I Am Not What I Am

At this time of life it is time to take a good hard look at what is and what could be.

The obvious frailties: reading glasses, aching joints, the prospect of a life without enduring love.

If I had only invested in a surrogate child. All my fears may be allayed.

That, for the uninitiated, was irony. You know how I feel about those surrogate gaybies. Abandoned to nannies until they can talk. Dressed up like performing monkeys.

“They spent every weekend on Fire Island this season and didn’t take the baby once.”

I am judged by what I own, by the company I keep, the baby I can afford, the art on my walls, the boy in my bed, the ideas in my head, the club I belong to, the house of my dreams, the car in the drive, the clothes on my back, the God of my understanding. I am judged.

Who am I? Take all of this away and leave me on the streets of Brooklyn and I am content. I want to be just like you. My history erased. My name changed. Once again.

The fire sweeps through the apartment building. The fire captains excited by the prospect of a real fire, manageable, heroic. Nobody is injured. The windows are smashed. The art deco facade blackened.

The jews are on the streets blowing their horns for the new year.

“Are you Jewish?” The young Hasidic Jew asks me.

” No. I’m not a Jew.”

I change my mind the next time I am asked. “Yes,” I lie, “I’m a Jew.”

He takes out the ram’s horn. I stand there in front of this eager youth with boyish whiskers and a large black hat, (the bastard child hat of the sombrero and the fedora) and for ten minutes he chants incantations and blows his horn.

We walk to Park Slope, enjoying the multi-million dollar mansions, the Art Deco Brooklyn Library, the renovated Museum with oddly placed Rodin in the foyer.

Delightful Prospect Park adjoining the Museum could have been designed by Capability Brown but was (of course) designed by Frederick Law Olmsted the designer of Central Park.

We ate at the new burger joint in Park Slope. My burger was made of Elk.

As I was ordering my elk burger I opened an urgent email. My friend’s brother had been shot dead on his farm in Maryland. He was found, partially eaten by animals, on his tractor. They have no idea if it is suicide or murder.

I filed the tragic news as ‘pending’.  I called his Mother and offered condolences and help.

These streets. They yield all manner of fine opportunity. I can disappear on these streets.

Today it is dark, wet and grey. The wind is warm however, the rain splashes onto my face. The Little Dog sits patiently outside the coffee shop.

Yesterday I lay in the arms of a beautiful boy who wanted me to fuck him. His cat curled up in a shoe box.

After he came we lay watching Glee in bed.

Mawkish, sentimental nonsense, a world invented by gay men where periodically an entire orchestra will appear from nowhere and youngsters will start singing hearty cover versions of popular tunes. A world run by the LGBT community. Bullying each other with waspish bon mot.

The drama is lackluster and situational.

The one-dimensional characters problems are slight, their solutions are wholly achievable. They worry to the point of suicide about their home town until they are saved by the gay hero.

This new gay frontier, where blue-collar dads talk like Kant, where black trans boys walk freely and unchallenged around a mid-west high school in full drag… this homo-utopia merely betray the dreams these gay writers had about their own youth. The dream of freedom.

The episode starred Whoopie Goldberg and Kate Hudson as teachers. Teachers masquerading as judges from America’s Got Talent.

“You’re Fired!” “You’re Cut!”

But of course Kate has a drinking problem and a lost dream and Whoopie wants to be Maya Angelou.

I took the dog and the train into Manhattan where I met with old friend Oscar Humphries who looked amazingly well.

We have had our fair share of adventure (all over the world) these past ten years:  Driving 24 hours into the Australian bush to a Bachelor and Spinster ball  for the Sydney Morning Herald.  Louche nights in Paris and London…

Son of Dame Edna Everage creator Barry Humphries he is perhaps one of the most talented yet self-destructive people I know. We went to an NA meeting on Prince St. Then dinner at Cafe Select.  I just adore him.

I had a late date after dinner with a charming man. We brought cup cakes and drank hot chocolate on West 4th St.

I climbed into bed at midnight and fell straight to sleep.

Nightmare: The Cohen’s, David and his 6 children are looking after The Little Dog. I bump into the youngest son who tells me without compassion that “You’ll probably be sad when I tell you this but…” they had to put The Little Dog to sleep because it was too ‘nippy’.

Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.
In following him I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so for my peculiar end.
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ’tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am

Park Slope

 

New York Artists

 

Zelda

 

Labor Day 2112

 

Merle Ginsberg

A perfect Sunday lunch with old friends: the wonderful Merle Ginsberg and Orian Williams… producer of Anton Corbijn‘s Control at  The Chateau Marmont.

Followed by a walk up Abbot Kinny with Tristam Summers.

Dustin

My Family

Families come in all shapes and sizes.

 

Fuck you Konstantine Kakanias

Cocksucking Fame Whore

Continuing my occasional ‘Fuck you’ series of LA essays I nominate the ‘award winning’ illustrator and elderly Greek queen Konstantine Kakanias as my latest Fuck You.

Konstantine threw a party last night.

Who put the kaka into Kakanias?

This guy has tried it all.

Artist, writer, illustrator, jewelry designer.

B’jesus with this much talent this homo should be a household name!

He’s tried so hard to be something but for poor old Koni, nothing seems to stick.

He’s  just a socialite with a great talent for persuading other socialites to take him seriously.

You know, I have known the rancid Konstantine for many, many years.

We first met with Manolis Mavrakis and Fred Hughes in New York in the early 80′s.  Fred loathed him.  Manolis laughed at him.

Koni painted my portrait then tried to have sex with me.  I declined.  He was smelly and creepy.

I left the portrait on the easel.

We periodically bump into each other all over the world.  Much to his chagrin and my infinite amusement.  It was he I referred to as Nona Summer’s vile Greek escort last week.

Konstantine attracts the WORST sort of people.  Nona, Peter Dunham, Justin Kern, Alex Hitz etc.

As his last incarnation he was calling himself an artist.   He had a laughably sophomoric show at The Light Box Gallery in LA before it closed down.

Kimberly Light (heiress) rues the day she ever let this cretin have his own show at her gallery.

He was the only artist who did not sell at the Angel Food project auction at CAA several years ago.

That’s how seriously the art elite take him.  Look for his work in the collections of important collectors and you will not find his name.

His work is absurd.

Yet, within that sub-world of dodgy socialites and rich kids looking for a purpose he has carved himself a ‘career’.   Some how he persuaded Swarovski to manufacture his designs.

Silly rings, “Inspired by Byzantine royal jewels.”  He brays.

Did they sell?  They were a total disaster and can now be found on the Swarovski website knocked down to a fraction of their original price.

Last night Konstantine was up to his old tricks.

Konstantine is now a film maker.

He has made a ‘film’ and to launch this seven minute animated masterpiece he assembled LA’s elite…  including ‘designer’ Justin Kern and his pretty side kick Stephanie Danan for whom the ‘film’ was commissioned and QVC favorite… fried chicken go to guy and Coca Cola heiress Alex Hitz and a gaggle of loafer wearing euro trash.

“They’re very collaborative people and they’re really creative. They like playing with other creative people and that’s where it all crosses over,” Indeed, Danan and Kern enlisted the efforts of friends like Tatiana von Furstenberg (heiress), “They’re not in a singular mind-set and they can pull from other mediums.”

I walked in and immediately saw twenty people I knew well enough to kiss and twenty people I knew well enough to ignore.

I waved at Konstantine… he flew out of his chair…

“Who invited you…”  he trembled.  His voice deserting its usual treble… escalating into a Maria Callas soprano.

Alex Hitz who I kissed lavishly (after all he had paid for a wonderful dinner at the Sunset Tower) said, “This is Konstantin’s party.”

“I know,” I said, “And I am the wicked fairy.”

Alex shrank into the shadows.  I turned to face the outraged Greek.  Like his country… in debt and struggling to save face.    He held out his fingers like 10 wands and told me to get out.

I left, greeting people on the way out with smiles and kisses.  Clo Perrin (heiress) looking gorgeous in white silk jersy.

Justin Kern waved.  Justin is proof that there is life after modeling… just.

“I’ll be writing about this!”  I grinned cheerily!

Before I left one of the guests, a beautiful young Parisian flew up to me and laughed, “Darling, what a waste of time.  You didn’t miss a thing.   Poor Konstantine.”

Dinner at Laurel Hardware with a cute jew.    Great kisser.

Hollywood Friday

 

The Weekend

The Gays

The gays. Oh God. It’s enough to make you homophobic.

I don’t mean you dear. Not you.

This post is all about children, real or imagined.

Since Obama’s toothless benediction, the gays have become emboldened.

However, this spurt of new confidence has not translated into any sort of useful direct action or changed the argument in any important way.

All that has happened?

The gays decided to take on the owner of Chick-Fil-E because he doesn’t agree with marriage equality.

Good God. All they managed to do was make that guy a whole heap wealthier. Thanks gays.

I hadn’t heard of Chick-Fil-E before the fuss now all I want to do is sample their factory farmed chicken sandwiches.

Damn you gays!

That’s not true. I’m not going there any time soon to eat anything.

Meanwhile, Elton is on vacation with David and his kid… and David and Neil and the twins… all wearing matching white cruise wear. Each surrogate kid costing $160k. A fleet of nannies back on the boat.

Elton laments that his kid will never know his mother. He’s quite right. Erasing mothers from the picture… is just wrong.

Amongst the gays I notice a new theme emerging, something that used to be hinted at, implicit… but recently… in polite circles… made explicit… there is amongst a broad swathe of the gays I meet… an appalling misogyny.

“I don’t hate women, some of my best friends are women.” they say (without irony) when challenged.

Those who have surrogate kids grumble that the women who sold their eggs or carried the child might want something more than the money. They might want to ‘see’ the child. They might want a relationship with the child.

They would prefer that the baby not see the mother at all, that the baby be delivered from vagina to the hands that paid for the baby, like a UPS parcel.

Apparently it’s now possible to take the DNA from two men and create a child without any genetic material from a woman. I was told this frightening news triumphantly by a gay man the other day.

“You would still need a womb.” he told me sadly. “But it’s only a matter of time before that (a womb) can be replaced too.”

I was uncharacteristically speechless.

Is erasing the mother from the picture just wrong or am I being old-fashioned?

I met gay Ian, a young CAA agent manque.

“I suppose that’s the benefit of being gay… no women.”

A perfect world for Ian: married, baby, no women.

He, ‘Didn’t see the point..” of women. “Women are our natural enemy.” He giggled.

“Are you single?” I asked him. He looked appalled. My question implied that I might want more than a conversation.

I reassured him that I tended to fuck people my own height.

His modern, bourgeoise anxieties included: he would never be able to afford a surrogate child.

That he would never meet a perfect man and marry him.

His friend Zach chimed in helpfully, “Surrogate kids are only 8 grand in India.” No problems with permits he assured us and the women can’t find you.

The gayby industry is being outsourced.

The vitriol spewed over me (as usual) in the Data Lounge is worth noting.

Writhing with xenophobic zeal these queens who hate me seem to hate me for all the things us gays are meant to aspire: beautiful men, money and uniqueness. Ill informed opinions about my house etc. can be ignored.

I feel sorry for the young gay guy who wanted to celebrate me then ended up apologizing for all the nastiness.

Those resentful old poofs who hate me? Well, you’ll have to try little bit harder. As you simper at home writing anonymous shit about me… I’m out and about having a great time.

Thank you very much.

Remember, after ten years a resentment has more to do with the person harbouring it than the intended recipient. Get over yourselves.

Of course, some resentments are fresh and well deserved.

My ex has every reason to loathe me and I wouldn’t expect anything else. I made his life hell after we split up and increasingly, every day in fact, I wish I could put that genie back in the bottle.

P.S. Do I think I’m better than most people? Nope. Do I look down at you from a lofty place judging you? Would I want anyone else’s life? Nope. I don’t envy anyone… ever. I really love my life… good and bad.

And finally, something more to celebrate.

As I’ve written before, I saw those amazing pics of the ex bf with his current beau. They looked great.

They are unashamedly gay.

I applaud his apotheosis.

It is time for us all to jettison the mantle of straight acting, embrace our gayness in what ever form that takes.

That ex of mine has come a very long way since I first met him, from the artificially deep voice, the bad clothes and heterosexual relationship (he even berated my occasional gay flourishes) to dating a man who skips around his closet in 6 inch heels.

Some of my friends who viewed the style u like vid wondered how a man like that could call himself a jock… well my dears, he can call himself anything he likes.

When you have really loved someone and they fuck you over… however long it takes, the aim must always be to forgive and forget.

Loving him gave me a great deal of pleasure and pain but it was something.

We sure had something. And, when they ask me what that something was I can look them in the eye and say, with all honesty, that it was nothing they would want… but it suited me just fine.

However an impossible fantasy it was.

He was like an imprisoned child back then, in desperate need of parole. Boxed in by lies and deception. He became my child, my gay child.

Like every daddy I wanted the best for him.

When I didn’t know where he was, I worried about him… like a child.

Now I know that he is happy… I am happy.

Wasn’t that always my intention? To make him happy, however he wanted it?

What transpired was completely at odds with what I first wanted… Because I fell in love.

I tried not to… but I couldn’t help it.

I let myself fall like an olympic diver into a magnificent pool of crystal clear love.

Sadly, I hit the bottom of the pool and bashed my brains out.

Malibu/Venice/Hollywood

Swimming not Drowning

On Friday night we saw Lily perform a charming play after her month of theatre camp.  She played a slutty demon.

After the show I met the parents of a 12-year-old gay kid who was easily the star of the show.  He is obsessed with fashion.  Begging his mother to take him look at wedding dresses in Beverly Hills.

I smiled, remembering my own fashion obsessions when I was his age.

He is not having a great time at school.  The other kids are mean to him and he in turn is a pain in the ass.  I know that feeling too, being an obviously gay kid who spent the larger part of his childhood at war with other kids.

I rather hoped I would grow out of it but…I didn’t.  I am still at war.

The entire weekend was spent rehearsing and shooting tests for the movie.  I look forward to viewing the material.

After day one we met Jacob and Fielder at Laurel Hardware.  The dinner was spectacular.

We scoffed the heavenly pig cheek, sharing the lamb, the char, assorted salads and the most delicious rhubarb and strawberry cobbler and roasted peaches.

Perfection.

The ingredients are locally sourced,  incredibly fresh and the flavor combinations were perfectly well judged.

After day two of rehearsing and shooting the most dramatic scene in the film… we all took off for the local watering hole.

Boys leaping a hundred foot out of the air into the ice-cold water.

Policeman confiscating beer and … of all things… an axe.  A mostly Mexican crowd they looked horrified when the cops turned up.

After my time helping out the ACLU I now know why.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

So, here it is.  Up and running.

My controversial, contemporary retelling of Oscar Wilde’s 1890 Lippincott version of  The Picture of Dorian Gray.

I really hope you enjoy it.

Laurel Hardware

1.

It was a day.  Yes.  Yesterday was a long day.  Good.  Kind.  Revealing.

I walked the dogs.  Through the bourgeois streets of suburban Malibu.   Early morning.  Before the sun breaks through.

I have struggled with writing both the end of the film and the novel.  Because, I suppose, they are both so firmly planted in the experience of being me.

My Producer is fine with everything.  Everything but the last page.  He wants an epiphany.

So, that’s what I am striving for.

The film is about a sociopath, a charming sociopath.  In fact, the film is about two sociopaths.

I can’t discount my own bat shit craziness.  Let’s face it… I did some terrible things.

For those of you who have been reading this blog for the past two years… I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the balanced and sensitive way I have drawn the characters… but that is not my credit to take.. it is my dear Producers influence.

If I had my way there would have been murders my dear…

His genius for editing and re positioning.. for making me (and you) care for the person I loathed and loved.

For revealing the truth.

I headed into town at 11 to meet my assistant at the club.

I’m test shooting cast this Sunday and having informal crew meetings.  I met a very competent First AD this week.

At the club I met Scott Cooper who made Crazy Heart and we stood in the bathroom discussing his new film, Out of the Furnace with Christian Bale.   He is understandably excited.  Really lovely man.

I bumped into Nona Summers who was with a loathsome Greek from my distant past.

Kevin and I sat with Jacob Brown from the New York Times. A super cool kid who is making his second short film.  We watched his first at the table.  Enigmatic, sexy and very well shot.

Jacob has excellent taste.

He and Sean Devany are the up and coming generation of young gay film makers fearlessly re-imagining their own experience as gay men, using film for their catharsis.

I am heartened that these smart young gay men are once again beginning to tell their stories.

For the longest time young gay film makers shucked their own experience in favour of chasing a bigger, straighter audience.

As a result… our community became less vibrant.

The gay film festival circuit, until recently, was lack luster and uninspiring… this year, at Outfest, there were so many interesting and well made gay films.  It warmed the cockles of my homo heart.

Gay men want, understandably, well made films with high production values but financiers are loathed to invest… scared that the audience wont come.

The tide is turning.

2.

Brock pitched up looking incredibly sexy in a tight, pale blue polo shirt.

We ate Caesar salad with added chicken.

After lunch we met Rafi Gavron the hot, hot, hot British actor who was ass raped in the TV series Rome.   He was with his cousin Dean McKillen the owner of the super chic new restaurant Laurel Hardware in West Hollywood.

Dean invited us for dinner on Saturday.

Brock and I hung with Kevin and Fielder at their home on Martel then decided we would preempt the Saturday invite and go to Laurel Hardware.

The place was packed with a really interesting crowd.  A smattering of Young Hollywood and some cool looking gay men.  Dean made us feel very welcome, sending us delicious pizzas covered with burrata and basil.

The boys drank beer and I didn’t.

I drove Brock back to his car and met up with my night-time companion,  collapsed into bed.

3.

There is an odd collision of circumstance:

Jacob is the best friend of the best lesbian friend of you know who.

One degree of separation.

It doesn’t surprise me.  It is a very small world.

We trawled through Facebook.

I looked in awe at pictures of my ex and his new boyfriend.   They are indeed an unusual couple.  Dressed in outrageous and colourful garb.   When my ex’s bf wears his heels he must be 7 foot tall.

There was a picture of them holding each other in a bucolic setting.   My ex is quite short and his beau wore heels.  The height differential was staggering.  It looked like a post wedding picture.

You know, after the vows.

I wondered what they would wear when they actually got married.  If Thom Browne would make the costume.

They looked very, very happy.

Diane Arbus would have photographed them.  I mean, it was like that… like a Diane Arbus picture.

I expect to feel different things when I see them together but I always feel the same.  I am truly happy that he is happy.    From a distance I share their obvious happiness.  It is a relief.

I am pleased that even though we will never know each other… will never speak ever again… that I was indeed somehow, in some way responsible for forcing that boy out of the closet and into the life he should have enjoyed since his teens.

Mostly I congratulate myself for saving her.

It baffled me, for the longest time what terrified him about being gay.  I understand now.  He wasn’t scared of being gay, he was scared of being that kind of gay.  Flamboyant, creative, a dandy.

Every time I see him in the virtual street my questions are answered.  A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.

I hope that she is doing ok, that she has found a good man.  An honest man.  I wonder if she forgave him?   I mean, there’s only so long one can hold such hatred in one’s heart.

Perhaps one day she will thank me.  I don’t expect any thanks from him.

4.

My great friend, the abundantly talented Lady Rizo is off to the Edinburgh Festival.  Packing her Marchesa frocks and her false eye lashes.  I urge my British friends to urgently seek her out.

You will not be disappointed.

5.

I am headed to Provincetown to stay with Benoit.

Tuesday July 24th 2012

Pink Pig

1.

It is dawn again. Dawn in the desert. The smell of the earth and the dew. The sounds of the chirruping birds.

The pervasive silence of the long black night coming to an end.

My night blindness is getting worse. I sat on my spectacles so am guessing, largely… where the keys are.

The days get hotter and hotter. The sun beating down relentlessly. The lawn toasting, the dogs roasting, the mountain tightens around us as it bakes.

Hot days in Dorset/ hot days in Malibu. Hot days on the sleepy ocean, lapping around me.

Coffee, editing, read the daily news. It sure looks bad in Syria.

We cruise down to the beach and play in the surf. We are tangled at night in the white linen sheets. We read side by side in silence. A familiar smell, a beating heart, the man I want but do not need.

He asks what we are. Nothing. We are nothing, I say. He struggles with ‘what it means’ to love another man.

My struggle is over. I am too old to give love a second chance.

He sees me thinking. He will read this and tell me to talk to him as if talking will solve everything. Just shut up and make love to me. Stop asking me what it means. Don’t expect me to know anything. Work it out yourself.

I don’t really care.

For all the terrible, meaningless cruelty I am still besotted with him. And, like the parent of a missing child, I wonder daily about his safety. Even though he is undeserving of my worry and considers my concern an intrusion..

I continue to fret about him, however violently I have tried to expunge the memory.

2.

I am mostly happy. I know you don’t believe me. I know that you think I am lying to you about my happiness.

Well, if you could see me… if you were the one laying beside me… you would understand.

Island Wall. The tiny cottage there. It was enough. It was perfect.

Now I lay my head down and it is enough.

Perhaps, you say, you could be happier? How much happier?

Facelifts, apparently, make women happier.

Then I realize that you are confusing your own thoughts about getting older with what you think happiness is. How can anyone be that old and be happy? How can anyone have so little and be happy?

Then, you try convincing me that I should want to be young again. Forgetting, of course, that I was never young. Always old. Always.

I have a spectacular ability to get on with what I have and be happy with it.

I don’t want more. Even in the jail. I found comfort. I found solace.

So, you think I am unhappy because you do not know what happiness is.

Could you imagine a happy person killing themselves? I could.

Come death.

3.

I had another dream about the DA. This time my thumb was in her mouth. She was sucking my thumb. Pressed down on her tongue. Like a calf. Her big brown eyes looking up at me.

Whenever I dream about her, her cheap gold jewelry tinkles like ice cubes in a crystal glass.

4.

I am writing my screenplay. Finishing it. I am enjoying a social life. I let the man beside me massage my neck.

I understand that I am in love with struggle. Struggle is sustenance.  It feeds me everything I need to live. I am alive when I fight to survive. I am alive when I feel myself emerge victorious. Even though you could not imagine what I experience as victory.

I dream that I am walking by my primary school in Whitstable. The black, tarmac playground is always empty. The lawn is green. The classrooms, I assume, are full.

I remember the boy who ate coal, the butcher’s son. He looked like a pink pig. Fat, pink, bespectacled. He drowned you know. You knew that… didn’t you? When he couldn’t take it anymore.

5.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.

Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea.

And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

Lady Gaga and The Trust Act

My days are split between the remarkable and the absurd. Bloated with new experiences, extraordinary adventures and, of course, passion.

Every day unfolds like a new napkin.

From dawn I write and rewrite. I am determined and hungry, inspired by the 75-year-old man who won the Palme D’Or in Cannes this year.

Contradictions:

On Thursday I stood in front of the Men’s County Jail with a disparate bunch of men and women denouncing the secure communities protocol, the very same protocol that illegally incarcerated me. A press conference for the Spanish press.

The only Anglo Saxon, the only non spanish speaker.

They hailed me and the other people called to testify. ‘Viva Duncan!’ they shout together. I am moved to tears.

Nobody I know cares about these people. Not least my gay ‘friends’ who savage me publicly for standing shoulder to shoulder with day workers, maids and gardeners who face daily threats of deportation and police harassment.

Later that same day I sat with Lady Gaga and Lindsay Lohan at dinner eating spaghetti. My date was overwhelmed. It was wholly unexpected.

The writing and photography give my life meaning and hope. The immigrants, of whom I am one, better shape my understanding of the world.

I am not interested in what I wear. I’m sure I look like a hobo. My beautiful tailored shirts are shredded. I have no interest in replacing them.

All the vintage Helmut Lang has been sold.

I can cobble together an ensemble for dinner. I look respectable enough.

Last week a young gay man told me I was lonely and sad. I feel neither. In fact, I have never felt so complete.

Lanvin Hat

The Lanvin hat was bought for him in Paris the day before my birthday two years ago.

It was subsequently abandoned and crushed.

So that I might never forget those months of crippled love I had the hat framed.

A Perspex box. A sarcophagus.

4th July Party 2012

Last Weekend, June 2012

Return To County Jail

1.

No. Not what you ‘re thinking…hoping?

I set out at 6am for the Men’s County Jail to see my friend Jeremy who is presently residing in dorm 5200.

Jeremy is a good-looking white man in his mid-thirties. A meth head with a penchant for transsexuals.

He has two kids in Utah. He used to manage an ihop.

He is the kind of character I couldn’t invent from a movie I couldn’t write. A charming man with anger issues.

Like most inmates he is pre-occupied with his own case, another miserable drug dealer hauled off the streets.

We spoke for thirty minutes, I left $50 for him to eat well and I drove home.

The deputies who processed us into the jail were very pleasant, polite.

2.

Yesterday we drove to Redondo Beach where we met with Democratic State Senator Lieu.

The second State Senator I have met this month. He has a strange constituency, ranging from progressive liberals in the Venice area to hard-core Odinists in Orange County.

We sat in the sparse office with his Harvard educated interns. They were polite but they didn’t offer us water or coffee.

Our successful visit last month to Senator Calderon lead to his decision to co-sponsor the Trust Act.

The bill then passed the Senate Public Safety Committee and is now headed towards the Senate Floor .

The Trust Act will make what happened to me less likely to happen to others. It may liberate the 3000 un-convicted men and women currently held on ICE holds in California.

The Trust Act will demand that ICE follows its own guidelines, its own rules.

It is essential that Senator Lieu support this bill.

Lieu is an interesting man.

In his Redondo office there is a huge studio photograph of Lieu and his family lounging on a white, fluffy rug. He is wearing a dress shirt but no tie.

He has been a vociferous supporter of the LGBT community, especially the transsexual population for whom he reserves special respect.

I sat with Kristine Chong from The Californian Immigrants Policy Center and three other Immigrant rights specialists… including a day labourer from Mexico in the Senator’s dingy ‘conference’ room.

Lieu’s people wore badly cut suits. We all began to sweat in the un air-conditioned office.

Antonio, the day laborer, spoke very movingly about the catastrophic effect ICE and the Secure Communities protocol are having on the immigrant population. Families broken apart, 5000 American children made orphans, their mothers and fathers deported.

Immigrants are routinely forced to sign deportation papers or threatened with months held in privately owned immigration camps, camps that are currently costing the people of California 6 million dollars a year

The situation is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

This state has enjoyed, for many years, low-cost manual labour on which their false economy was based. Now, these undocumented migrants are being rounded up like animals. Targeted on the streets, in their cars, in their homes.

ICE have to deport 400, 000 people a year to fulfill a federal government quota.

Even President Obama’s announcement last week supporting The Dream Act didn’t stop three ‘Dreamers’ being deported yesterday.

I told my story. I told them what they must have heard many times out of Latino mouths. Spanish speakers, their accents somehow devaluing what they have to say.

Listen to me.  Listen to my clipped British accent.  Listen to me eloquently tell my story.  Pay attention to the dramatic pauses.

It is always very shocking for them (especially the starched, ivy league interns) that an affluent white person could have got caught up in the immigration net.

They bowed their heads in shame.

After 45 minutes our meeting is over.

They tell us that Lieu’s support on the Senate floor cannot be assured, he has to pamper to the right-wing element of his constituency. They say: Lieu, in the past, has been threatened physically for supporting immigrants rights. He received death threats.

Pampering to the right? I ask incredulously. Pampering to the right will keep this state poor, our children uneducated, the prisons full and gay men like me… unmarried and childless.

Be brave, I urge him, and do the right thing.

As we are leaving we pass another group of men and women patiently waiting their turn to be heard. They could have been Odinists for all I know, demanding that Lieu hunt down every illegal immigrant in California and throw away the key.

More LA Portraits

Nonce

1.

I taught the inmates at MCJ the meaning of the word nonce.

It was funny. Didn’t sound like it does when people use it at home.

It really is the worst word you could imagine calling someone. Much worse than the word cunt.

Mind you, an insult is all in the delivery.

2.

A young man wrote to me yesterday.

He told me that he was gay, lived in Arkansas. An Iranian Jew. His mother tells him that gays are sick, should be in mental hospitals.

He sits there watching her. He knows that he will never ever tell her the truth.

Perhaps, he said, he should trick a girl into being with him. So…he won’t end up alone.

Sound familiar?

Now, that’s a closet.

3.

I am struck by how many young men I meet are fascinated by English men with beards.

So, I asked him. He said, “Have you seen the film The Weekend?”

I smiled and quietly thanked Andrew Haigh under my breath.

4.

God and the devil. In league with both of them…to make art.

5.

Read the Hollywood Reporter. “I was crazy for many years.” says Oliver Stone.

Which artist isn’t?

6.

I am happy. Not blissfully…but at ease with myself.

Yikes

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

1.

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

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

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

I faked a dropped call.

2.

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

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

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

3.

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

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

You left an impression.   Creases in the bed sheets.

4.

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

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

5.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.

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

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

Wish me luck.

10 Affectations

1.  Phil bought me a string of Baroque pearls for my 26th birthday.  They vanished.  As Coco Chanel lay dying on the Rue Cambon in 1971, her friends stole the jewelery she was wearing from her fingers and from around her neck.  The same happened to Barbara Hutton the Woolworth heiress.

2. What does it feel like when one assumes that someone they loved is dead and gone and then they reappear?  What changes, adjustments have to me made?  When one has already grieved.  The shock of the living far outweighs the shock of the dead.

3.  I did not sleep last night.   The demons were upon me.  Yet, I would describe myself as happy.

4.  I wear dark glasses.  I am reading the Martin Kippenberger biography.

5. It is so cold at night I fear the succulents will die.

6.  I found the Lanvin straw hat I bought in Paris.  It was crushed in the back of the car.  I took the remnants and had them framed.

7.  I am optimistic.

8.  Stringing together the visual DNA on my blog.  I find myself abruptly halted.  How can one leap from a formal portrait of a disgraced Duchess to snowy Stonehenge?  What is the connection?  Either the Duchess goes or I’m stuck.

9. The final act of my film needs rewriting.  Truth is stranger than fiction.

10.  Not sleeping has a powerful effect on my libido.  I have unwanted erections.

 

 

 

Your Life Now

New York. May 2012

There you are. Finally. For all to see.

Like bumping into you in the street. That’s how it felt.

But you were where we met…virtually…on the internet.

Peony, the rain, the winsome songs.

If we had bumped into each other in the street, I think I would have felt the same. I left the page with a sweet smile on my face. I felt proud of you. I know how exciting life must be for you.

And if I had bumped into you in the street and you had told me that you were in love…inevitably you wanted me to know that you were in love and inevitably I crumbled.

I am indeed that cliché you despised so badly.

I called Robby and he listened. I called Joan and we looked into your life and we all agreed that it was swell.

So…

The end of the film needs rewriting.

All the world can see your love. Ironic huh? Now you know how I felt when I wanted to publicly celebrate what we once had, when I wrote about us.

There you are, together…pressed together. In love.

You looked great. Your hair well cut, your pants the right length.

Your boy friend looks extraordinary and familiar. Celine is a great brand.

I know you didn’t put that Tumblr page up for me but you knew I would see it. You knew I’d have an opinion.

It was a perfect way to let me know.

If we hadn’t ended things so badly and we’d met in the street…I would have hugged you. I would have thanked you. I would have smiled gently. I may have shed a tear.

I loved you very much…you know that. But, we knew what we had was fleeting…needed to happen for you to set yourself free, free for this relationship that you celebrate so publicly today.

The metamorphosis is complete and you have emerged fully into the world…a beautiful young man capable of great love and glamor…and your underwear was chic as all hell.

I know that you will make something amazing one day…something I would have never guessed.

A film or a book or a room or a garden. You are capable of all those things.

Of course I still love you. But not like that.

This is all I ever wanted, to know you are happy and to share your happiness

By publishing your life so publicly I am relieved…even though I cried, I cried because you were there on the street telling me what I needed to know.

That you are happy and in love and…of course…beautifully dressed.

PS I bought the book.

Andy Gipson Kills Gays for Jesus

Dear Andy Gipson Mississippi state Rep. (R),

Apparently, on Facebook recently, you posted a note advocating the murder, slaughter, deaths of homosexuals after (black) President Obama had some personal feelings about gay marriage.

Well, I wholeheartedly support your ‘put homosexuals to death’ position…you know…kill a gay for Jesus. Yay. You’ve got my support.

However, I support you on one condition. You can kill any one of us..as long as you can look us in the eye and kill us with your bare hands. Your hands around our throats. For Jesus.

You know, like vegetarians who urge carnivores to try killing their own meat before they eat another burger.

I mean, it’s one thing to say something terrible like that Andy but it’s another doing it…isn’t it?

I’ve posted some pictures of some gay people and their friends below for you to imagine shooting or gassing.

I saw you with your kids. You’re obviously a good dad. I mean…apart from wanting to commit genocide.

Have you seen pictures of the gestapo on their days off? Holding their kids in their arms?

I noticed too that you dress your kids in army uniforms. Are you training them to kill gays?

I was in a pub once called the Admiral Duncan in London that was bombed by a man like you who wanted to kill gays. He killed as many heterosexuals as he killed homosexuals. He went to prison for a very long time.

Will it make you happy or sad when you squeeze the life out of your first gay?

Andy!!! God forbid! Have you ever thought your children might be homosexual? What will you do when your children want to come out? When your children ‘come out’ will you enjoy killing them?

How will you feel? Taking their lives for Jesus? I thought you people were pro-life?

Apparently, at the concentration camps in Germany (during the last great state sanctioned homocleansing) where large numbers of gays and lesbians were murdered…the guards tortured us before butchering us.

Could you imagine doing that?

Do you ever have thoughts like that?

How exactly do you want to kill us? I mean, there are millions of us…in God’s great plan…he sure fucked things up.

Disposing of all that gay meat and bones may very well increase the deficit you despise so much.

I’ve given your problem of eradicating us gays a great deal of thought.

It occurs to a simple-minded man like me that however many of us you kill we will return.

Every generation you straight people manage to make more gay people.

If, for instance, you could determine when we were fetus that we might be gay…would you offer free abortions to women…NOOOO!!!! No abortions. Nothing FREE!!! The deficit!!

OH…yes…we’re probably evidence of the devil’s work? Is that right? But, I can eat garlic and sprinkle holy water on my forehead without turning to dust or the water burning my skin.

I must admit that I’ve thought about murdering some of my exes and if you could start…when the day comes…and you get permission to murder us…can you murder my ex first? I mean, before me. So I can see it happen maybe? Then you can turn the gun on me.

Have you ever considered just murdering gay people for fun? You seem like you might enjoy it.

Thank God Jesus has people like you to help him at difficult times like this.

I thought ‘thou shalt not kill‘ was a commandment but you people seem to make this bible stuff up as you go along.

Do you think you could help me go straight, stop hankering after a mouthful of cock?

I may renounce my gayness and come join your congregation. Come and live at your house. Ex gay. I’m too old to be gay anyway.

No. I’m not doing that. I’m a butt fucking gay. Too old to be ashamed of who I am. Too old.

I live in California. If you are ever here and feel like killing me for being gay…or any other reason…just let me know.

Facebook me.

And just in case you didn’t think it could get any worse:

The charming words of Charlie Worley, another gay killing pastor.

 

Red Medicine

Woke up early. Wanted to get the daub onto the stove. It’d been marinating all night.

Then, something about the process, the action of stirring the pot, as it began to simmer…broke something in me. Like I was having a rare moment of clarity, sanity…and I felt a terrible guilt for the way I had treated…not him…but his parents…drawing them into our drama. Collateral damage.

I wanted to write to them and tell them how sorry I was.

They were innocent.

Then I found that Avadon picture of Ginsberg and his long-term lover Orlovsky. And I thought about them ‘long-term’ and what they were thinking, or not thinking when they kissed for the camera.

I thought about the way they, we…I…describe what we have as long term.

Long term insists that we take what they had seriously. Ginsberg had not just met some man on the street and taken him into the studio. He had made some sort of commitment. Long term.

And I thought that marriage would be just that…long term. That our beards would grow long together. That I would never ever tire of looking at you. Kissing you.

Then I remember that I am here in LA. You send me a picture of Washington Square. It’s all I need right now. A picture.

The whole house smells of beef in red wine, fresh herbs, fresh garlic.

I had lunch with Robby on Monday. We ate a lamb burger at Gjelina. I drank ginger and mint italian soda.

He has been having a wonderful time. Earning masses of cash, loving his man and roaming with his homies. Yes, I wrote that.

On Wednesday I met a friend for lunch, a lunch that didn’t end until 3am. He is 23, he lied about his age. He told me he was older. A masculine dilettante.

We had lunch in Venice, tea in Beverly Hills, an odd party at The Sunset Tower (gays and girls), then dinner at Red Medicine on Wilshire.

Have you heard of Red Medicine? It’s that restaurant, Jordan Kahn’s place…that everyone is talking about.

We ordered far too much. Each baffling plate arrived covered in flowers or Dadaist condiment.

We ate: DUNGENESS CRAB / passion fruit, brown butter, black garlic, Vietnamese crepe, hearts of palm $32

We ate: HEIRLOOM RICE PORRIDGE / egg yolk, hazelnuts, ginseng, echire butter $17 and added Santa Barbara uni for a further $20.

We ate: BEEF TARTARE / water lettuce, water chestnut, nuoc leo, chlorophyll, peanut $15

We ate: AMBERJACK / red seaweed, buttermilk, lotus root, tapioca, succulents $16

Then, after dinner, we lay in the back of his SUV by the beach and kissed each other until my face was raw, my heart was racing, my legs were trembling. I was so completely overwhelmed that I could not drive for ne’er a mile before I had to stop and beg a cigarette from a passer-by.

He is beautiful. He gnawed at my neck until I could not bear it any more.

So, that’s what love looks like in a warm climate. For a moment. Not long-term. Not to be taken seriously. Just a moment. I have trained myself not to yearn for more.

So, the daub will cook for four more hours until it is tender. We will eat it with home-made noodles.