knew he knew even if they didn’t know her particularly well. Friends of Lee’s found her unexpected comfort calls at that very difficult time very reassuring.
I had dinner last night with a wonderful producer friend of mine who knew everyone in the restaurant. I ate a large and delicious salad nicoise. We popped into an art event/installation that included a ten foot pile of pancakes and a naked man in a glass box with a pancake covering his face and genitals. Later we ended up at a young Hollywood party on La Cienega. The next generation of real managers, producers and actors all crammed into a tiny bar.
The best part of my day was spent in Malibu with the little dog. We walked down the hill to see how the Rambla Pacifico road construction is progressing. They are making a massive amount of headway, grading the land over where the land slide happened all those years ago and preparing to back fill with huge polystyrene blocks which apparently will lighten the weight of the construction.
On my way back I met two Armenian brothers who have moved into a house at that end of Rambla. One of them is dreamily good-looking. Instead of fixating on him however with his brown eyes and hairy chest I felt sad and missed my NYC friend.
My favorite restaurant Axe in Venice has burned down. Fuck. I loved that place.
Before I start today’s rant I must just share with you how beautiful it is in Malibu. The house is calm, the colours are peaceful and dreamy. The misty canyon is slowly clearing to reveal the ocean below.
Unusually there is a TV and it’s nice to hear it babbling in the background so I don’t feel so alone. I woke up too late this morning to go to my therapy group. Thirty minutes too late. Perhaps all I need is a TV and a little dog to be happy? I have been wondering since I returned from Europe what or how life will deliver next. Obviously if I were in NYC I would be enjoying the tail end of my relationship with him. Oh, I don’t know.
The insurance man came yesterday to discuss the burglary that happened here in Malibu before I left for Europe. He was polite and thorough. A friend popped by to take me to lunch, a young Japanese actor. We ate at the new Cuban place nearby.
I spent the afternoon imagining how the house might look if I made the essential changes I want to make before I put it on the market this autumn. I drove down to see how the new road is progressing. They have already carved out the route and huge yellow earth movers are shifting tons of debris from the 26-year-old slide. It excites me to see the changes. Driving up Rambla Pacifico is really beautiful overlooking the northern Malibu shores, past vineyards and the vast Santa Monica mountain range. As I have said before, the road makes sense of why these homes were built here. I was sure when I bought the house that one day the road would be repaired so seeing it happen gives me a huge sense of relief.
Went out for dinner with friends last night, they had an elderly black labrador who the Little Dog fell in love with and tried humping. He had such fun! Running around their lawn with his new girl friend.
Something funny happened yesterday morning after therapy. One of my co-conspirators (kinda famous) came up to me and told me that if I ever saw him in public that I shouldn’t speak to him. That my fame as a sex addict might reveal him as the same.
The news on the TV is all about missing boys, bigamy and bombs. For many people just like me yesterday’s great news was the over turning of the morally reprehensible proposition 8. A federal judge declared California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional Wednesday, saying that no legitimate state interest justified treating gay and lesbian couples differently from others and that “moral disapproval” was not enough to save the voter-passed Proposition 8.
Even though marriage has been small part of my long story I have never really considered marriage between me and another man a possibility. If I stay in Malibu on the side of a mountain I am never going to meet anyone.
Meeting someone. Why has that become so important to me? Why have I abandoned my desire for glorious isolation? I suppose the very fact that for the past few months I have felt connected to someone has woken in me the desire to share what I have and learn to be a pair rather than a single. Of course this happened rather too late in the day. I miss him because he is intelligent and funny and warm and forgiving and when I am with him I feel complete. A rare combination. NYC is not far away but I will stay away because he has to make sense of his new life.
I must spend the morning putting the house together for new renters. The last renters left the house looking beautiful. Some people just leave a really nice feeling in the house. It is easy to remember only the bad renters and forget the good ones. I have been jammed solid with renters this year and most of them were appreciative and delightful. For that, this morning, I am very grateful.
You know if I ever relapsed on anything it is likely to be ecstasy. After nearly 14 years of abstinence I am hankering the oblivion of an overwhelming high.
The sinking, bubbling rush of great e. Sinking into the warmth, the clock ticking,
The moment when we are connected to the men and women around me moving as one, abandoning my individuality, my sense of self for us. The vanishing point, the music throbbing, the sweat flowing. I have already stowed anything valuable elsewhere: my watch and wallet. I don’t want to have to worry about anything. I catch the eye of a beautiful boy on the dance floor, he is glistening too. We find each other and I can smell him, taste his lips. My jeans tighten around my legs and groin.
The music elevates us, I know him more perfectly at that moment than I have ever known anyone. There is a moment of silence, just a beat but the silence becomes interminable. I can hear my lungs fill with air, his lips open, I can see his teeth. His black hair stuck in thick bangs over his white skin, his blue eyes looking at me. Focused on me.
All through my twenties I took drugs recreationally. Always at weekends, with friends all over London and New York. The finding and buying and taking of the little pill. I am the first one on the dance floor. There are a thousand gay men around me and it is so fucking gorgeous, so fucking glamorous. I am slim and agile, my arms are long and muscular, my hands are behind my head then they are up in the air above me playing in the light. I know how delicious I look. Passed from one man to another, passed from the arms of one man to another. Kissing the ones I want, briefly. Kissing the men I want as the music slows and panting, filling my head with the thoughts of the men dancing around me.
Drugs gave me so much more than a human could ever give me. For a few moments I am granted a reprieve. No thought, no care, nothing. Just me and the moment.
Soho House. LA. Misty morning on the 13th floor facing east overlooking the Pacific Design Center. I think it’s going to be a beautiful day.
I will write a six-month review of the LA House sometime soon but as of August ’10 everything is perfect in the paradise they have created here. During the day it is mellow and there are, thank god, few people hanging out this early in the morning.
So far my return from Europe has been very uneventful. I have thrown myself into therapy. My head is cleared of all recent obsessions and I am going to the Toronto film festival with Charlie in September. Phillip’s will sell the remaining art I have this winter and then, hopefully, I can pull myself out of the financial malaise that has blighted most of this dismal year. Me and a million other Americans.
I am eating a huge English breakfast. The grilled tomatoes remind me of him.
So, what of him? He returned to his life in NYC and our ‘relationship’ is in abeyance. Without doubt I will miss him and do on occasions (kissing him) but only when I compare him to what is on offer here for me. I mean..the gays I have to choose from.
Anna Albelo and I spent the day together yesterday. She is exhilarated by the fantastic attention her new film Hooters is getting. She deserves it. We ate a late lunch in China Town then went to an al fresco screening of Withnail and I at the Palihouse. It has been so unseasonably chilly here in LA, we left after 40 mins shivering and in general discomfort – pillows smelt of beer. We ended up at SHLA where we met a couple of well turned out gays that I really struggled to find anything in common with. They did not mean to be clichéd but sadly..they are. I understood that my experiences, history and personality are hard for anyone to deal with let alone a couple of sweet gay men who have a specific lifestyle that I cannot seem to make mine.
Before we left I bumped into Orian Williams the producer of Control (Joy Division) and his friend. They had been playing footie at Rod Stewart’s house. I like Orian.
The preceding day I was in the Mohave Desert shooting my scenes in a small, low-budget TV series about a future world of cannibals and gunrunners. The heat was unbearable. When it came to shoot my scene my brain was totally scrambled in the searing 110-degree heat. My lines vanished in the rivulets of sweat and parched throat.
Anna Albelo
I was impressed by just how many people my friend had persuaded to work with him for nothing. Boys love that sort of thing: guns, motorcycles and sexy Asian girls. I had an AK 47 to play with. It took me an hour or so to feel comfortable with it.
The rest of the cast were real actors and sat around talking auditions and managers and the Asian crew asked each other about the community of Asian actors they knew. They said things like, “Do you know Eddy Woo? John Chan? Margaret Cho?” etc.
We sat in an old air steam type trailer that, as you can imagine, was a big metal box in the desert..not exactly practical.
The little dog stayed in LA with Hillary who let me in at 3.30am when I finally got home.
As for my darling little dog? He really didn’t like sharing me with the companion. He likes me all to himself.
I shared last week in therapy how my time away with the companion in Europe had made the impossible seem possible. That a sexual relationship with another man where I remain present at all times could, indeed, be part of my narrative. That even though we were occasionally snippy with each other if one compares our time together on vacation with what I have heard since from others..well, we did excellently. We only had one big fight, on the street in London. Two men shouting at each other but we patched it up and made a potentially destructive moment into something worthwhile.
I never knew, before I went away, the joy of ‘make up’ sex.
Since coming home I slept over at an ex lover’s house but we just lay in the same bed. I am not ready to have sex with anyone else but equally I don’t like being on my own at night. This is what I miss most, waking up in the morning holding familiar flesh. Listen..do I think I will see him again? Certainly, but it will never be the same. After such a thrilling adventure the reality of who he is and what I am comes into hard focus..different people at different stages of their lives who came together for the most passionate of moments and are now friends.
I am sure a bunch of other things have happened since I last wrote my blog but this, for the time being, is all I can remember.
I have known Susan since I was 13 years old.
