Bradley Manning My Hero

So, I’ve been spending time on Christian Mingle.

Looking for God’s match for me. Well, I’m sorry but… it’s shit.

God (not my usual God) made it quite clear to me whilst I was scrolling obsessively through acres of men who look like pedophiliac geography teachers… he made it perfectly clear that a life of abstinent solitude was probably on the cards or (if I was really lucky) being violently murdered by a crazy sex therapist or… luckier… a hit man sent by some crazier ex.

Which brings me illogically to:

Bradley Manning. My hero. What can I say? This courageous young man has revealed not only international truths triggering the Arab Spring and a hasty retreat from Iraq by the USA… but the truth about American, white gay men.

Fuck me. What a bunch of crazy, right-wing cock suckers.

I mean… these gay white guys are voting Democrat, so they get their miserable marriage equality then… as soon as they do… they’ll jump ship and vote Republican… if they aren’t already.

Gay White Men won’t feel like they are part of any minority once they achieve parity with their straight white male colleagues.

Powerful white men famously loathe sharing the stage with immigrants, brown people, poor people, ugly people, fat people, trans… and women. Fuck them. Especially women. Their natural enemy.

‘They don’t mesh with MY lifestyle.’ he said.  Yes, he really said that.

It fills me full of dread to imagine a world run by gay white men. But apparently, according to Elton John. It already is.

So Bradley, I had to draw a line in the sand.

It’s Anderson Cooper, Elton John, David Geffen, the HRC and any guests at a typical Hollywood pool party over there… and it’s me you and the brown people over here.

Bradley, in the USA the gays want to ignore you, demonize you, forget you.

The rest of the world thinks about you every day, rotting in that jail. They agree with me. They think you’re the bees knees.

Bradley, you won’t believe this but, yesterday Vivienne Westwood wore a laminated photograph of you pinned to her lilac, silk gown at the Metropolitan Fashion Ball.

Perhaps the gays might take you more seriously now?

I doubt it.

I’m really sorry that our community has let you down.

Apparently what you did… isn’t gay enough.

“What does Bradley Manning and his treason have to do with being gay?” That’s what they say Bradley.

You just ain’t the right flavor. And, of course, they (elite gay snobs) know you only joined the military in the first place to get a free education.

You ended up educating the whole world.

“You should have known better. You shouldn’t have broken the rules.”

That’s what the rich, white, gay men say.

Bradley, they were going to include you in the 2013 San Francisco Pride event. Did you hear about that? They were going to honour you.

But they lost their nerve after the rich, white gays persuaded the poor, black lesbian who runs the event that you were just a common thief.

There are well researched articles about you and what happened at San Francisco Pride. Bradley’s inclusion and outrageous exclusion.

After it happened I had to defriend over 250 affluent gay white men on Facebook. Yes, I did.

I felt like a Jew waking up out of a blackout at the Nazi Christmas party. Or a Muslim at the NRA National Convention. Or a Christian in the back room of a gay bar.

I had to make a big decision. I had to weigh up: the differences versus the similarities and… the similarities between me and the gays were negligible.

I had to redefine myself.

Bradley, for you… I am not gay.

I will have nothing more to do with them. Because of you.

Thanks for that Bradley. I owe you a club soda some time.

But, that’s only half the story.  I’ve been feeling very uncomfortable in my gay skin for a very long time.

It all began with that smile he gave me in the family court waiting area 3 years ago. He was with his dad.

That arrogant grin. You see… he thought he’d won the war.

Americans always think they have to win.

It was shocking because, until that moment, I’d only ever seen his ersatz humility. I did not recognize him any more.

But, I knew the smile. I’d seen it before… on the entitled faces of rich, white gay men.

Oh God. I thought. That’s who you are. That’s what you’ve been hiding.

The pain I felt around the gays. The revulsion I felt at the gay charity events, gay AA, gay white men, gays en masse.

The smell of them began to make me nauseous.

Perhaps, I thought, it might just be self hate? Internalized homophobia?

Just like I thought my gall stones were indigestion… it was the wrong self-diagnosis.

I am surrounded by millions of gay zombies.  In the perpetual search for fresh meat.

Zombies forcing other gays, gays with unnatural ideas to think like them.

Bradley, President Obama is on the TV right now… warming up his audience with a few self-deprecating quips.

The gays love him. They don’t care if they’re being used to shield what’s really going on.

Hey America! Look at this dancing gay who wants to get married… look… over here! Look over here whilst we torture these Muslims and spray the world with bee killing Round-Up.

If you ever get out of that prison… you’ll find a very different gay America. Oh yes.

But don’t expect a heroes welcome from the gays. It ain’t happening.

Don’t expect a GLAAD award.

Their ‘heroes’ are prescribed by good looking GLAAD president Herndon Graddick and his ilk. Heroes? A GLAAD ‘hero’ is anyone who comes out of the closet or a celebrity who says publicly that they like gay people.

Herndon Graddick?  Consider the source.

You know what, Bradley? The last time I saw Herndon (fascist star-fucker) he was sobbing in a gay AA meeting because he can’t stop doing meth.

The time before that I saw Herndon he was at gay traitor Ken Mehlman’s drinks party with his forked tongue shoved so far up Ken’s ass what he pulled out was scarcely chewed.

Bradley, you were very brave.

Most of the gays I know in LA and NYC are the kind of men who stayed close to the teacher at school because they lived in fear.

Fear has shaped their lives.

They are scared of you.  They used to be scared of radical homosexual Peter Tatchell.  Before Elton brought him in from the cold.

Bradley, you didn’t come from an affluent family, you’re not a great looker. You might not even be a man… that’s what they say.

But who ever you are, you are my hero. You made me rethink, reshape my life. Redefine myself as queer rather than gay… and I thank you for that… again. Because without you… things might have remained confusing for me.

But now… they’re not.

The story of S.F. Pride versus Bradley Manning and S.F. Pride versus the activist community of San Francisco is an ugly one that illumines the maggoty underside of assimilationist politics and policies. In the quest for straight acceptance that has propelled the LGBT community headlong into the arms of two of the most historically repressive institutions, marriage and the military, dissent has become anathema. The values of ads that used to pepper the personals in queer newspapers and magazines “seeking straight-looking, straight-acting, no fats, no fems” have become internalized within the community. The controversy over Manning highlights what has happened in the juggernaut move toward equality — there’s no room for outliers. Either you are a Lisa Williams-style straight-acting, straight-looking martinet with no temper for dissent or you are like the people who signed the complaint — activists all — who recognize that our queer story is not going to be told simply through marriage equality and being able to enlist openly in the military. Marriage and military equality are important, but they aren’t our only issues. Manning took the actions he did because of his outrage over DADT, which was still in effect throughout his deployment. But he also acted like so many patriots have over our nation’s history — out of loyalty to American democracy. Manning thought the government was lying to the people. So he told them the truth.

VICTORIA A. BROWNWORTH is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who has won the NLGJA and Society of Professional Journalists Awards for her series on LGBT issues. She is the author and editor of more than 30 books, including the award-winning Too Queer: Essays From a Radical Life. She lives in Philadelphia. Find her on Twitter at @VABOX.

A Lie in The Manger

1.

It started with a short message and ended up with a whole bunch of choices I never expected.

Not in my wildest dreams.

I’ve read what you had to say. Now it’s my turn.

Stepping away from the mess. It’s not so messy. It seems like it was planned.

This pantomime. Look at the cast of unusual, freakish characters. Look at them.

Boys and men, trans and women.

Young girls. Yes. They are here too.

So you wrote me a poem. No title… of course.

2.

We were connected .

When it expires we are expired.

The order? It was a good idea. It was a great way to formalize the end of our association. I can only imagine that you feel much the same way I do.

I wish we had never met.

Don’t you shudder whenever you think about it?

I understand why you needed to rewrite the narrative.

I took advantage of you?

You had far more to lose by telling the truth.

When assigning blame, I take full responsibility. I should have walked away.

Everyone I trusted advised me to do so. Everyone I trusted.

I didn’t.

Instead, I pinned my hopes on you. I found your interest in me all at once baffling and inspiring.

A romantic relationship was impossible.

Because I am a broken, sick man. Incapable of intimacy.

You sold me:

A big fat lie.

Yet, we never talked about my lies. Yes, I lied to you about almost everything.

Lies I had held onto for a very long time.

This man is a liar. Just like me. Did you ever think that?

So.

The last time I checked, and that was some time ago, you seemed very happy wearing your new clothes, your relationship, your job and your family.

I am delighted. You will make a much better job of being a gay than I ever could.

It seems to be an exciting time for a young gay man in the USA. Equality on the horizon, no AIDS.

Your ability to form and maintain relationships will mean that you’ll have everything you always wanted. Everything you ever dreamed.

The questions I wanted to ask… I have no reason to ask.

The truth set you free and I am very proud of you… even though I have no desire to set eyes upon you ever again.

May 6th 2013

3.

When did you have time to write that? Was it really meant for me?

Did you wonder if I should reply? Did you think I could?

There are no words left.

4.

It’s 3am.

The storm rattles the house, thunders down the drain pipes. Torrents of rain over the mountain. Hammering down onto the wide, new leaves.

Wide awake.

Make some toast and lime marmalade. Boil some eggs. Stand naked in the warm rain.

Gallbladder Removed

Last Monday I qualified at an AA meeting in the East Village.  A twenty-minute qualification.

I skipped the drugs and drinking part of the story and talked exclusively about  how I got sober and how I stay sober.

Since returning to NYC I had thrown myself back into AA.  90 meetings in 90 days.  A new sponsor and a new sponsee.  I quickly realized that there was no place for me in the gay meetings and opted for the straight/mixed meetings in far-flung places.

I could blast gay AA if I could be bothered… but I can’t.  Needless to say, it’s just not for me.

Monday morning, during the qualification, I nearly burst into tears.  In fact, I nearly burst into tears three times.

Once describing seeing the word God in the written steps of Alcoholics Anonymous at my first meeting,  the second when describing how humbling it was spending time with the tranny hookers I met in jail and thirdly when I remembered the final moments of my using.

I have never ever cried when qualifying.  I knew by the end of my share that something was seriously wrong with me.

I had a fun weekend with a young Texan.  We visited the New Museum, had various lunches and dinners with friends but all the while I felt listless, irritable, prone to bad temper.

We had HIV tests, we explored Williamsburg.  We looked at art, we bought action figures.

Tyler left on Sunday.

Within hours of his leaving my pee had turned a dark umber.

I felt the return of the pain in my chest that I often commented, when ever I had it, on Facebook.

Helpful people told me it was acid reflux, they told me to go to the doctor.  They told me to touch my toes.

I told them:

Is this flu or depression or anxiety or kidney failure?  Guess what folks… the terrible chest and back cramps have returned with a fever…

The terrible chest and stomach pains that I learned to dread, that had plagued me for the past two years were getting progressively worse.

Now, added to everything else… the pale brown pee.  I knew things were… serious.  But I remained optimistic that by the morning the pee would return to normal.

On Tuesday morning, despite my optimism,  my pee had turned the colour of coca cola.

I called a doctor friend at Cornell who made an appointment to see me immediately.

In huge pain I made my way to his office on the upper east side.

He prodded and poked then had me take a sonogram which revealed the cause of the problem:  gall stones… lots of them.

One of them, he suggested, may have lodged in the bile duct and the bile was now backing up into my blood.

By Tuesday afternoon my eyes were bright yellow.

I told my doctor friend that my mother had her gallbladder removed and my father had died of pancreatic cancer.  He baulked.  He couldn’t be sure that this wasn’t cancer until they had probed a little more.

He took blood and sent me home, making an appointment to see his urologist friend this week.

When I got home I went directly to bed.  The pain worsened.  I was in difficulty.  I called my doctor.  He told me to go to the ER.

I called my landlady and she kindly drove me to the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The doctor called ahead so I was quickly admitted and given a massive dose of morphine.

In a painful daze, during the next day, I had the blockage removed.

The young gay man who removed the stone was incredibly chipper, explained what he was going to do and soon I was asleep.

They shoved something down my throat and into my tummy.  They cut into the bile duct and removed the obstruction.  They checked my pancreas.

It was ironic: the gall bladder and the pancreas irritating each other.  My mother and father at war in my tummy.

I woke up.

Thank GOD it wasn’t cancer.  It was a gall stone.  But my pancreas was angry.  The doctors urged me to have the gallbladder removed.

The following day I was wheeled into surgery and had my Laparoscopic Gallbladder Removal.

I woke up with a dull thud in my belly and four small incisions.

The surgeon described my gallbladder as ‘severely traumatized’.

The bladder had been suffering for many, many years and within hours of surgery I knew that I was waking up without just the physical bladder but without a huge emotional burden.

I felt free. I feel free.

A day longer in the hospital recuperating and they sent me home.

Dear Cristina sent a car to fetch me and Stephen and Roy filled the fridge with wonderful things to eat.

My time in the hospital was made so much better by everyone who works there.

The doctors, surgeons, specialists, nurses and orderlies.

Every one of them treated me with respect, kindness and the level of care I received was without comparison.

Each doctor looked me in the eye, introduced themselves and shook my hand.  They described in detail what was going on and gave me options.

The surgeon bantered and made one feel at ease.

The nurses said goodbye to each patient when they left their shift.

Every person I met wished me a speedy recovery and good luck.

Even though the hospital remains over crowded (since hurricane Sandy) and we were housed in former waiting areas and reopened buildings the staff were sublimely professional.

The other patients, however, were terrible.  They complained about everything.  The staff remained, in the face of this rank ingratitude, resilient.

I saw drug addicts in the ER demand morphine.  I heard men rudely tell nurses that they ‘didn’t do’ wards.  I heard cantankerous men demand their diapers changed.  The nurses were treated like care slaves.  Like servants.

The lack of any kind of humility from most patients was stunning.

I apologized whenever I could for the behavior of my fellow patients.

I’m sure that fear and pain determine the behaviors of most people in hospital.

I’m sure that the entitled rich expect so much more because of the high insurance premiums they pay and the poor… well, they  never get to treat anybody as they are treated.

Still, it’s no excuse.  Bad manners prevail.

It was another peculiarly American experience, one I will never forget.

The dogs were happy to see me but I was less happy to see them.  I couldn’t deal with how much attention they demanded.

I lay in my bed watching the Oscars.  A long way away from that terrible, cruel world.

i am not gay

1.

Nope.  Not any more.

I AM NOT GAY.  I am OUT.

Unambiguous?

My New Years resolution: don’t call me gay.

I am The Other.  I am simply… Out.

I have resigned my gay membership.  I renounce the word GAY.

The Other is different from you.  He is neither superior nor inferior.

He is not alone.  He is out.

2.

Are you kidding?  I still like sex with men… but I’m not interested in being gay.

Do you understand what I’m saying… gays?  Yes you.  I’m talking to you.

I’M TALKING TO YOU!  Yes you, the gay in the bar, on the street, editing his Grindr profile.

Let’s face it.  This separation will work out just fine for both of us.

I loathe you and you hate me.

I know, amongst other things, what galls you… you (particularly) don’t like when men in their fifties own up to having a rich and varied sexuality:

I’ve been called a ‘dirty old man’ by more gays than I ever have by straights for wanting or having beautiful younger men in my bed.

The gays write it anonymously.  They post it all over the place, whenever they can.  As If I should be ashamed?

You, you who have cornered the market in nihilism, immorality, homogeneousness, bitchery, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, self-obsession… in fact anything with the self prefix… apart from self-awareness.

I am peeling off the parade.  I am letting the party wend its way elsewhere.

2. (a)

They told me at Triangle House in LA when we were making our documentary about older gay people:  they say that old gay people end up going back into the closet because… it can get ugly… it can get dangerous.

They say that gay men are more likely to end up homeless than in any other demographic… because they have no community.

You gays are the very worst at hating yourselves.  But you reserve more venom for the elderly homosexual than any other group.

It is a sickening idea to many young gays, that we (the elderly) exist.

Some young gay people believe that past 50 our penises shrink appropriately into our bodies.  Retract.

In old age we become like wrinkly Ken dolls with smooth, pink groins.

No longer a threat to anyone.

I thought that when I became old… I would start wearing women’s clothes.

Where do young gay men learn how to be dignified old gay men?

I learned from older men in AA how to be an older man.

The respect that AA old timers get, applauded for their contribution to the community of AA stands in stark contract to the respect that older gay people don’t get from younger gay people.

Unless, of course, they are famous… or comical freaks… or rich enough to buy the boys they used to get for free.

Young gay people don’t want to be reminded that the party comes to an end.

2 (b)

So, today…

I resign my membership.  I am no longer a true believer.  I’m handing back my awards, my medals, my history, my pride.

It’s yours not mine.  Take it.

I renounce: gay pride, gay film festivals, gay beaches, gay basketball, gay bars, the gay ghetto, the gay plague, gay marriage, gaybies, gaydar.com, gays in the military, gay cruises, cottaging, felching, gay news, gay voice, gay face, the gay sub section in the book/video store/Huffington Post.

So help me God!

I’m praying the gay away!

The terms of this divorce:

You can keep it all.  The gay plays I made, the gay films I directed, the gay art I painted/etched/sculpted.

Take everything I ever made in your honor.

If you don’t want it?  Burn it.

2 (c)

When I offered our award-winning film catalogue of gay films to The Legacy Project (the gay and lesbian film preservation project) based out of UCLA… the gays turned it down.

Even though AKA  had won the LA Outfest audience award and opened (and closed) many gay film festivals all over the world with all of my films.

The Legacy Project said no to the free gift.  They wanted me to disappear.

They don’t want any evidence that I existed.  As a man or an artist.

“He’s trouble.”  ”He’s angry.”  ”He’s a parasite.”

Gays!  Look at what you’ve become!

Examine, for just one goddamned gay second…. the mediocrity!  Your righteous indignation! Your mock elegance!

Being with you is like drowning in cold tea.

3.

I don’t drink or take drugs.  Tom blew weed into my face.   He put vodka into my virgin mary.  That’s how the gays bully one another.

Try wearing something unusual when your companions  just want to be invisible.

“Who does he think he is?”

Their artificially deepened voices.  The plaid shirt, the super hero tee.

The cloak of invisibility.

INVISIBLE.

Tom asked incredulously, “What are you wearing?”  A man who wears nothing but ugly jeans, ill-fitting t-shirts.

Tom has an ‘opinion’ about individuality:  He doesn’t believe in it.

These gays are terrified of being seen.  Gripped by the politics of invisibility.

At least that grotesque, lying freak I used to date… he and his boy friend have some sartorial audacity.

Even if it is TOTALLY misguided.

Who are these gays?  These invisigays?

Like Tom, they may appear normal:

4.

How can a gay man expect to age with dignity when nobody gay wants to age at all?

I saw it in LA… my destiny. If I chose to take it.

At first, Adam looked just like any other confident gay man claiming to be 48.

His gay parties are the talk of the town.  Richer than most of his friends, though not very well connected … not to the real gay power in LA.

I mean, David Geffen wouldn’t be seen dead at this piss elegant, graceless house in the Hollywood Hills.

Adam invented the heart valve.

At one of his parties (to his chagrin) I photographed every single one of his guests.

A snap shot of LA gay life.

He has never been elegant, he has never been a great beauty.  He will never be tall.

He is, however, manicured, botoxed, his teeth reinvented, his flawless skin, his demeanor… (that only great wealth lends you).

It was at that last raucous party I attended (as a plus one) I saw him upset (rattled)… why?

He looked like an old, vulnerable man.

“What happened?”  I asked the gays.

They told me imperiously (as if it were obvious) that the young, chiseled boy he imported from NYC just wanted him for his money.

Adam looked… beaten.  Crest fallen.  His frail hands shook, the delicate skin around his eyes failing.

The gays stood around helplessly as their host fell apart.  They stared into the plastic cups of vodka.  They played with their nipples.

The pimps and the whores waited silently by the sodden beer pong.

He turned the music off.  Finally, he threw everyone out.

They lined up on the steep drive.  A hideous parade of grotesquely young boys, graded online or in public bars for their sexual prowess, their social fallibility, their youth.

The man who invented the heart valve, it seems, suffered from a broken heart.

5.

Take the gay man who gave up his 160k surrogate child for adoption because she had a small birth defect on one of her legs.

Yes, you heard me.

When we interviewed the doctor who makes hundreds and thousands of gay dollars from the gayby industry… he told us that the gays want perfection.  Nothing less will do.

Take it all… this gay culture.  This gay community.  Take it.

Take the video of Bryan with 25 Bel Ami boys jacking off over him.

Moisturized with Czech sperm.

Or the man/boy with the huge cock who they pay to sleep with a hooker and unbeknownst to him… tape him.

This tribe of entitled, elitist gays clinging to gay marriage and their smart phones.

6.

I had lunch today with a 30-year-old man/boy who just came out.  ”Why did it take you so long, ” I ask, “To tell the truth?”  He said, “I didn’t… (he paused dramatically) …I mean I still don’t… I don’t want to be gay.”

“That’s ok,” I reassured him.  ”You can describe yourself however you want.”

When, as frightened teens, blooming… prepubescent boys… infants… when we understand that we want to fall in love and fuck and suck and slide into another man… what choices do we have?   To describe ourselves?

Gay is the only way.

And if you don’t know what you are.  The gays will tell you exactly what you are.

The gays are so prescriptive.

He’s gay, they claim conspiratorially.  They claim anyone ‘hot’ is gay.  They all know someone who had sex with Tom Cruise or Hugh Jackman.

“He’s fucking his ‘assistant’.”

Oh Yes!  He’s had sex with a man… he’s gay.  He’s experimented… he’s gay.

Prescriptive.

6 (a)

Hollywood does not lend itself to morals.

CAA agent Kevin Huvane.  When you first meet him, he shakes your hand and pulls you toward him.   Trying to pull you off-balance.

The first time he met me… it worked (I was rocked) the second and third times I was prepared and we set to a gay tug of war, an argy bargy, him attempting to pull me and me attempting to pull him.

The fourth time I let him pull me onto him.  I crashed into him.  His tiny frame overwhelmed by 6′ 2″ me.  He landed in a heap beneath me.  ”Oh sorry,” I said.  ”You pulled me toward you.  I lost my balance.  Sorry… Kevin.”

He’ll put you on a ‘list’ they told me.  ”I’m on so many lists.” I murmured.  ”More lists than Cathy Griffin.”

7.

After claiming on the Dr. Drew show that I wanted to make healthy decisions about sex.  Somebody wrote to me or about me:  If Duncan Roy doesn’t like gay sex… he isn’t gay.

He wasn’t far from the truth.

At first, I was outraged by their attempts to isolate, malign and lambaste me.

They had tried for years.  Without success.  Every time they try… they fail.

This last time… the jail.  What the hell did they expect?  That I would buckle?

Those who throw rocks at me are seldom innocent of that which they accuse.

8.

The Gays, have become so… bourgeois.  Do you understand what that means?  Let me refresh your memory:

Marked by a concern for material interests and respectability and a tendency toward mediocrity.

When I was young… gays like you knew their place.

They stayed in the closet.  I mean.  Coming out of the closet was brave!  Now anyone can do it and become a fucking hero.

9.

Gays… why are you killing yourselves?

You kill yourself because you can’t take a joke, because you can’t hold your liquor, because you can’t say no to crystal… because you don’t want to be gay.

I don’t remember young gay people killing themselves in the UK.

It gets better?

What gets better?

Better than death?

10.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled when any oppressed group gets a bit of equality… but what will the USA gays do with their equality?

I’ll tell you.

They will make it even harder for the rest of us to be different.

There is a hideous conformity to which these young gays feel they must adhere.

Gay life in the USA.  A blushing desire for ‘straight acting’ has become a tsunami of heternoramativity.   The foundation on which this miserable gay monolith now stands.

Who are you?

A greek god, perfectly muscled, forever young… dressed to be ignored, as bland a personality as he can effect.

He is Peter Pan, he is Hercules, his personality as glittering as the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Do you care about anything other than marriage equality?  No.

He eats what his parents eat.  He would vote republican if they could only find it in their neo con hearts to see that the gays are perfect conservatives.

So.  We are divorced.  I am no longer gay.  I’m OUT.  I’m out of here.  I’m out but I’m not gay.

Happy New Year!

NYC NYC NYC

There is a week of mayhem to report.  A week of extraordinary conduct.  A week of moving back east.

Connecting with AA, meeting a man on the street whose face I never tire of.

I can’t show you his face.

Only in NYC.

Then, I meet a woman who KNOWS all about my film.  I mean, she knows the story like an urban myth.  But it’s not a myth.  It’s the sad truth.

“Oh, I know this story,” she said.  Her eyes sparkling with anticipation.  ”I think he’s my friend on Facebook.  Yes, look…”  she pulls out her smart phone and there he is.  I push the phone away.  I shouldn’t be looking at that.

“What was he thinking?”  she roars with laughter.

Women love my film.  It confirms everything they think they know about men.  The injustice of men.

Dead five-year olds.  20 of them.

The children are shot dead by a crazed, entitled white boy.  The little bodies buried this week.  Lined up against the wall and executed.  You know they didn’t have a clue.  You know they did as they were told.

I thought about the little dog facing the lethal injection.

A horrific pendant: ten Afghan children are splattered into the mud by a drone.

Somehow their little brown faces are missing from the media.  Somehow the little white children in Connecticut are worth more.

This week has been all about mental illness and guns.   The mild wet weather.   The poem.  The fiscal cliff.  Obama.  That’s PRESIDENT Obama to you.

We asked you to vote for him, now he’s letting us down all over again.  Surprise, fucking surprise.

I saw a man being mugged on the 5 train.  Into Manhattan, a stealthy, tall, nimble black man rips an iPhone 4s out of an asian man’s hands leaving him with his ear phones on his head.  The rest of us sat amazed.

The white people urged him to call the police but he said, “I’m already late for work.”

I’m buying a parker.  It’s lined with blood-red shearling.  Like the monkey they found in Ikea.

Dinner in the neighborhood, dinner at the Mercer Kitchen with Courtney, dinner at the Standard Grill with Brock.

Dinner with Cristina who I have not seen for 30 years on the floor of her palatial Upper East Side home.  It was as if all those 30 years just melted away.   That we were friends again from last week.  Funny, compelling, brilliant, beautiful Cristina.

Dinner with new gay AA friends in cheap diners.

Dinner at Mary’s Fish Camp with Benoit.  We stop at Boxers (gay bar) on the way home.  There’s nothing for us.  Benoit peels off leaving me on the street and as I wait for the green light a handsome green eyed man says hello.

At first I wonder why.  Why is this stunningly handsome 27-year-old man saying hello to me.

Then we’re in Barracuda kissing each other.

I’m wearing that huge fur hat.

I can’t kiss him any more.  I can’t suck any more spit out of his mouth.  I can’t look into his green eyes.

I am so overwhelmed by him I walk through the rain until I am soaked to the skin.  Wondering how it happens?  Wondering how it ends up like this?

All the way home I’m humming Nature Boy to myself.

In the morning my room smells of damp fur.

I Google You

 

I Google you

Late at night when I don’t know what to do
I find photos you’ve forgotten you were in
Put up by your friends

I do, I Google you
When the day is done and everything is through
I read your journal that you kept that month in France
I’ve watched you dance

And I’m pleased your name is practically unique
It’s only you and a would-be PhD from Chesapeake
Who writes papers on the structure of the sun
I’ve read each one

I know that I should let you fade
But there’s that box and there’s your name
Somehow it never makes the pain grow less or fade or disappear
I think that I should save my soul and I should crawl back in my hole
But it’s too easy just to fold and type your name again, I fear

I Google you
When I’m all alone and don’t know what to do
And each shred of information that I gather
Says you’ve found somebody new
And it really shouldn’t matter
Ought to blow up my computer
But instead…
I Google you

 

Bitter Old Queen

When I first started going to gay bars in Britain in the late 70′s we drove (with those lucky enough to own cars) twenty miles to Margate, a larger town near my home in Whitstable.

Margate is famous for being the birth place of conceptual artist Tracy Emin.

Margate was a derelict, regency ex-holiday resort.  Butlins had closed, Pontins was on the way out.  British people wanted to go to Spain where sunshine could always be assured.

The sweeping, majestic Palladian mansions were being torn down or turned into multi occupancy dwellings for the unemployed.

The crowd at the gay bar, run by morbidly obese Shirley was divided in two groups.  Two distinct crowds:  older, local men who had stayed local and younger men and boys who were using bars like this to spring-board into a metropolitan gay world.

The older men were routinely described as ‘bitter old queens’ by the younger men and there was indeed something bitter and suspicious about these older men that intrigued my teenage self.

Always the contrarian I hung out with them rather my teen peers and learned about these older men, their lives and their failed ambitions.

Older provincial gays who had been mocked, beaten and subjugated.

In Britain Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1965.

To me those old queens seemed incredibly brave for staying loyal to their home town communities.

To my younger ‘friends’ these men were simply stuck or foolhardy for not moving to the big city where their gay dreams could come true, their gay lives could be lived fully, openly and without fear.

My interest in them proved fruitless.  They may have been older but they were not very wise, stripped of ambition by soul rotting low self-esteem.

They wanted to be like everyone else.

I wanted to be different.

They mocked me as they had been mocked, they chastised me as they had been chastised, they still do.

Those older gay men waiting for younger gay boys to emerge from the shadows.  Supping gin and tonics.  Bacardi and coke.

Hanging around the local ‘cottages’ (public restrooms) waiting for straight boys to unload.  Playing an endless game of cat and mouse with law enforcement.

“So and so was sent to prison for cottaging.”  So and so would emerge a year or so later, jaundiced, older looking.

It seemed to me that these men had every right to be bitter.  They had every right to harbor resentments against a cruel society that deemed them criminals even after they weren’t.

The swinging 60′s, the sexual revolution, the progressive explosion, the post war boom really only affected my generation who grasped hold of the bucking bronco and held on for dear life until, of course, AIDS came along in the 80′s and we were all thrown far, far away.

The AIDS pandemic.  Fear in men’s eyes.  Disco dancing queens learning to dance to a different tune.

If I had taken pictures of those old gay men in the late 70′s they would have looked defiant, like those pictures of native Americans by Edward Curtis.  They were fat and badly dressed, their teeth were rotten, they were working class, they were left behind.

So, it amuses me now when I am described thus:  A Bitter Old Queen.

The advent of gay marriage, the normalcy of children for gay men (if they can afford it), the regular inclusion of gay men in prime time TV shows.  All of these changes have heralded a new acceptance, a new normal, a new peace of mind for young gay men.

Or has it?  A new generation with a new set of fears and anxieties.  ”Will I ever earn enough to buy a surrogate child?”  ”Am I pretty/handsome enough?”  ”Should I be totally hairless?”  ”Is my penis big enough?”   “Am I ‘straight acting’?  Will I get married?

A generation of gay men comparing and despairing.

What of us?  My generation?  Those of us who survived the great epidemic.  It seems that many gay men still feel left behind.

Shamed.

Last week I met a 55-year-old man who told me he was recently diagnosed with HIV even though he had, he assured me, never indulged in risky behavior.

He told me that older gay men were being revealed to be HIV positive because of a latent strain of HIV that only makes itself apparent after the age of 50.

A strain that has been there all the time, undetected.

I was shocked.  Perhaps I hadn’t dodged the bullet after all.

The man way lying.  I researched the claim.  There was nothing.  I asked my friends on Facebook if they had heard of this anomoly.  They had not.  They scoffed at the idea.

No, I reasoned, this man is a well-respected gay advocate.   As it turns out you can be a well-respected, well liked gay advocate and not be at peace with your HIV status.

Being gay for many men remains a hard task.

If I ever think of my ex boyfriend I still wonder what is was that kept him in the closet for so long.  Even now, after the revolution.  Why he created and maintained such an illusion? Risking his girlfriends health?  Lying to his family?

Then I wonder if we are all illusionist?

How easy is it in 2012 to tell the truth about being gay?

There seem to me like there are so many dirty little secrets that we hold onto.  That we continue to live shame based lives… even the youngsters, even when there is no reason to hide?

I wondered what we were striving for?  To join the military, to get married…

I got to thinking about David Petraeus resigning because he had an extra marital affair.  Adultery is illegal in the military but would those rules apply to serving gay men?  Would we, once married, be held to those same strict hetero rules?  Is this what we want?

Today I posted something about Israel.  Like most Europeans I find myself erring toward the support of the Palestinians.  I find the Israeli treatment of these falsely imprisoned people abhorrent and ironic.

What is the difference I ask myself between The Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza?

My American gay friends react with comments like:  all muslims are terrorists.

Just like I was told when I was a child that all homosexuals are pedophiles.

Those older, less educated, less principled, men were from a different time.  Embittered by circumstance, godless, hopeless.  Drowning their sorrows in great vats of beer, their greasy faced pushed against the window of life without ever joining in.

“No kissing at the bar, dear.”     Shirley would tell her clientele.  ”No kissing at the bar.”

Bully

All this talk about bullying.

How do we teach kids not to bully when we pay Gordon Ramsey and Simon Cowell to bully others? When we invade Iraq and kill the innocent people we were there to protect?

It’s not just the gays who get bullied….

homophobic/racist/classist/fatist/ginger/glasses/smelly/poor/good grades/bad grades… all reasons kids are bullied.

Go on add to the list…

I’ve done my fair share of bullying. On set. Within relationships.

Growing up gay: you have two options… let the homophobes beat you down or fight back. I’ve always fought back. Spent my life fighting.

Probably to my detriment.

They called me BLEACHED NIGGER at Primary School ’cause I had black curly hair.

Yet, the worst bullying in my life occurred after I left school from other gay men. Especially as a youth. Bullied into sexual liaisons.

Vicious bitchery. Cruel and catty.

Yet somehow forgiven because it was meant to be funny.

My body image shot to pieces by gay men. Having to subscribe to their standards of beauty.

Ultimately… as my granny said: what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

I embraced my curly hair, my gangly legs, fought off the men who tried to shame me into sex or told me to lose weight, shave my head and balls, go to the gym…. and carved my own little niche which ended up being quite a crowded place with other like-minded people.

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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.

 

Dog Breath

Benoit Denizet-Lewis has been staying. He’s writing a book about dogs. He has driven from Boston in a huge RV with his dog Casey.

In Northern Arizona he found another big, black dog, a stray he called Rez on an Indian reservation. Her nipples torn from a recent litter, she had a bladder infection and a bad ear but he, with Cesar Millan‘s help, put her back together again.

It’s been very busy at Chez Duncan.

Lady Rizo is in town so we saw her show on Sunday night. Her debut LA show, she had to quickly tailor it for the austere LA audience. By the end of the set she had them eating out of her hand.

Sans follow spot, her work cut out for her, she did a miraculous job. Special guest Moby had the audience rippling with excitement.

Twins had their birthday…can’t remember if I’ve already written about that? Anyway, it was a miserable afternoon (storm clouds) but we had a great time and I cooked a huge feast. They moved out of my house the following day and into their new apartment in Hollywood.

I’ve seen quite a bit of Robby..of course..since then but little of Miles who is busily writing a documentary about (from what I’ve been told) attraction.

I testified downtown at City Hall before the city deputies. Prison Violence. I told them what I had witnessed at the Men’s County Jail. They, in turn, asked questions.  They looked at me very curiously, peering over their lecture.

One of them had read the Richard Rushfield piece in the LA Weekly and quoted it.

I left down town, the fierce heat, drove over to Robby’s house and fell asleep on his sofa. I found it all very exhausting.

On Saturday I went to Honor Fraser‘s galleryon La Cienega to see the hightly anticipated Kenny Scharf show. He was in fine spirits. Showing good new work, performance art by Ann Magnuson and a great crowd.

Sam McEwan flew from London. We are all looking old….apart from Honor who just looks more wonderful and chic…wearing Alaia.

“Hodgepodge,” featured paintings, sculptures, and a Cosmic Cavern installation.

The centerpiece, a gaudy customized Cadillac served as Ann Magnuson’s stage for her performance work “Finism”.

First performed in 1984 the piece was fresh, enticing and, of course, very funny.

I liked the picnic table with an atomic mushroom cloud exploding from it that forms a parasol.

“Hodgepodge” runs until May 19.

Wish I hadn’t sold my Scharf. What a moron I am.

Then, rather amazingly, I bumped into Marius Bercea the artist showing next door at the Francois Ghebaly Gallery.  He reminded me that we had met at the Cluj Film Festival in Romania a decade ago.

He was just a kid who took me back to his studio.

I remember being impressed, writing about him in my diary, now look at him. We sat outside the gallery and smoked cigarettes and ate doughnuts off the Cadillac parked at the back of the Scharf show.

Lunch with Mike Manning, his super smart sexy boy friend and Fielder. Mike has tiny eyebrows.

Thankfully, since my AA Big Book burning tirade most of my AA friends have unfriended me on FaceBook saving me the time and effort. I think my blog has caused some amusement and consternation…judging by the number of people reading it. Fuck AA LA.

I’ll write at length some other time about my years in LA AA, the cult with a smiley face.

Look at the gorgeous things from the Out of The Box Collective vegetable delivery. The spring flower box. Delicious.

Instagram I Love You

It’s my new obsession.

Court today.

Spent rest of morning with ACLU.

Breakfast with Ivan downtown.

Lunch with Robby. We ate octopus.

Love this picture of me.

Oh yes, I seem to have pissed off the cult. AA people…in LA.

Freaks.

Wrinkles

I am downtown. Downtown LA. We are drinking coffee in a chic coffee shop.

It is reassuringly sophisticated.

It feels like NYC. It feels like a city.

Spring Street. Coffee bar.

The people who pass by are dressed well and don’t have that Hollywood vibe. The women are not showing off their chests and legs, the boys are wearing well cut pants and have covetable accessories.

Having the car makes life more interesting.

I am scarcely at home.

I am writing this on my phone.

I had dinner with an old friend on Saturday night. We ate at Bossa Nova then we saw Clash of the Titans 2 at the Chinese Theatre.

There were less than 10 of us in the theatre.

The film was terrible, Olivia was terrible. Everything about that terrible film that could be said…was said.

He brought two young men. They didn’t say much. One was gay, the other ‘in training’.

Outside the theatre there was a costume exhibition. We poured over the ormolu costume jewelry Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cleopatra.

We explained to the boys the history of Century City.

You know that story don’t you?

How Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox? How the back lot was sold and Century City was built?

Everybody should know that story, if they live in LA.

It was pouring rain.

Under the theatre, in the parking lot, valley girls were vomiting out of SUVs onto their fake Louboutins.

We drove west, we sat together at my club and they drank cocktails. I drank coffee.

The boys remained mute.

Not feeling at all combative, I found myself passionately discussing racism and gay equality which quickly disintegrated into a nasty UK v USA argument.

At one point my friend told me that if he could press a button and eradicate all Muslims he would.

I pointed out that my father was a Persian Muslim and technically so were the majority of my 11 brothers and sisters. That he would have to kill my young sister Rebecca.

How did he feel about that?

His genocidal zeal was not diminished.

How come it’s become ok for reasonable men to become so islamaphobic?

The conversation further disintegrated into how retarded the Brits were for accepting equality without the word marriage in the equation.

It made my blood boil that he would rather have nothing if he couldn’t have the word marriage.

Civil unions in the UK seem, to those who have them…just like being married and my friends who have civil unions think of themselves, describe themselves, as married.

Anyway, the m word is now being fought for in the UK but more as a nice after thought attached to the equality that we already enjoy.

You know how I felt, and people like me felt about that word. Archaic, patriarchal bull shit…antiquated in the secular UK.

Then, this morning, I found myself listening to Democracy Now on the radio as I drove the 101 Freeway.

Van Jones being interviewed.

He pointed out that in the civil rights game played out in the USA…if you are prepared to be arrested for what you believe…and there are enough of you, change happens quickly.

Be seen to fight for what you believe in, rather than playing the faceless gay equality/marriage ‘incremental’ tactic…employing expensive lawyers and fighting state by state…

He mentioned the names of 5 or 6 black civil rights leaders. I got to wondering where our civil rights leaders were? Who are they? Why can’t I name them?

I suppose Lance Black has become a recognizable leader/voice of the gay community but this seems accidental rather than deliberate.

It has always been my dream for the gay men and women of the USA that they get the human rights they deserve.

But…what are they prepared to risk when demanding those rights? How many windows do they need to break?

There is something weedy and unfocused about the movement.

Worse, by articulating this frustration I risk people like my friend telling me that I am letting down the cause.

We need leaders, we need direct action. It is the only way the unelected justices (who get the final say) at the Supreme Court will truly understand how important equality is to us.

The system has failed us.

Meanwhile, Justin Bond shared on Facebook a piece he found in the NY Times about the suicide of a gay man struggling with the notion of old age…amongst other things.

Read it here: gay suicide

Some of Justin’s friends dismissed the piece as worthless. Some of them understood how important it was.

Some of them, quite rightly, wondered why the piece was in the style section.

Our community wrestles with all sorts of problems peculiar to our people. It is absurd, at moments like this, to pretend that we are just like everyone else.

Our generation of gay men, used to unlimited sex, sexual validation, Peter Panism at its worst…has to wake up and acknowledge the wrinkles.

So, it’s been quite a week. A date last night that went really well. Passionate discussions and…well the dogs.

What more could I want?

Death Threat

Doctor’s office yesterday.  He wasn’t there.

The  receptionist told me with ersatz compassion that they had tried calling me.  They had tried cancelling.

She showed me the number they had for me.  She let me see the evidence.  The right digits, the wrong order.

I remembered telling the young woman who initially took my details.  I remembered her thick accent.  I knew that she didn’t understand what I was saying whilst I was saying it.

She’s not the only one.  I get things so muddled.  I can’t spell.

I mean, some words elude me…like the word ersatz.  It baffles me.

Hot coffee, very hot microwaved coffee.  It’s raining.  The dogs are staying in bed.

The boys stayed out last night.   I had a friend over.  Lit a fire.

Yesterday this mad kid (Turkish origin)  from Bel Air in Maryland left violent, racist messages on this blog.  He used to call and text.  He stopped texting and calling months ago after I threatened the police…so he sets up false Facebook accounts and tells me how he is going to kill me etc.

In his head he is best friends with Peres Hilton.

In his head he thinks he can leave anonymous notes…telling me that I am a disgusting negro lover…and not get caught.

Again, what this idiot, these morons don’t get?  They leave their IP addresses , they leave crucial evidence.  This is his:  68.55.180.249  It is linked to every email he ever sent, every message he ever wrote.

The kid is a tragic mess who needs help…but I ain’t the one to give it to him.

Robby said yesterday, after I texted some sweet note…’till death do us part’.  So I reminded him that death was probably not so far off, (more deaths of contemporaries reported in London) that he would one day organize my funeral.

“Did you get a death threat?”  he asked…

No.  Not today.

Rain forecast for the next three days.

The kid who shot all those Afghans in their own homes last week…well, he is getting a media makeover.

They say he ‘snapped’,  he was ‘drinking’,  it was his ‘third tour’.  Meanwhile whole families are dead.

Can you imagine the same excuses being made if an Afghan slaughtered an American family.  Well, he snapped, he was drinking…he couldn’t take it any more.

Could you imagine those excuses being made?

More details are ‘emerging’, more details are being manufactured so we can let this guy off the hook.

Meanwhile the tenant I had downstairs, Matty O’Neil…he has gone…leaving a disgusting mess behind him.  The boys took a whole day cleaning up after him.

You know, this kid Matty spent time in jail because of his Arab origins?  He was held in a jail after 9/11, probably held illegally by the US government…with his father when he was a young boy…yet when I suggested that his story and mine had similarities he told me imperiously, “I am an American!  There are no similarities.”

He moved out, brought a motley crew with him.  His sister, her girlfriend….his boyfriend.

The girlfriend was Chinese, the only one there with ancient Mayflower/American credentials was Matty’s boyfriend the acutely fay boy who works in the veterinary office in Malibu who Matty met on Grindr.

Deluded, the week before he left he asked me for a membership to the private club I belong to.

It made me smile.  How the American children of immigrants quickly forget the struggles of their fathers.

“I pity you.”  He said, as he was leaving.

Along with his pity he left two huge stains on the carpet, refused to pay his rent or accept responsibility for the mess…I pity his next landlord.

Private

For some reason best known to WordPress my entire private collection of blogs (over 350) suddenly became readable.  Past blogs that had been hidden from view.

I am now undoing what was done.  Annoying.

Yesterday was altogether the most satisfying day I have had for a long, long time.

Early mornings with the boys, lunch in Hollywood, afternoon with lawyers (more will be revealed at a later date) and finally a spectacular party in the hills.  A gay party, you know the kind…the sort that usually terrifies me…but on this occasion was great fun.

It was a cold night in LA and I was the only one wearing a coat.  The first time I have been appropriately dressed at that house.

I felt, yet again, as if I had left that judgmental Duncan back in the jail so was free to enjoy the party.  This has been a long time coming, this freedom.  A delightful French actor to sit with.  Many people told me how sorry they were that I had been in jail, that it seemed so wrong.

I was surprised by the reaction.  Part of my fear of going there was the fantasy I had that people disapproved…in fact, the opposite was true.

I hadn’t realized that people cared as much as they do.  Why is that so hard for me to believe?

Let me get back to privatizing my blog.

Give it up for Deputy Gonzales!

There are some moments that I didn’t want to share with you…but they have lingered like a prison fart.

Begging to be remembered.

One particular memory I hoped to forget:

Our dorm, as you know, was the school dorm…the honor dorm.  On occasions when the police came into the dorm to conduct the evening count, when we lay on our beds, our faces in the mat, our plastic identification bracelets on view for the deputy to inspect…the police would call out, “Give it up for deputy…so and so..” and it was our job to cheer and shout and welcome the new deputy into the dorm.

If the deputy was homophobic we would be primed to make even more noise, the more well endowed, busty trannies to leap up and show the deputy their tities or dance seductively around him.

The blushing deputy, bloated on the attention, would playfully curse his colleagues.

I refused to cheer and shout.  It made me sick.  I wondered if the Nazis had ever played games like that in the nissen huts at Auschwitz.  Making the starving jews/gays/gypsies play games for their amusement.

One night, an attractive deputy called Gonzales arrived and they cat-called him and cheered his arrival.  We gave it up for deputy Gonzales and he, in turn, ran a lap of honor around the dorm.  I thought, wow, he’s a good-looking man.

Weeks later Gonzales took a few of us to the visiting room but not before he had told us that homosexuals had a ‘sick lifestyle’ and we disgusted him.

It was strange to me that such a beautiful man had such ugly thoughts.

Today, I was arraigned which meant that I went back to court at 8.30am and plead Not Guilty.   It was odd being in court wearing my own clothes rather than my blues.  The DA, Anne-Marie Wise was wearing her badly cut, black suit, treating the event like it was a first degree murder of a small child…or something truly heinous.

Anne-Marie and I had Facebook friends in common (another DA) who she demanded de-friend me.  Surely she can’t do this?  Unbelievably her entire Facebook history is on view for the whole world to see.  Her kids, her vacations etc.  Why do people do that?

We were presented with the transcript from the preliminary trial so, I assume, this is all on public record.  Who I am, who he is, who she is etc.  I am still loathed to use his name…just in case it breaks some obscure law.

We met our new Judge, Judge Michael V. Jesic who seems like the most grown up Judge so far.  Like a real Judge.  He was a Hardcore Gang prosecutor.  Son of Yugoslavian immigrants, born in Belgrade.  He has gravitas.  He loves animals and met his wife at a pet adoption event.  Like most of them he is an ex-DA.  He seems, from the video published above, like a fair man.

The LA Times endorsed him in 2008 and he is most likely to be described as ‘ethical’ by his opponents.  Read a full description here.

However, he is a registered Republican (fiscally) and was strongly recommended by church organizations during his election campaign in 2008 as most likely to hold beliefs that would uphold their biblical values.

Judge Jesic will be our third and final judge.

The first judge (whose name escapes me) the first time I saw him last November, was a MESS.  Papers all over the place, tie off, hair askew…when I returned with TMZ in tow he had combed his hair, wearing his robe…his tie was neatly tied around his neck.  Showing his best side for the camera.

Judge Karen Nudell was our preliminary judge.  I was still in custody so the petulant, young deputy who lead me into the court would rearrange my chair and tell me off for wearing my spectacles on my head.

Judge Karen sat yawning, shuffling papers, playing with her huge earings and stroking her long hair.  She sat at an odd angle to the courtroom, like Mona Lisa…but less enigmatic.

She reminded me of the mother in the movie Carrie.

During the prelim Anne-Marie was trying to shame me for describing the victim as ‘The King of The Cocksuckers’.  I reminded her that we were gay and being good at cock sucking was probably not an insult.

You can tell what a fiasco the trial will be.  The press will have a field day.  Anyway, Judge Nudell looked appalled that the words cock and sucker were being used in her court in such close proximity.

My friend later commented that Judge Nudell’s grandchildren probably made excuses not to visit her on Sundays…

Let’s hope that Judge Jesic isn’t so squeamish.

You asked me to describe my arrest.  Well, let me tell you that the very courteous cops who arrested me looked like extras from a ZZ Top video.  Long beards.  Very, very long beards. So long in fact that their police badges were hidden behind them.

The detectives who interviewed me were charming.  The first was a good-looking man probably my age (looked better clean-shaven) and the second a younger, probably rookie detective.   I had no complaints about the way they treated me, they were doing their job.  I’m sure they would have preferred leaping over cars chasing rapists.

I have been slowly crawling back into my life.  The dog, who initially pretended not to recognize me, is back on my lap.  Three months apart, he had to make Jason his master.  He’s a one man dog.  Of course he was confused, poor darling.  We are getting on fine.  We walked to Sarah and Paul’s house on Hume but they moved out.  The house was open and empty…except for the leopard print, wall to wall, carpet.  He ran around the house looking for them.  So did I.

Mel took me to dinner at the Real Inn last night.  I ate fish and chips.  We sat by the fire.  We speculated about the couple sitting near us, whether they were having a first date.  She was wearing heels.  Her Angora sweater was too short revealing her fat hips.

The house is back to normal or as normal as it ever will be with three young men who find clearing up after themselves almost impossible.  Thank you twins and friend for being here.  Filling the house with laughter and youthful enthusiasm.  I delight in being mother hen…washing and making good food for them to eat.

I can’t complain about anything…even though I feel like I am already dead.

Down to You

I am sitting at home with my foot in the air swaddled in ice, listening to Joni Mitchell.   Well, singing along to her less pessimistic songs.  Relieved of the bondage of self.

The dog had his stitches out yesterday.

Henry has been very kindly driving me around.  We popped into Gjelina for a late lunch with Anna and bumped into Louisa Spring and the fabulous Chrissy Illey.  Chrissy, as you know, is a wonderful writer and journalist from London.

Read her stuff here.

I will see them again this weekend.

I had to buy new towels.  All of mine are old and miserable.  Nothing worse than getting out of the shower and searing your skin with an old towel.

Meant to be having dinner with a friend in H’wood last night but my ankle blew up like a big pink balloon so I hobbled home and lay in bed.  Iced.

I had a Facebook squabble with a well known writer who damned me for appearing on the ‘A’ List.   Why the hell shouldn’t I?  Low and High culture are there to be experienced.  I have certainly had my fill of High Culture.  Performance Art, Art Films…even my book (nearly finished btw) feels like it was written for the exclusive few.

Sorry publishers…I know you don’t want to hear that.

When I got home I tried sleeping but ended up not sleeping.  Instead I sat at the desk tidying my prose.

Perhaps I am perplexed by seeing you know who next week?  Perhaps I am worried by the future.  At around 4am I finally fell asleep.  Exhausted.

Malibu Chile Cookout today.

CNN Today

I thought you might wanna see this:

BTW, for those of you who have recently started reading this blog and want to catch up with the Jake B/Duncan Roy ‘relationship’  fiasco….

Here is a quick recap:

I was a patient on Dr. Drew‘s Sex Rehab which aired on VH1.  I admitted that I found straight men desirable and re-traumatized myself with straight cock.

After the show aired I had many straight men contact me with a view to having sex with them.

They were rebuffed.

Jake contacted me via Facebook, he presented himself as straight.  He lived with his girlfriend of 7.5 years.  He told me he was a literary agent, interested in publishing my blog  (he wasn’t the only one) we met and became friends and I agreed that he rep me.

After getting to know each other and working together Jake then revealed that he was gay.  Not straight or bi but full on gay.  He sent me pictures of his penis and ass.  He told me that he loved me.  I was confused and greatly attracted.  I was flattered.

I lived in LA…he lived in NYC.  He skyped a great deal.

I genuinely thought that he would leave his girlfriend for me.  That’s what he said.  I made it PERFECTLY CLEAR that I wanted nothing to do with him if he did not tell his girlfriend Jessie the truth…in fact, I forced him to tell her that he was gay.

He was petrified that I would out him.

He finally told her the truth.  She, quite rightly, threw him out of their house.

He then started a sexual odyssey that did not include me…even though he called every day and accepted an expensive vacation to the South of France.

So, whoever it is (we can guess) that continues to send anonymous notes insinuating that I am somehow responsible for the Jake situation…go fuck yourself.  Jake is fully responsible for not just ruining his ex girlfriends life by lying to her for the past 7.5 years but also busting his way into mine.

I insisted that he tell the truth.

I could just dump our entire email correspondence on here if you are interested in the chronology?

Friends

I used to be a Quaker, a member of the religious organization also known as The Society of Friends.

I went to my first meeting when I was 13 years old, primarily to get out of British boarding school Sunday morning chores.

My headmaster John Lampen and his wife Diana were running the small independent school near Shrewsbury called Shotton Hall.  They were both very enthusiastic Quakers.  They radiated that peculiar peace for which Quakers are renowned.

When everything at school seemed chaotic John would provide, in retrospect, a different kind of solution.  I was drawn to him yet baffled.  Nothing seemed to annoy him…and he knows I tried.

His alternative Oxbridge way of thinking both irritated and inspired me.   He was self-assured but never smug.

He had something I most definitely wanted.

I asked if I could go to their Quaker meetings.

Sunny Shrewsbury Sunday morning.  The meeting was held in a regency building set off the High Street.   Cobbled streets, plane trees, red sandstone peculiar to the region.

I was an unruly, difficult child.  At my first Quaker meeting I felt immediately accepted.  This was an inclusive church.  One where a young gay boy might find solace rather than damnation.

I heard, “There is that of God in every man.” and I was sold.  The God I knew existed.   No longer dressed in extravagant robes, tradition, canticles or phony ritual.  A simple room filled with love.  No more priests or clergy to funnel God into me like a goose choking back the corn, but there I was a 13-year-old boy looking within to find God in my heart.

I started going to meetings regularly, sitting silently for an hour, attempting to find and nurture a God of my understanding.   “Like a spec of gold.” Diana said.  If moved to share, a Friend would stand and speak.  Sharing whatever God Shot was on his or her mind.

This was revolutionary!  We were all priests.

It was as evident to me then as it is now that this was how human beings, focused on a power greater than themselves connected with their ‘God’ and each other…found joy.  Without the myths and tales and dogma of organized religion it was here that we set aside our differences and focused on thinking our way into right action.

I knew instinctively that when I sat quietly in a room of meditating humans I was probably doing something that we had learned to do millions of years before.  On the tundra, in the shadow of Stone Henge.

Some of us.

Reflection and God-consciousness does not suit every man.  It is apparent that not all men are created curious.

My years as an active Quaker were perhaps the happiest times of my life.  I loved the room.  I have never been frightened of old people, different people, sick people.  Perhaps that’s why I get into so much trouble?

I left school, striking out on my own into the dramatic new world of my own creation.  I left the tranquility of those Quaker meeting houses behind me.  I left God behind me.  Nearly twenty years later, smashed to pieces by my own bad choices I would once again seek out some fundamental truths and a relationship with a God I knew was indeed in every man….including me.

I did not return to The Society of Friends but to the rooms of AA where a healthy relationship with God is essential for an everyday peace.

Yesterday was my birthday and hundreds of you wished me well.  One of the great benefits of Facebook: we can celebrate our lives with an extended community of friends and acquaintances.  Amongst the notes Kevin Sessums wrote to me.

He said, “Happy b’day .. have a special day with special friends not just FB ones …”

I wondered if friends on Facebook were any less special than those I met in the real world.  I have never met Kevin yet I enjoy our Facebook friendship.  I don’t know if I would necessarily enjoy him more if I met him.

Pen Pals we used to call them when I was a child. People I wrote to in different countries who would tell me about their exotic lives and I would live vicariously through them.  Facebook is no different.  I like to engage as I do in the real world.  I like my ‘friends’ to see what I am up to and like when they comment.  I like when they share their holiday snaps, their location and trial and tribulations.

I have several real communities that I keep up with virtually.  Whitstable, Sydney, New York.  I have friends in all of those places (Jake cruelly called them my sycophants) and Facebook allows me the opportunity of enhancing and deepening my ties to those disparate people.

Real people disappoint me.  Facebook friends rarely do.  I have no expectations of those I meet on-line.  Enter my world or my house and I may not know you for very long.

I had lunch with Jennie Ketcham in Venice.  We hadn’t seen each other for an age.  She looked great.

Later that night Toby threw an impromptu party for me at his house and many LA friends arrived to wish me well.  Were they special friends?  The ones I know from AA and SAA most certainly are.   I have a deep connection with those friends with whom I sit quietly, go in peace and share a common interest in God.

I didn’t take any pictures.

Regardless of any drama that may or may not be unfolding in this real world I recognize at my core a stillness that I learned as a teenage boy from long dead Quakers on quiet Sunday mornings in Shrewsbury.  It is to you that I give thanks this morning.  Thank you Joyce, Priscilla, Raymond, Susan, Diana and John.  Thank you.

If I hadn’t met you, if you hadn’t shared so humbly what you knew to be the truth about God I don’t think I would have celebrated this last birthday nor many, many before it.

Numbers

43 minutes to write this post.

14 days left to enjoy this month.

33 days until I face The Penguin in the court.

83 degrees at the beach club.

811 emails from him.

16 days left in California.

7 is a beautifully directed film.

10 feet of Bougainvillea to chop down.

3 loads of organic matter carried to the end of the drive for composting.

7 dollar sandwich for my lunch.

3 dolphins swam past us as we lay on the beach.

1 of the twins helped me with the garden.

4 of us sat in the sun.

23 dogs past us as we sat in the sun.

9 minutes to write this so far.

2 visitors from LA.

460 dollars owed to a renter.

6 months on the market and I didn’t sell the house.

13 years spent in my last house.

3,582 blog views on my busiest day.

531o days sober from drugs and alcohol.

2 days content.

1 day is all I need to think about.

24 hours is all I need to get through.

10 pages a day.

1402 Facebook friends.

90 days I want of sexual sobriety.

1 room with a perfect view.

Robby!

Robby, the twin that hung around in the womb a full twenty minutes longer than Miles is urging me to go to breakfast at the bottom of the hill.  It is 9am and it is already very hot here in Malibu.

The dog is sprawled on his bed in the sun.

Miles is on set somewhere nearby.

Last night Armand popped in and we took Robby’s car and had dinner at Dukes.  Dukes, the restaurant of little culinary interest at the bottom of the hill.  Why?  Mainly because I found one of the waiters attractive.  I met him in Starbucks last week and he told me that he would ‘hook us up’.  I didn’t eat anything because the food looked so rancid.  They had burgers and Caesar Salad and calamari and beer.

We were not hooked up.

Yesterday afternoon, after my long walk with Miles down Rambla Pacifico, my Australian friend Daniel turned up with a bottle of white wine.  I poured him a glass and looked at it longingly.  Crisp white wine on a warm Californian afternoon.

We have many friends in common in Sydney and it was so nice to hear all the news.  I am sure if I just looked on Facebook I could have found out for myself but it was lovely listening to him tell me all about everything and everybody…the weather and the burgeoning Australian economy.   The drought has ended, the reservoirs are full.

We headed into Malibu where we ate lunch at the Deli.  The once very fat man who runs the Deli has lost 130lbs just by NOT eating white bread.  He looks so much happier.

After lunch, as we were wandering around the absurdly priced shopping Mall, a beautiful man with a bleeding dog begged me to tell him where the vet was.  His beautiful labrador had been bitten in her face by a Rattle Snake. My worst nightmare.

I pointed him in the right direction.

He had been sucking the poison out of her face.  I hope she survived.

Armand stayed long after I went to bed.  Teaching Robby how to use his synthesiser.

This morning I squeezed fresh grapefruit from my tree.  Ruby red.  Delicious.

Willie Visits

It is raining with torrential force today.  See below.

The Little Dog and me are wrapped up warm on the sofa.  Frank just left.  He brought  Willie to see us.   Willie and I still love each other but he lives with Frank now.  That’s that.  I posted a little video of us on Facebook.

Yesterday was not a great day.  I hung out with Jen and Jason, helping them with their delivery business.  Anything to take my mind off of the anonymous note I received.   Of course I thought about it all day.

I called Dan.  When is this ever going to end?

Usually when I get notes that are JB related I just ignore them…but this was different.  It was designed to hurt both of us.

In a way it was good to know where he is because I can avoid those parts of NYC where he will be.   I know that it sounds improbable but I really don’t want anything more to do with him personally.  I just WISH he had never ever contacted me.

Resentful about that.  Totally ruined the past few months.  It probably gives him immense pleasure to know that I have been so badly hurt and continue to be so.  He lied his way into my life, stripped me bare and like a wilful child slammed the door in my face.  So damned selfish.

I feel cheated out of the investment I made in him.  The time he demanded.  The love I lost.  Only now, after so much damage…like a natural calamity that leaves one in the pause of powerless amazement.

When CP left last week I felt very alone.  He, very sweetly, worried that I get depressed when he is away and (annoyingly) there is some truth to that.  I feel focused and connected when he is around.

We have been working hard to make our film happen.  It looks more likely every day.  Spent last night looking at DOP reels.

I am excited by this project.  Excited by its potential and our ability to reach out to our community and explore difficult ideas.  We spent hours with old gay folk.   Let me tell you something:  for the rich or the poor old age is a the great leveler.   We don’t do nearly enough for our aged population…not in England or America.

Therapy last night.

I love solitude too much.

Water Fall

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Mudlark

The smell of damp tweed.  My collarless shirt and felt braces.

A mantle with fabric that may or may not be Bloomsbury.  Mismatched luster wear cup and saucer.  Chipped.  These things used to delight me. Treasures found at the edge of the Thames.  When did I cease to be a mudlark?

Is it Duncan Grant or Vanessa Bell?

• I bought the fabric from a junk shop in Stamford a month ago. Would dearly love to find out who it’s by… 

  7 hours ago · 1 person Christopher likes this.
•  

  Simon I’ll check in a book on Bloomsbury textiles at work. It could be one of those designs they did for the Queen Mary that were then mass-produced. That would be v exciting! 

  7 hours ago
•  

  Christopher It’s Bloomsbury I sure of that 

  5 hours ago
•  

  Christopher My only other thoughts is that it could be by Cressida Bell but I do feel it has something of Vanessa about it 

  5 hours ago
•  

  Ed How exciting! I think it’s possibly more Vanessa in style too.

White linen bed sheets, feather pillows, pale pink, satin, quilted, stuffed with down.  Hot water bottle.

Laying the table for breakfast.  Poached eggs.  Marmite on my toast.

That tribe of gay men still delight me.  I used to know them.

My cottage in Whitstable was full of tiny, beautiful things.  With more money came larger, expensive things.  Now I sit under a decade long avalanche of avarice.

More stuff.

Remember when we didn’t have radiators in the cottage?  Frost in the sitting room before we lit a fire?  The smell of coal and crackling kindle.  Wrapping up warm before we left the bedroom?

I think this is how one might start again.  Renting a room at the back of a house by the sea.  I don’t have to live in Whitstable.

I am wondering hard again.  Torn between two worlds.

The conversation from Facebook (above) that I have taken the liberty of reproducing made me feel homesick for small mercies…for a butler’s sink, for the sound of a mop bucket.  For the back stairs in a country house.  For sea views that may include the ghosts of women once dressed in white tulle and parasols.

Related Articles

• What made the Bloomsbury Group so radical? (brighthub.com)

Feisty and Confident

The secrecy is getting to me.  I can’t bear it.

You can slag me off as much as you want but the truth is: I am mortally indiscreet so this is like shoving a red-hot poker up my ass and NOT in a good way.

After bleating this week about never going to have sex ever again well…an old comfort buddy called me yesterday morning and we lay in bed all afternoon kissing and stroking and showering together.  Someone I have known for years.  A sweet-natured Iranian man, 28..hairy chest.  There’s a picture of him in the blog I think.  Hidden.

It felt good to hold him in my arms.  It was very comforting.

The back of his neck reminded me of you know who so I looked him in the eye.

We scoffed a late lunch overlooking the sea.

As we ate two drunk people started a fight.  A bruised woman in her late 40′s and her madly attractive, much younger (20′s) blond, surfer boy friend.  Both chestnut coloured from lazing all year on the beach.  Her sun bleached hair tangled in dried blood from a recent brawl.  She threw two large bottles of beer at his head.  They smashed on the ground.  Later we saw this odd, violent couple being arrested.

Spent the rest of the day wrestling back control of the computer from Max.  His 13-year-old brain having got the best of his mum and dad’s good intentions.  Taking control of the family internet.  He was horrified by what I had done: limiting his internet usage to 3 hours a day, no iChat, no unfettered Facebook.  Every time he wants to do anything dodgy the computer emails me and tells me all about it.

Whilst they were out 10-year-old Hannah and I cooked dinner.  Moroccan influenced lamb balls.  Assorted vegetables.  Buttered rice.

I am feeling good.  Excited.  Fearless.

How do you Solve a Problem like Amanda Eliasch?

Amanda Eliasch is very, very rich. The ex-wife of Johann Eliasch, owner of tennis racket and sports wear company Head.

Currently Amanda is trying to get me to remove a blog reference made last week after she posted some nastiness about me on Facebook. Sadly, as Jake found to his dismay, even if I removed any or all evidence…the blog will remain in the virtual ether forever and ever. FOREVER.

Then, she persuaded some weird friend of hers to say that I only have 3 readers a day…that’s like telling a man he has a very small penis.

Let me remind you how I know this woman Amanda Eliasch…she was/is going out/hooking up/in confused hyper emotional ‘relationship’ with my old friend the genuine article…writer Tim Willis.

Poor Tim, the first time I was summoned to her house he was a quaking, smoking and drinking wreck. Exiled to the tennis court at her architecturally significant, now recently sold Beverly Hills house. His already weakened body covered in welts from Amada’s sharp little tongue.

The 1^st and least problematic problem with Amanda: she is a bully.

In some lame attempt to stop me from posting anything about her on my blog she reminded me that she had let me visit her home. OK. So? I reminded her (pompous hag) that I let her visit mine. The next barrage of emails, no doubt, will include reminders that she paid for a couple of lunches.

The emails after that will include homophobic slurs.

Well known to architects, and interior decorators as a person who loathes paying her bills. (I know two personally) She is currently working with ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard who told me that he went to Eton..does anyone know if that is true? I met ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard with Chris Cortazzo the “The King” realtor.

Why will ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard definitely get paid for renovating Amanda’s new home in LA? The simple fact is: ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard is far too well-connected not to get paid.

As well as converting Amanda’s new Wimpy home (ex Janet Leigh) into a white clad Wimpy home ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard is also converting a small apartment in Sierra Towers Los Angeles as something ‘nice’ for Elton’s Nanny and child.

I really did not want to start the year slagging an old slag but hey, at least I’m not writing about Jake eh?

The most perplexing problem with Amanda: she is totally bonkers…and not in a good way. She has no style, no friends and leaves a nasty taste in ones mouth whenever one may chance upon her.

Her conversation is limited and punctuated with barking noises…is this some sort of tick? I have never once been able to get a reasonable opinion or for that matter ANY opinion out of the woman that hadn’t been cribbed from some Daily Mail commentator/op ed…consequently her politics are slightly right of Hitler’s.

Amanda once complained to me, like many of her ilk, that there wasn’t a decent right-wing newspaper in Britain.

Now, I know that she will take issue with the ‘no friends’ claim but after her $500k fiasco of a birthday party last year where half her Facebook friends didn’t turn up..and, like an eastern European traveler, she tangoed for her startled guests then..to their growing horror played a sycophantic film ‘produced’ by her friends waxing bout how wonderful Amanda is. I wonder how she manages to keep the friends she has!

Good God! You can’t make this stuff up!

Amanda is surrounded by a certain type of woman, the ball breaking Aliai Lady Forte, the ball breaking Tracy Emin and the drunk most of the time but harmless..unless sober when she too becomes a bone fide ball breaker…Kay Saatchi.

Throw a few insignificant men into the black lacquered pot and bob’s your uncle: Amanda’s World.

The unforgivably huge problem with Amanda (and British social-climbing women like her) she is ever so slightly homophobic. She likes to remind gays that in Amanda’s World they have no right to demand rights or equality ‘what ever that is?’…that we have no place in the army or in sport…she questions our integrity in the school room and she tells us that we are of ‘no use’ to her…unless we are ‘decorating’ or ‘making things look pretty’.

Amanda, like her ball breaking friends, is also a low-grade racist and treats her black chef with imperial disdain.

Amusingly she has a desire to be close to film stars and celebrities but they are not eager to be seen with her.  Her life interminably chasing yet another film festival, film opening, red carpet event…film star etc. is pathetic at best…tragic at worst.

Amanda, if she doesn’t mend her ways, will end up like Wallis Simpson who, though remarkably chic, died isolated and miserable. At Wallis’s funeral the bulk of the wreaths came from vendors all over Paris who, without doubt, missed her very generous patronage.

Ed is Coming

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Related articles

• Amanda Eliasch ‘Peccadilloes’ Exhibition At Leadapron Gallery, Los Angeles (huffingtonpost.com)

Just Not Into It

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.

I begin my small claims action against him today.

Gay Pride?

Today the sea in the Gulf of Mexico is burning. Added to the slick of heavy crude oil toxic, jet-black smoke polluting the air we breathe.   The azure, pristine water marred with acrid plumes of shit colored oil.  The marshlands and beaches painted brown, the life there dying because we refuse to doubt our dependence on oil.  It is officially one of the worst man-made environmental disasters ever.

Yet, the massed people of the United States, indeed the world, politely ignored it.  Until now.  Blame is being apportioned, asses are being kicked yet today I will fill my truck with gas and think nothing of it.  I am complicit; I am responsible yet I do nothing.   Nothing.

It is maybe just the analogy I need to explain the human disaster caused by religious based homophobia that causes pain and suffering to those who live in it’s shadow.

Frankly, I don’t give daily thought to the fact that I am part of a community that is routinely demonized just as I choose to forget that hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spew into the sea.  I have learned to live side by side a huge number of people encouraged to hate me and people just like me because of the way we were born and the sexual preferences we have.

Politically I have sat motionless on the sidelines whilst living in the USA.  I have not demonstrated like I did in London, I have not written to my representative in Congress expressing my outrage at how my rights are diminished or devalued.   I put up with things just the way they are because I feel powerless, that I am just one man with one lone voice against the angry mob.

Nowadays I am resigned, whenever I am with men who do not know that I am gay and say things that are blatantly offensive, to keep my mouth shut.    I do not blame myself for their views but as I grow older I am less likely to defend my community or myself.  It simply isn’t worth it.  I am tired of being the uppity gay.

I am exhausted by confronting inequity and hate in my life and I am scared.  Scared that I will not be able to fully defend myself against their physical abuse.

My entire career as an artist has been to serve the gay community.  My plays and films aimed at men like me.  I have been hugely admired (and reviled) as a filmmaker but even my gay friends do not respect that I describe myself as a ‘gay filmmaker’ a gay man who makes films for and about our community.  They muse that I could have done so much better for myself if I had abandoned my principles.  If I had gone ‘mainstream’.

All I ever wanted to be was a gay artist who uses the language and locations of our gay lives.  I am proud to have done so.  I am proud to have served my community thus.

I wonder how much damage we do ourselves in the way that we choose to be seen?  How can we expect those who loathe us to accept us when we do so little to let them know who we are?

What is my part in the public relation disaster that still prevents fellow citizens from owning and celebrating my existence?  What am I doing in my community to help those angry people understand who I am?   How can I expect the mainstream to accept my demands for equality when I essentially live in a hermetically sealed ghetto?

How can I expect my gay fellow travelers to start reaching into their pockets and paying for a PR campaign that somehow celebrates our diversity when all we are seen to want is the right to fuck?

Call me old-fashioned but the love I have for another man always felt far more subversive than the act of fucking.

How do you say ‘I love you’ to another man?  What does it mean when two men say that they love each other?  Having sex with a man is easy-isn’t it?   That’s why we all do it as often as we do..don’t we?  But to say ‘I love you’ to another man is perhaps the most shameful phrase I ever uttered.   My tongue, swelling in my mouth, choking me..rather than say those three tiny words to another man.

I love you.  I love you.  I love you.

What I know for sure about love between men is that others condemn the sanctity of that love.  That I still feel a vague embarrassment when I am seen to hold another man’s hand in the street.

We, as a community, do not promote ourselves as hopeless romantics but as half-naked sex maniacs.  By doing so we have become unwitting witnesses for the prosecution.   By publicly sexualizing everything we do we devalue what we have.  On Facebook the majority of my gay friends are shirtless in their profile pictures.  When questioned why he was bearing his chest in his Facebook profile picture one erudite gay friend said that he was ‘proud’ of his body and wanted to show it off.  It seems like a simple enough answer but is this what gay pride has boiled down to, our very own hard-fought perestroika reduced to this?

It seems so..undignified.

In West Hollywood there is a large poster on Santa Monica Blvd for a gay removal company; two half-naked men carry a small box grinning broadly.  At the premiere LA gay bar The Abbey there is another huge poster celebrating it’s twentieth year.  Three massively built and tattooed men, one of them mixing a martini on the rock hard abs of another; their naked truncated bodies engaged in what may be fellatio.

It was past this very poster out walking one evening last week when I had a full beer can thrown at me that very narrowly missed my head and landed squarely on my chest.  The accompanying homophobic insults are not worth repeating.

I hated the smell of beer on my clothes and the pain in my heart but I hated that poster far more.  It’s as useful as a picture of happy, smiling Jews counting dollar bills outside the Jewish Community Center.

The way we choose to be seen is the way we will be perceived.  I am told constantly that there are thousands of gay men who do not go to gay bars, who live happy lives in monogamous relationships who work quietly and steadfastly beyond the glitz of the gay ghetto but, amazingly, I have never met those men.  I don’t know what they look like.  I have never seen them, been introduced to them.  If I have never met those men then those who misunderstand us certainly never have.

The acrid smoke and crude oil are coming ashore; it destroys almost everything in its path.   If we do nothing perhaps nature will deal with it, break it up over thousands of years so I don’t have to think about it.  But, irritatingly, I am not that kind of man.   I worry about the herons and the oysters and the dolphins.   I am outraged by the incompetence and greed, just like I am every time my community is attacked because we do so little to let them know who we are, what we are, how we are.

Crying

The Sex Rehab show effect has been cumulative.   When it first aired I expected to be immediately recognized.  As the weeks and months pass more and more people come up to me in the street and introduce themselves.

Shown daily on VH1, making it easier for old ‘friends’ and acquaintances to reach out to me.  Long forgotten, now reminded by Sex Rehab re-acquainted on Facebook, twitter etc.

Reality TV is truly life changing.   Opportunities include film projects,  book deals,  lovers-I am anywhere but where I thought I might be at my age.

Outside, this rainy afternoon, the gardeners are pulling out tons of weeds.  It is good to hear them chattering away in Spanish.  So, that’s what life will be, a life of chattering Mexican gardeners until Dorset Mary pitches up in her airstream and tends the goats and the chickens.

I have to call the bee man today about getting the bees up here.  I know where I want them to go.

I wrote yesterday about crying, a commission for a new magazine.  There’s been a great deal of crying during the past few months as my focus shifted from the big picture to just one man.   Ones view narrows exponentially when one falls in love and at the same time balloons into something huge.  My tears were not often for him but for past traumas and relationships and deaths.  My focus became very shallow and as I retreat from love I seem to be more aware of the horizon.

I cried when my Darling Big Dog was killed. I sat in my bed for a week and sobbed like a child.  I am still prone to sink into that deep, black well of sadness, tears  flooding my eyes and my heart.

If I had not witnessed that terrible moment I would be a lesser man today.  In many ways to have suffered like that unleashed all I had been denying myself throughout the years.  So many times I should have, could have, would have cried but remained stoic and dry-eyed.

The architects have just been to the house to check out the layout.  She was a rather wonderful, practical woman with a great attitude.

My film is taking shape, the garden continues to give pleasure and I am getting into my creative groove.  Although I am still mourning the death of love I am looking forward to a brighter, leaner future.

Love/Sex Addiction

So, I meet this guy.  He’s age appropriate, he’s sober, he has a great sense of humor and we CONNECT.  I mean..we connect intellectually.  After a few hours I kinda know that (if I wanted to) I could really make this work, that he could easily be the one.  We spend a couple of days together, we eat dinner, we get closer.  It feels GREAT.

So, if everything is so fucking PERFECT why does meeting this special someone make me feel so damned vulnerable?

Let’s try again.

So, I meet this guy, he’s cute and funny and sober.  We connect immediately and I can’t stop thinking about the future.  No..DUNCAN ROY..stop thinking!  Stay here and now.  Be present.  Isn’t that what you wanted all along?  To fall in love?  But, like loving the little dog I am suddenly bound and gagged like Houdini.  I begin to talk myself out of a beautiful time.  I can no longer move freely.  I tell myself that I can..I can be easily wounded.

When the big dog was killed I called my mother and cried.  Later, I felt sick that I’d called her.  I felt so embarrassed.  I called my MOTHER sobbing.  My Mother hates dogs.  What sort of person calls the most hard-hearted person in their life expecting sympathy?  I felt like a FOOL.  Who would I call if this went wrong?  My Mother can’t take a love affair between two men seriously!  Say, for arguments sake, I fell in love with this man..what would happen if he left me?  YOU SEE!   I am already writing the final, tragic chapter.

What happens when I fall in love?  I am as fragile as a Ming vase.   I want to stare into their eyes, kiss their lips.   I want him right here right now.  I want to be we.  I want to be a line in a popular love song.  I don’t want to raise goats on my OWN.

The worst of being an addict is that I can so easily transmute from sex to love addiction.

Today’s big GRIPE:

Why do so many gay men around my age have topless pictures of themselves on Facebook?    Let me tell you.

Most gay men suffer from Peter Pan syndrome.  Forever teenagers, these identical looking men-beards, tats and manscaped pubes seem unable or unwilling to grow up.  They behave like pre-pubescent boys, screaming around the world in half naked gangs looking for the next big cock.

I used to care that these men had no respect for monogamy but now I can’t be bothered what they do or don’t respect.

When we are not objectifying each other we encourage others to objectify us.  We demand objectification.  Gay men are in a constant state of sexual red alert.  We advertise our bodies rather than our minds, constantly comparing our pecs our lats etc.

Let me tell you lads-this is why nobody takes us seriously when we want them to.   If you want equality, put your shirts on.

Start taking yourselves seriously and grow the fuck up.

What about the guys who don’t want to take their shirts off?  The guys who don’t spend hours in the gym?  Are we expected to compare and despair?  No, prepare to be ignored lads.  Prepare to be marginalized.

This is exactly why we will never have any kind of political leader.  Remember Harvey Milk?  I mean, who would vote for Milk now?  His teeth are bad, he isn’t in the gym 24/7.  Who would want to fuck that queen?  Our message has been lost amongst the lotions, hair dyes, gym clothes, and food fads that really motivate the community.

There is a terrible fascism that pervades the ‘gay community’, racism, and ageism-it’s all there.  Sadly, due to our ingrained sense of entitlement, there is little or no regard for the similarities-only the differences.  Which means, that when the chips are down, we are never ready to fight together for our common good.

Funny thing happened after an AA meeting last night.  A gay bloke was squirting hand sanitizer over himself and others after having shaken a stranger’s hand-the same guy who had been describing shoving his tongue up some random ass the night before.

Yay!  Vote no on ‘Prop 8’.

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• This Thing Called Love Addiction (femalesexualhealth.wordpress.com)

Porridge

My Mother

Breakfast with John this morning at Cecconi’s.  We ate oatmeal, which is American for porridge.  Actually just milled oats with hot milk rather than the creamy, steaming, slow cooked porridge of my youth.   Served this morning-like a desert-with strawberry jam!  Yuk.

I was telling him about the long relationships that I have had with women.  I have always identified as gay but recently, after rehab and therapy I am coming to other conclusions.  Gayish maybe.  I don’t know.  ‘It’s complicated’ as they say on Facebook.

My relationships with women, as with Jennie on the show, have always been incredible romances.

I have loved women more than I ever loved me.

That was a Freudian slip.  I meant to write men.  But it’s true; I have always loved women more than men or me.

The woman that I have loved the most have been highly intelligent, powerfully articulate, always incredibly beautiful and sexually submissive.   The most recent being the editor of a highly regarded magazine.  I refer to all my past female lovers as my ex wives.

To understand these relationships I’d best explain the relationship I had with my mother.

My relationship with my mother was intensely emotional.  Remember, she too was held hostage in our ‘family’ by my violent step-father.  Consequently, I became her escape, her confidant, her secret affair.  On the bus to Canterbury I said, “I’m not your boyfriend!”  For the remainder of the journey we both sat in silence, shocked that I had articulated what had, until that moment, been our terrible secret. I was 12 years old!  In lieu of a loving husband or a loving father we loved each other absolutely, unswervingly.  She would confide in me, when we were on our own, that there was only us, no one else existed.  Just her and me.  That if she could she would run away with me.  This emotional incest laid the groundwork for the intensity I seek out with women.

Sexual violence I seek from men. I always find it.

Even though I have had long relationships with men, I devalue these relationships when I compare them to the relationships that I have had with women.

The truth is my mother and I never escaped.  She stayed married to my step father and endured his constant punishment.  I escaped into madness and addiction.

I still find it very difficult to forgive her.  She is a sweet and simple woman who really did her best to make a terrible life better for all of us.  However, knowing what I know now would it have been so terribly hard for her to put my brothers and I onto the bus and somehow get away?

I don’t believe that all gay men are born gay.

I know that this thinking sets me at odds with the majority of the gay community and many, many straight men.  Saying that, I don’t believe that there is a cure for homosexuality – as once the dye is cast our sexuality seems inevitable.

There is no evidence that gay to straight rewiring or reorientation actually works.

However, gay men who live with and marry women are of course far more prevalent than we like to admit.  But should these relationships be discounted?  Both Oscar Wilde and Vita Sackville-West had incredibly loving relationships with both their spouse and a member of the same sex.  Indeed, Oscar’s love letters to his wife are as beautiful and compelling, if not more so, than his letters to his male lover.  Vita’s profound love for her husband provided a springboard from which she would leap into a previously unimagined same sex world.

Again, in my experience of having relationships with women, women were far more accepting of my behavior than one would like to believe and tended to stick by me even after multiple same sex indiscretions.   When I have had relationships with women, women who knew that I had preferences for men, they tended to overlook the past and focus on a future that we might share together.

Most gay men who identify as gay are born gay.  However, a few men (and I count myself among them) are sexualized at an early age.   I am plagued with this question:  If I had not been so badly abused as an infant would I have become gay?

There are many varieties of gay.

Men who own to same sex desires later on in life endure accusations that they were merely in denial: minimizing their life’s journey.

Mother in Malibu garden

The group of men who seem to cause the most distress to both straight and gay men are those who genuinely seem to have sexual choice and act accordingly.    Same sex experimentation amongst straight men, despite rowdy protestations, occurs more frequently that any of us like to acknowledge.

As I have written before we, as a society, are incredibly prescriptive about the sexual identification of others.    Supposedly, once a man has crossed the sexual Rubicon he is damned.   Bullshit.  If only these sexual prescribers applied the same rational to female sexuality.   But how can they?  When straight men persuade women to act out lesbian fantasies have these women now become forever lesbians at the behest of heterosexual men?

All of my work as an artist has sought to understand, rework and revisit my initial trauma.  This now feels, after therapy, like a terrible indulgence.  Yet, to let it go..what am I left with?  The future seems very bleak without this grotesque narrative.

PS  My mother visited me after my grandmother died. It was uncomfortable for both of us but we got though it.  When the big dog was killed I called her crying but I felt like I was crying to a woman I no longer knew.

In the words of Tennessee Williams: Time is the greatest distance between two people.