Then, every decade, they wouldn’t stand miserably by their pyre lamenting the loss of personal items on the early evening news.
2.
So. I’m writing my last will and testament. And, after much prayer/thought, I’ve decided to leave everything to my former school Monkton Wyld.
I am also discussing making a charitable donation to Monkton which is now a residential education center.
The Grade II listed neo-Gothic building is set amongst an idyllic eleven acres of lawns, gardens and meadows.
Designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter, the rectory was built in 1848. It is in need of help. Tracery needs restoring, energy efficient windows need installed and a large bay window at the front of the house needs underpinning.
As a Centre for Sustainable Education, Monkton Wyld hosts a range of courses, conferences and gatherings for adults, families and children.
From bee-keeping to scything to yoga, Monkton’s programme promotes low-impact, earth-centred skills for changing modern life.
Meals are prepared in the house kitchen using fresh organic ingredients from the Court’s own Victorian walled garden, orchards and farm.
The Court is managed by a resident volunteer staff with the help of volunteers and overseen by a board of trustees.
They work to develop and promote a lifestyle based on mutual respect for each other and for the wider community and environment.
Sounds perfect doesn’t it?
I want my ashes scattered there.
Have you written a will? How many single people do? It is imperative.
I’ve been thinking for many years what to do with any money I might have when I die and this, I believe, is the best solution. Helping with the fabric of this building may secure its future for decades to come.
The definite seasons on the east coast. The passing days, changing. Slowly.
Each day has a brand new identity. New light. Color.
The bland, endless Los Angeles summer has finally come to an end. After 8 long years. I am heading home.
I wear my long, grey cashmere coat (Hermes) and fur hat (Dior).
I pull on my knee-length, woolen socks and my heavy boots.
I am going to therapy… daily. I am finally addressing the issues I have been ignoring this past year. You know, those pesky medical issues.
Strangely, without warning… even though we share the same streets. I never see him. Nor do I wish to conjure him, manifest him, make him appear… I had lunch with one of his co-workers the other day, a youngster (we met at an AA meeting) who wanted his job.
It was funny being at the same table as someone who works in close proximity to him. Their opinion.
They knew the story. An urban myth that they delighted in fact checking.
Oh well.
Of course there’s loads going on (Film/House/Social) but somehow I don’t have the energy to write it.
I take pictures and let that suffice.
2.
I found a picture of Joe. He’s obsessively going to the gym. A man mountain. In his late 60′s now.
I scarcely ever think about him. Isn’t that odd? To have no thoughts about someone who was once the center of your world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The ACLU 2012 Bill of Rights awards at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I sat with my lawyers Barry Litt and Peter Eliasberg.
We ate stewed pear salad, grilled chicken and for dessert they served a strange, solid cake.
During the dinner they projected various videos describing the work they do for Homeless Veterans, Immigrants Rights, The LGBTQ community.
Of course the work I have been contributing to was just part of what was projected. I was incredibly proud to be asked to stand in front of the 1000 or so people and introduce myself.
Will Ferrell, Jay Roach, Ermin Chemerinsky and Jane Lynch all spoke beautifully on behalf of the ACLU and their various causes and friends.
During the interval both Usher (the singer) and Scooter Braun (2 million twitter followers) took the time to introduce themselves and congratulate me.
Of course, as usual, not one gay person, including honoree Jane Lynch made themselves known to me. The chasm that exists between me and the gay community in LA was even more evident than usual at this event.
Only last week the gay ‘director’ Guy Shalem texted me telling me that I deserved to be in jail… mocking the time that I had spent there, telling me that I only had friends I made in jail.
Guy Shalem is a gay Israeli fame-whore who lives in Los Angeles. I met him at some grimy gay party in the Hollywood Hills last year and he subsequently invited me to Griffith Park for a walk the following day.
The conversation on the mountain centered around his visa problems, his inability to make relationships work, his celebrity friends and his desire for younger boys.
He complained that Outfest were sniffy about his short film. When I saw it I understood why. ”Bruce Vilanch is in it.” He boasted, “They should love it.”
After all, he’s obsessed with celebrity… why shouldn’t Outfest?
So, it was mildly shocking to see Guy at the ACLU event. Wearing a bad suit and even worse shoes.
He had seen the video lauding the work we are all doing for those held on spurious ICE holds.
He heard the applause I received when they asked me to stand.
He heard Hector Villagra, head of the ACLU talking publicly about my personal bravery and commitment to the ACLU.
Guy is the perennial plus one to any gay celebrity. Last night, yet again, he was with Jane Lynch. He saw me, headed toward me and shook my hand. Apparently forgetting the vile things he said last week.
I told him in no uncertain terms how and what I felt about him coming up to me.
He motioned to his ugly short gay friends lawyer Aaron Rosenberg and his ‘husband’ that this was worth watching. They snickered, like vile bullying children, behind my back.
Let’s face it, Guy was only there for the free dinner and to stand with his famous friend and hope to ensnare other famous people with his puppy eyes and his maudlin sob stories.
The point of the evening was completely lost on him.
After I walked away from Guy other honorees came up to me and offered their hands.
One of them, an elderly female philanthropist said, “We are like kindred spirits, you and me.” I was so touched by her generosity.
So many kind people… not one of them gay.
2.
There was a moment in Beverly Hills recently when my body decided enough was enough. 7am, Beverly Drive, walking the dogs… I fainted.
The last thing I remember: kicking a fresh pine cone. The next thing? I crashed to the ground painfully twisting my wrist under the weight of my body.
Dude, my fat red dog ran away as fast as he could. The Little Dog stayed beside me as loyal as any dog can be.
I probably should have seen a doctor but, like my Grandmother and my Mother, a visit to the doctor is the last thing I do willingly.
It took an hour or so to persuade Dude to come back to me. For the rest of the day he looked at me differently. Like I was a stranger.
As part of a plea deal crafted by the DA and my lawyer, I plead NO CONTEST to a misdemeanor. My sentence? An 18 month gagging order and a 52 hour course in anger management.
There was no jail time, no fine. It was all over in 20 minutes.
I smoked a cigarette outside the courtroom. So did the DA. She sat there in her black coat. Sitting where she always sits. Behind a wall.
Like a naughty school girl. Smoking.
And I felt like it was going to be OK. Because she was smoking too.
The judge said goodbye, the bailiff smiled. The stenographer watched with interest.
Her name was Natalie Volk. She was very apologetic. Her husband got out of the car. Natalie must have been 80 years old, he was older. She touched the back of the car to make sure it wasn’t all a bad dream.
We exchanged personal details. I’m not going to call her insurance people. I know what they’ll do to her. How punitive they can be.
That night I stopped at a gas station to buy gas and soda. A huge black woman begged me to fill her gas tank. The station wagon was packed with kids. They were homeless. They lived in that car.
I paid for their gas. I made it seem like a terrible imposition.
Absurdly, I didn’t want other people to think I was being hijacked.
I went to buy myself a soda. The woman at the checkout said, “That was really kind of you, they were homeless.” She smiled and said, ”I’ll pay for your soda.”
I felt badly that I hadn’t been kinder to the homeless women.
On my way out of the service station I saw the most beautiful black man. A solid wall of muscle. He was walking up Lincoln Avenue. I circled around until I found him. I stopped the car and asked him what he was doing.
We had a chai latte at the Coffee Bean in Marina Del Rey. He was from Chicago. 28 years old. A personal trainer. He had moved to LA a few months ago to help his brother. He used to have dreadlocks.
I dropped him off at his apartment. He invited me into his empty place.
At 5am I drove him to the gym where he worked.
Perhaps I should have given him more? More than a chai latte?
As I drove home up the PCH. Looking over the Pacific Ocean. I thought about the previous day.
All that public money wasted. All that time taken by highly paid District Attorneys, Attorneys who could have been solving real crimes.
Money that could be spent repairing a local school. Money that could have been spent investigating white-collar crimes.
I was listening to John Martyn. Solid Air. Synthesized sea gulls. A heartbeat. My heart is still beating.
2.
Whatever may happen. How ever bad it gets. It is is up to you… yes you… you can turn the worst things that happen into the most extraordinary adventure.
As anyone who has a creative bone in their body knows, to carve something artful out of wherever you find yourself… well. It’s up to you.
So, it was no coincidence that, after I spoke to the reporter about The Trust Act, after my involved and specific conversation with the lawyer, after I had recorded the Youtube video….
I sat down at my desk and rewrote the ending of my script.
That means that I have not had a drink or a drug for 16 years.
I got sober and I didn’t relapse.
Gay men find it impossible to stay sober. They relapse again and again. The reason is clear: sex. Sexual addiction. I am not suggesting that all gay men who claim that they are alcoholic are in fact sex addicts but most gay men who can’t stay sober cite sex as the primary reason for relapse.
The simple fact of the matter is that most of the time, readily available anonymous hook ups quickly take the place of alcohol and drugs. When a sober man walks into the apartment of a super hot man doing crystal meth, sobriety is quickly flushed down the toilet along with HIV status.
I hear the story over and over again. Yet, as a community, we think we can get away with this risky behavior. It is an arrogant vanity.
Gay AA is a sad affair. I go periodically—mostly when I flee the super charged straight stag meetings because I find the straight, young newcomers too triggering.
While many straight sober people create a new life with AA that involves abandoning bars and other locations that might lead to relapse, gay sober men often want a sober version of the life they had before, complete with dance parties, bars and gogo boys. Any reason to have a party will do—including the absurd “three-month anniversary.” Or, as one galling invitation I received said, “Help Joe S. celebrate his one-month anniversary.”
Forgive me if I’m wrong but anniversaries are a yearly celebration.
Many of these sober parties are indistinguishable from their non sober equivalent: scantily clad men line up for espresso machines manned by disco short-wearing super hot straight guys more used to shaking cocktails than dispensing coffee to gay guys jacked up on caffeine. Unable to attend drug-crazed gay circuit parties, many gay sober men in LA flock to the sober circuit parties, such as Hot ‘n Dry, which is held annually in Palm Springs. These events are more likely to take someone out than any other reason I’ve ever heard in gay AA. Yearly, after this event, bedraggled gay men turn up at meetings, their eyes blazing from excessive drug use, taking newcomer chips. Should I be surprised? After all, the Hot n’ Dry ticket salesman had assured me that it would be “a sex fest from the moment you arrive at the Ace Hotel.”
The absurd idea that we can behave like we have always behaved as long as we have a deluded and lackluster understanding of the 12 steps just doesn’t work. Two years ago, after I appeared on Sex Rehab With Dr. Drew, I suggested that within the gay community, we might have a sexual unmanageability problem and was flooded with vitriol. But that’s not going to stop me from sharing what I believe to be serious issues.
The other serious issue within gay AA, in my opinion, is the resistance to God or a Higher Power. Most of my gay sponsees are understandably wary of God. The Christian God—the religious God—hasn’t made them feel very welcome in the past and has actually steeped them in shame and misery. To find that at the heart of AA is a God—even if it’s one of their own understanding—is anathema to most gay men. From what I can determine, most gay men just ignore the God part of the 12 steps—a relevant fact when the God part, in my estimation, accounts for roughly 90% of recovery. Working through the God options with gay men can be excruciating. Why bother looking for spiritual validation when they can get immediate validation on Grindr?
I used to love AA in LA; my love for it was actually the reason I first moved to LA. Now I hate it. It’s like a cult—sober grandees ruling over desperate men, the film industry providing the sickest of backdrops: men flaying themselves before agents and film executives in the hope of catching crumbs from the sober table I see this everywhere from the straight stag meetings, where misogyny and homophobia are expressed freely, to the sickest meetings of all: Gay AA in LA.
For all of these reasons and more, last November, after nearly 16 years, I stopped going to AA meetings. I was exhausted, disillusioned and utterly miserable. My last meeting in LA, at the iconic Log Cabin on Robertson in West Hollywood, was a gay meeting attended by 300 gay men.
I couldn’t walk away fast enough.
And yet yesterday, after a nine-month hiatus, I walked into a co-ed meeting in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was an hour early. I helped set out the chairs in ten neat rows and then I made the coffee. During the meeting, I shared my resentments and my fears and afterwards, a tiny woman called Dianne came up to me and let me have two full barrels of her tough love wisdom.
“It’s time for you to get fucking humble,” she said. “Come back and do fucking 90 in 90 like a newcomer.”
She was right. After months away from AA, I felt spiritually bankrupt. I stopped fighting and did what we are all meant to in the rooms of AA: I gave in.
Later that evening, the young man I helped set up the meeting took me for dinner. We talked recovery. This morning, we had sex. There I was, doing the walk of shame, doubled down. I had once again fucked a newcomer, counting days. It’s my story in AA. The younger men find my honesty irresistible and I can’t say no.
When I first got sober in London, the only gay men I met in AA were old queens at the Eton Square meeting. I met a couple of gay men in NA but within the deluded gay community, at that time, there was a mantra I heard over and over that “quitting was for losers.” Several years later, after celebrities like Boy George got sober, the rooms of AA and NA filled quickly with what we now recognize as gay recovery.
Back then I was accused, by my drinking friends, of being a contrarian—of rocking the boat and spoiling it for the others. As it happened, I was in the vanguard. I remember being hounded by drunken gay men who were outraged that I might, just by being sober, challenge their powerlessness and un-manageability. Of course those very same men now thank me for introducing them to the 12 steps.
After a few months away from AA, I am ready to start again but, as Dianne said, I’ve got to get humble, forget all those years of sobriety and do 90 meetings in 90 days. For the first time in a long time, I value my life. I should have left LA years ago but I’m a tenacious old queen; I didn’t want to let go. Just one more meeting might fix me. Just more line, one more Vodka Tonic and the crazy opera playing in my head might stop.
Walking back into AA in New York was a relief, a joy—just like it used to be. I want to be sober. The only problem getting in the way of that is me. But I know that if I’m going to be able to do it, I’ll have to learn how to say no to sex. As a single gay man, the consequences are dire if I don’t.
Continuing my occasional ‘Fuck you’ series of LA essays I nominate the ‘award winning’ illustrator and elderly Greek queen Konstantine Kakanias as my latest Fuck You.
Konstantine threw a party last night.
Who put the kaka into Kakanias?
This guy has tried it all.
Artist, writer, illustrator, jewelry designer.
B’jesus with this much talent this homo should be a household name!
He’s tried so hard to be something but for poor old Koni, nothing seems to stick.
He’s just a socialite with a great talent for persuading other socialites to take him seriously.
You know, I have known the rancid Konstantine for many, many years.
We first met with Manolis Mavrakis and Fred Hughes in New York in the early 80′s. Fred loathed him. Manolis laughed at him.
Koni painted my portrait then tried to have sex with me. I declined. He was smelly and creepy.
I left the portrait on the easel.
We periodically bump into each other all over the world. Much to his chagrin and my infinite amusement. It was he I referred to as Nona Summer’s vile Greek escort last week.
Konstantine attracts the WORST sort of people. Nona, Peter Dunham, Justin Kern, Alex Hitz etc.
As his last incarnation he was calling himself an artist. He had a laughably sophomoric show at The Light Box Gallery in LA before it closed down.
Kimberly Light (heiress) rues the day she ever let this cretin have his own show at her gallery.
He was the only artist who did not sell at the Angel Food project auction at CAA several years ago.
That’s how seriously the art elite take him. Look for his work in the collections of important collectors and you will not find his name.
His work is absurd.
Yet, within that sub-world of dodgy socialites and rich kids looking for a purpose he has carved himself a ‘career’. Some how he persuaded Swarovski to manufacture his designs.
Silly rings, “Inspired by Byzantine royal jewels.” He brays.
Did they sell? They were a total disaster and can now be found on the Swarovski website knocked down to a fraction of their original price.
Last night Konstantine was up to his old tricks.
Konstantine is now a film maker.
He has made a ‘film’ and to launch this seven minute animated masterpiece he assembled LA’selite… including ‘designer’ Justin Kern and his pretty side kick Stephanie Danan for whom the ‘film’ was commissioned and QVC favorite… fried chicken go to guy and Coca Cola heiress Alex Hitz and a gaggle of loafer wearing euro trash.
“They’re very collaborative people and they’re really creative. They like playing with other creative people and that’s where it all crosses over,” Indeed, Danan and Kern enlisted the efforts of friends like Tatiana von Furstenberg (heiress), “They’re not in a singular mind-set and they can pull from other mediums.”
I walked in and immediately saw twenty people I knew well enough to kiss and twenty people I knew well enough to ignore.
I waved at Konstantine… he flew out of his chair…
“Who invited you…” he trembled. His voice deserting its usual treble… escalating into a Maria Callas soprano.
Alex Hitz who I kissed lavishly (after all he had paid for a wonderful dinner at the Sunset Tower) said, “This is Konstantin’s party.”
“I know,” I said, “And I am the wicked fairy.”
Alex shrank into the shadows. I turned to face the outraged Greek. Like his country… in debt and struggling to save face. He held out his fingers like 10 wands and told me to get out.
I left, greeting people on the way out with smiles and kisses. Clo Perrin (heiress) looking gorgeous in white silk jersy.
Justin Kern waved. Justin is proof that there is life after modeling… just.
“I’ll be writing about this!” I grinned cheerily!
Before I left one of the guests, a beautiful young Parisian flew up to me and laughed, “Darling, what a waste of time. You didn’t miss a thing. Poor Konstantine.”
Dinner at Laurel Hardware with a cute jew. Great kisser.
Waking up at Robby’s apartment. West Hollywood. Feeling like I have a hangover. I haven’t. I’m still not drinking. Waiting for the right moment…but it never comes. The sanctity of sobriety.
It’s hard after nearly 16 years to think about the right time to start drinking.
A woman I know from the programme called yesterday. I told her that I had renounced AA. ”How’s that working out for you?” She pried condescendingly.
Saturday pre pride party. Good fun. The über gays. The fake NYC producer I mentioned in an earlier post sitting at his table wondering how I manage to surround myself with such beauty. He looked exasperated. Staring over at us.
Pride was a great deal of fun. On the streets. The floats have not changed for 30 years: muscle boys and drag queens. Not very inventive.
I stayed at the London Hotel courtesy of my Kuwaiti friends. They pitched up at 8am. We ate smoked fish and Quiche for breakfast.
3.
Nothing is obvious. Just when you thought you’d never kiss anyone meaningfully ever again.
I saw you in the bar and knew you were the one. A brief conversation. Kisses, glances, then you pissed on me. That was new to both of us but so damned exciting. A mouth full of piss. Then we spent the afternoon talking. Eating. Each other.
You left an impression. Creases in the bed sheets.
4.
Without me even noticing it LA is full of gay men with beards.
Does this mean that they/we are growing up? That men are trumping boys? The aesthetic is not only very pleasing but means I get looked at all over again. I have some currency…if you know what I mean.
5.
I don’t have time to write this very often. There’s a great deal to do.
I’m helping those boys in the jail, even though they don’t know it. Meeting lawyers down town who are investigating conditions in the jail. They seem shocked. Young lawyers. Fresh faced. Idealists.
I try balancing my complaints with a broader understanding of the jail dynamic. The deputies are not just cruel…they are frightened. They do not treat the trans population with contempt because they hate gays, they are confused by the feelings the girls bring up in them.
Ernest lawyers ask how I would change things in the jail. I am always prepared for those questions.
Last week I sat with Senator Ron S.Calderon who is co-sponsoring a bill in the State of California that would basically abolish the situation in which I found myself. Protocols would have to be adhered to. States right to decide trumping the draconian Immigration Department.
I drive for hours to get to the meeting and speak clearly and concisely. I know that I am speaking on behalf of thousands of wrongly incarcerated immigrants.
I go to cities I would never usually visit. I am introduced to people I would never usually meet. Immigrant rights advocates, Methodist ministers. I am familiar with Secure Communities. I hear terrible stories. They tell me that ICE operate like the Gestapo. They spread fear in the immigrant communities, wrecking homes, lives, marriages, separating families, sending children into foster care.
6.
Then, there is the other work. Kevin, my incredible new assistant, and I…running all over town. Putting this show together. Holding things together.
Today I see the doctor. No good news all over again. I’m sure.
Woke up early. Wanted to get the daub onto the stove. It’d been marinating all night.
Then, something about the process, the action of stirring the pot, as it began to simmer…broke something in me. Like I was having a rare moment of clarity, sanity…and I felt a terrible guilt for the way I had treated…not him…but his parents…drawing them into our drama. Collateral damage.
I wanted to write to them and tell them how sorry I was.
They were innocent.
Then I found that Avadon picture of Ginsberg and his long-term lover Orlovsky. And I thought about them ‘long-term’ and what they were thinking, or not thinking when they kissed for the camera.
I thought about the way they, we…I…describe what we have as long term.
Long term insists that we take what they had seriously. Ginsberg had not just met some man on the street and taken him into the studio. He had made some sort of commitment. Long term.
And I thought that marriage would be just that…long term. That our beards would grow long together. That I would never ever tire of looking at you. Kissing you.
Then I remember that I am here in LA. You send me a picture of Washington Square. It’s all I need right now. A picture.
The whole house smells of beef in red wine, fresh herbs, fresh garlic.
I had lunch with Robby on Monday. We ate a lamb burger at Gjelina. I drank ginger and mint italian soda.
He has been having a wonderful time. Earning masses of cash, loving his man and roaming with his homies. Yes, I wrote that.
On Wednesday I met a friend for lunch, a lunch that didn’t end until 3am. He is 23, he lied about his age. He told me he was older. A masculine dilettante.
We had lunch in Venice, tea in Beverly Hills, an odd party at The Sunset Tower (gays and girls), then dinner at Red Medicine on Wilshire.
Have you heard of Red Medicine? It’s that restaurant, Jordan Kahn’s place…that everyone is talking about.
We ordered far too much. Each baffling plate arrived covered in flowers or Dadaist condiment.
We ate: DUNGENESS CRAB / passion fruit, brown butter, black garlic, Vietnamese crepe, hearts of palm $32
We ate: HEIRLOOM RICE PORRIDGE / egg yolk, hazelnuts, ginseng, echire butter $17 and added Santa Barbara uni for a further $20.
We ate: BEEF TARTARE / water lettuce, water chestnut, nuoc leo, chlorophyll, peanut $15
We ate: AMBERJACK / red seaweed, buttermilk, lotus root, tapioca, succulents $16
Then, after dinner, we lay in the back of his SUV by the beach and kissed each other until my face was raw, my heart was racing, my legs were trembling. I was so completely overwhelmed that I could not drive for ne’er a mile before I had to stop and beg a cigarette from a passer-by.
He is beautiful. He gnawed at my neck until I could not bear it any more.
So, that’s what love looks like in a warm climate. For a moment. Not long-term. Not to be taken seriously. Just a moment. I have trained myself not to yearn for more.
So, the daub will cook for four more hours until it is tender. We will eat it with home-made noodles.
Since I was released from The Men‘s Country Jail earlier this month I have noticed changes, changes in myself, changes in others. Even though I have been occasionally combative and resolute when writing here…this may not be the whole story.
The story is revealing itself, the narrative unfolding in ways I did not expect.
There was an occasion in the jail when, after I heard that the immigration lawyers I hired previous to the wonderful Esperanza Immigrants Rights Project had fucked up. I felt really desperate and powerless. Carlton, the 24-year-old House Mouse. sat on my bunk and, seeing that I was beginning to flounder, took me in hand and firmly reminded me that The Country Jail was no place for desperation. He reminded me that if I gave into weakness I would either go mad or die.
He said, “There are too many personalities in here.” I knew what he meant. I had lived in Los Angeles for a long, long time.
The other inmates understood that I had a greater purpose for being there and yesterday that purpose became apparent.
Crawling back into life has been challenging. I feel tender, as if my whole body is bruised. I feel my age. I am quieter, less prone to irritation, grateful for everything, trying to be kinder. Becoming vulnerable for all to see, not just those who are the closest to me…everyone.
I had lunch at SH the day before yesterday, saw friends from London who are here for Oscar week. I saw local friends who knew what had happened but were either too polite or worried to ask details. If they asked where I had been I blurted out, “I’ve been in jail for three months.” Then I tell them to read the piece in The Independent.
I sat down with those who needed to know and explained the whole story.
I am not spending every day on the mountain, I am making the effort to live. I am not making the same mistakes.
Last night we went to a charitable art event in Beverly Hills. I bumped into Paul Haggis, explained where I had been, the experience of jail. I told him about Carlton and the men I’d met there. I’ve no idea why, perhaps because he is a director, I told him things I had not previously mentioned. I painted a more complete picture.
Paul said, “There must have been a reason.”
My jail friend Steve reminded me daily that I was in jail for a purpose, he knew that someone like me doesn’t end up in a place like that without a reason. That reason is being made clear both on a micro and macro level.
Steve told me, “You can help these people.” So, it looks like I may very well be able to help.
That purpose will be made clear to you soon.
When I have my ducks in a row.
What is it to be vulnerable, kinder? What will I lose? What will I gain?
The boys are here, living here. Three of them, taking their responsibilities seriously. Occasionally they clear up without being asked. Yet, their mess that would have previously pissed me off, scarcely affects me. Who cares if there are socks all over the place, piles of towels in the bathroom?
What does that matter when I am so grateful they are here.
The life I lived before I was arrested seems like another time, like another place, like a different me. I am wondering who he was, what interested him, what in hells name I was doing?
I was wondering how he could have got himself into such a mess? Then I remembered that I left that Duncan back in the jail, the Duncan who was scared of being seen, the Duncan that made unhealthy choices, the Duncan who knew Jake.
When I write about death and suicide, I am really trying to articulate what it is to cast off something already dead. I am not interested in dying. I have things, suddenly and without warning, that need to be achieved. Things that before I was arrested never occurred to me.
Am I killing that part of myself that has bedeviled me for so many years? Can you understand that? Can you see what I’m talking about now?
Don’t fret my darling friends. I am emerging from this experience with a different set of principals, new standards of living and unusual priorities.
What was previously important is now worthless. Clothes, possessions, jewelry, power and prestige.
In jail I learned to get used to the idea of nothing and in nothing I found something I never guessed existed: that very thing after which I had been hankering a whole lifetime.
So that I don’t break any rules I have removed the names of those I am presently being accused of Attempted Extortion.
Extortion is either threatening to reveal a secret or a crime unless money is paid. It usually accompanies threats of violence.
I allegedly threatened to blog about a man ripping me off. That’s what I have been charged with. Threatening, in the land of the free, the land of the first amendment, to have an opinion about a man who ripped me off.
No wonder my fellow Brits are outraged.
Firstly, this is a civil matter and The State of California should not be wasting millions of tax payers dollars going through the public courts.
Secondly, the law was obviously written to protect people who had committed crimes or had secrets from being violently blackmailed.
Of course it is hard luck when, in life, one gets fucked over. In America being fucked over is a daily challenge and those who manage to successfully do the fucking over are hailed as the winners. Just look at the Wall Street ‘winners’ rewarded for fucking over the entire nation.
Unlike most people who get fucked over, who cannot fight back…I have this blog.
It has proved to be one of the most effective fog horns in the world.
Let’s talk? Just you and me? Can I confide in you?
In 2007, after 35 years, I sold my beautiful house in Whitstable Kent. I started avidly house hunting all over Los Angeles for another home. I met CN from a well-known realty company. We looked at hundreds of houses, none of which I liked.
I was a US property virgin trusting that realtors in the USA would behave as I had learned from estate agents in the UK…with honesty and accountability.
Months into our search I had still not found a house I liked.
My recently deceased friend Jean Perramon lived in Malibu and walking his neighborhood I chanced upon my present home.
Two acres of lush, semi tropical gardens. Bananas, citrus, plums. Stone paths weaving through the landscape. A post and beam family home divided into two apartments. I met the owner KM and he agreed to let me rent the property with a view to buying it.
I told CN about the house and he introduced me to CC the sellers agent.
Well, we scarcely needed introducing as I had, on more than one occasion let CC suck my cock. But as with most of the power gays in town he had quickly heard my back story and with disapproving, judgmental aplomb…stopped returning my calls.
After our dating disaster I bumped into him again at the Barry Diller pre-Oscar party. We sat together at lunch and I met his bejeweled Russian friend Diana who claimed to be the wife of some oligarch and her euro trash monster entourage.
People like CC, Diana and their ilk gossip interminably about their celebrity friends…Elton this…Cher that…relating their upcoming agenda in lieu of any meaningful conversation. Squealing about their yachts, their diamonds, their homes and their spurious charities.
Listen, let’s face it…CC has done very well for himself. He comes from a humble Malibu family, his darling mother is often seen eating lunch in the garden at Cross Creek. His fireman father is dead. He sells more real estate than any other broker in the USA. For a man who is scarcely literate…he has done very well for himself.
This is what he writes about himself on his very own website:
“Yes, CC’s name is everywhere in Malibu, because that’s what happens when you’re “The King.” It was actually the Bravo TV program Million Dollar Listing, in which CC was profiled among several other L.A.-area top-producing agents, that coined the term “The King of Malibu”. Perhaps it was his incredible production that earned him the title. Perhaps it owes to the type of clientele he often serves, namely some of the biggest names in entertainment and business.”
As gay royalty goes, CC is certainly the King…the King of the Cock Suckers. He has a very regal, hungry mouth.
Being a gay man has impacted well on his life. He tells the story with relish, how he met Barry Diller with whom he allegedly had an affair and in turn introduced him to the gay mafia who claim to run the world.
CC was a handsome Richard Gere type of guy. Not so much now. He has sailed the recessionary wave.
The last time I saw him was at the 7.30am Wednesday morning celebrity Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting in Brentwood.
He looked at me in total horror, not because he was at an SAA meeting but because by that time he had colluded with CN and others to defraud me.
Information that now causes me to write this revelatory blog.
After seeing him at the meeting I wrote a sweet email welcoming him to SAA. It is very hard to admit you have a problem like sex addiction. I wanted him to feel safe when he returned.
After renting the Malibu house for a few weeks I asked CN to write-up an offer.
The house had been on the market for many months.
I live in a country where houses languish on the market for a very long time, it did not occur to me that a house that had been on the market for a few months may be problematic.
It did not occur to me that I was working with a couple of realtors who were determined, at any cost, to sell me a doozy. The ex told the police that he thought I was ‘dark and creepy’ and needed to be taught a lesson. My soppy, inexperienced realtor just wanted his commission and was sick of showing me endless properties.
We had written offers before but they had not been accepted. I had never ordered an inspection.
With the inspection…or lack of it…the active deception began…knowing how green I was they deliberately failed (using a fake geologist) to disclose the following:
The problem with the house? During the past ten years there had been landslides on either side of the property and on the property. That there was un-permitted and illegal construction work in the garden including retaining walls and water tanks degrading the land and making it more liable to land slide.
Neither the seller nor CC disclosed this information. Information that, by law, they were required to reveal.
Knowing that I would not want to buy the house if I knew the truth, they presented me with an expensive and thorough geological report conducted in 2004 which they persuaded me was adequate for my purposes, advising me that I should have a verbal report from another geologist to confirm that nothing had happened subsequent to the 2004 report.
They assured me that a ‘verbal’ report was perfectly normal. Amongst other anomalies they also told me that I had to pay their 6% commission. Also, within two months of the purchase the seller also demanded a further $200,000 that he claimed I had told him I would pay him after the sale.
CN, the Beverly Hills realtor, told me that he could not find a local geologist so hired a geologist recommended by CC…the sellers agent.
The young, good-looking geologist sat uncomfortably with us, CC at his side. He held the 2004 geological report and I asked him if anything had happened since that report was written. Anything I should know that would influence the sale of the house.
You know what I’m like! I asked him many, many questions. I’m a pedant! I needed to know everything before I invested my hard-earned $500,000.
Without looking into my eyes the young geologist told me that the house had a “reasonable half an inch of ‘creep’” but failed to tell me about either of the land slides or the illegality of the un-permitted work.
The last time I heard from the geologist…or the man who claimed he was the geologist…he had turned to Jesus. He told me that CN/CC had told him not to mention the slide as he wanted me to buy the house. The ‘geologist’ felt guilty. He told me that it plagued his conscience.
After we signed contracts, after escrow, CC came up to me and with spiteful eyes told me that I would, “Own that house for a very long time.” It was rather baffling. I thought he was just being a bitch because I came in his face rather than his mouth.
Only after I tried selling the house did I learn what he meant.
Watching others go through the process of buying a house I realize now how duped I had been by both CC and CN.
When I spoke to CN recently he said, “I knew this would come back to haunt me.”
Yes, you’re right CN, it’s going to haunt you until I have been paid the money I put down to buy this house.
The $500,000 I put down as a deposit on this house.
I wrote to CC letting him know ahead of time what I was going to do. That I would write a blog and give him some time to either do the right thing and find a solution that included a ‘fair and equitable’ settlement…or I would start a campaign against him…including paid advertisements in local newspapers, national news articles. At no time did I ever threaten to out him as a sex addict. I didn’t need to, I had already referred to him in earlier blogs as a sex addict.
As for my fair and equitable arrangement, the arrangement that he scoffed at last time we were in court. They pay me back the $500,000…they get the house. They can rent it, sell it, do what ever they like. I just want my money back.
BTW There are very public court transcripts for those who want to read them.
When we subpoenaed the geologist…a completely different man (in his 50′s and morbidly obese) arrived at the court house…a man I had never seen. He really didn’t want to be there, he tried to wriggle out of it. I was delighted! It was proof positive that I had indeed been conned by two unscrupulous realtors.
We will, in good time, get to the bottom of this mess, we will expose those who sought to defraud this proud British Citizen then cynically used the LAPD to turn the tables on me.
We will find out who kept me in jail even though there was no reason to do so. Eventually, when all is revealed, heads will roll.
CC thought he might have gotten away with his meticulously executed plan.
Never expecting to see my ugly mug listen to him say, “MY NAME’S CC AND I AM A SEX ADDICT” or , for that matter, their accomplice turn to Jesus Christ.
Every dorm in the Men’s County Jail is represented by one elected inmate, that inmate is the dorm’s House Mouse.
Originally called the HouseMouth his role is to liaise between the dorm and the police. He fixes problems, discovers when holds are lifted, dates of release, learns when the police are likely to come into the dorm for unusual reasons and generally makes life easier.
If there is a fight in the dorm it is up to him to get the truth of the fight and make appropriate punishment decisions.
A fight may result in the loss of ‘Programme’: TV, vending machine, late night privileges, even access to the commissary or when things really get out of hand…and the police raid the dorm and rip everything up…we end up without blankets or mats sleeping on ‘steel’ which never happened when I was there but we sure came close.
The House Mouse is a tough job, he has to command total respect from both the inmates and the police. He needs to understand who he can ask for favours and who he needs to leave alone.
The first dorm I lived in was a mess. The 5300 Mouse was disrespected. When he called for silence during the time set aside for dorm business nobody took a blind bit of notice. When silence in the dorm is required he would call ‘Radio!’ I’ve no idea why but that’s what they do in jail. It means, shut the fuck up.
In the second dorm 5200 our House Mouse Carlton, a young, great looking black man. An ex gang member, all he needed to do was call ‘Radio!’ once and there was silence in the dorm.
I made friends with Carlton when he learned how good I was at playing Spades. After a couple of weeks he moved me into the bunk next to him. Intelligent, wise and stylish he really shouldn’t have been in jail. If he’d been white he wouldn’t have been.
The language of jail has to be learned quickly. If, for instance, we were walking outside the dorm and found ourselves approaching a deputy we would be obliged to call out, ‘Walking!’ which alerted the deputy that an inmate was behind him. Once, I was being escorted to the attorney room and told that I should always be more than five foot from a deputy.
Many of the the younger deputies came to California to pursue other dreams but those dreams had to be set aside because of the recession…here they were marshaling men who simply hated them. Marshaling the disenfranchised, feeble-minded, surly, mental patients…I mean…there were so many people in the jail with severe mental health issues. They needed nursing…not policing.
Many inmates were just nuisances rather than criminals. It’s an expensive way to look after the mental health of the state of California.
Some of the cops, of course, are unapologetic sadists. Yet, even though I witnessed unsavory behaviour I had sympathy for those men and women. They are, after all, in jail too.
We were allowed out of dorm 5200 a great deal. School of course, outside on the roof once a week for three hours, church on Sundays and AA. The AA meetings were not like any AA meetings I had ever been to in my life. Imagine 300 trannies from 4 gay dorms catching up on gossip, not giving a damn about the ‘experience, strength and hope’ of who ever was brave enough to come into the jail and share it.
Some of those tranny hookers were really convincing. Like really high-end chicks with dicks. Some of them were just really ugly men with make up and long hair and over weight, crafting some sort of cleavage out of their fat pecs.
The tranny hooker market is so huge that most of them put very little effort into looking like real girls.
When Rosemary walked into the dorm the less attractive, more masculine tranny hookers looked very perplexed.
Rosemary was 5 foot tall, well cut hair, perfect tits, hips…a really pretty girl. Even the deputies looked at her askance. Obviously intrigued. She commanded a huge amount of attention. Good and bad. She was caught telling another tranny in Spanish what she thought of a particularly fine-looking deputy. Unfortunately he understood her, pulled her off the line, bawled at her, frisked her and threw her against a wall.
A big man throwing a small, delicate girl against a wall is not a very heartening sight.
The gay dorm in the County jail is unique, I have no idea if beyond California these dorms exist. I know that they don’t exist in prison. Which, by the way, was where everyone wanted to be. Prison rather than jail. Prison condition are a million times better. Nobody wanted to do their time in jail. There are three kinds of prison, the jail (run by the police) the state prison (greater freedoms) and the federal prison which by all accounts is like a country club.
The problem with the Los Angeles County Jail is that is it falling apart, it is over crowded and technically condemned. There is no money to replace it and no political inclination. During the boom time the jails were a luxury used to lure voters to vote for those who promised to fill them. Now the prisons and jails are a huge financial burden and nobody has the guts or political gall to face this crippling problem head on.
The two biggest unions in California are the police officers and the gaolers. Even if crime numbers fall the police make sure that the jails remains filled. Consequently, There are a huge number of parole violators and drug offenders inside the jail squandering precious tax dollars.
Even more galling? Whilst the police arrest and the judiciary hand down custodial sentences the LA schools are falling apart.
There is a correlation between these two facts.
A fearful tax payer would rather pay for more police and prisons rather than educate their kids.
Just look at the draconian Californian three strike law that keeps many, many men inside who really shouldn’t be there.
It is a totally broken system with too many vested interests.
The twins are living here with me in Malibu once again. They are dancing downstairs. Their friend Kevin has moved in too. It’s raining. I have to see my lawyer today. Blah, blah, blah.
Before I tell you. Before I make it public. Before I describe the beauty and the beast…before I feed the children, before I take the dog for a walk I want to say thank you.
Firstly, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank Robby who never missed a visiting day, who sat behind the bullet proof glass and smiled hopefully and never gave up. He tirelessly searched through many, many boxes for essential documents. He put money on my ‘books’ so I could eat decent food. He called friends, wrote emails, paid bills, drove between far-flung offices in different parts of Los Angeles in his windowless Miata delivering those essential documents to essential lawyers.
He answered my calls on a Friday night when most beautiful 21-year-old boys should be out chasing equally beautiful people, places and things.
He never gave up. He never let go. He told me he loved me when I felt unloved. He proved, once and for all, that God exists.
I want to thank Dee and Nicola for their extraordinary generosity by paying my lawyers bills. I want to thank Jason, Jennifer, Anna, Dan, Zelcho and Joan for picking up the phone, for listening, for laughing and caring.
I want to thank Mel for paying the mortgage.
The people on the outside, those good and honorable people complimented those I shared the majority of time inside the Men’s County Jail. The men who convinced me that everything would work out. The men who taught me how to play Cribbage, Spades and Feral (my brain REFUSED to learn Pinocle) and made me join in when all I really want to do was sleep away the day. Every day.
I want to thank my convicted friends Ivan and Steve, two men my age who sat with me daily (like the council of elders) laughing gently at the antics of the young.
1.
So it began…
The day I was arrested in early November 2011 heralded the beginning of the end of possibly the worst two years of my life.
The end of the mid-life crisis that had well exceeded its sell by date. It was the end of the madness that had determined far too many bad choices.
A series of catastrophic decisions made after the The Big Dog was torn up in front of me: a relationship with a man who could not possibly give me what I needed and from whom I should have run as fast as I was able…as soon as he revealed the truth about himself. An appearance on a TV show that merely underpinned the rancid thoughts I had brewing about my self.
Finally the reason, that reason…the reason I cannot explain at this particular moment because the lawyers have told me to keep my big mouth shut and on this occasion I have agreed.
This morning at 3am, after a 6 hour wait, I pulled on the musty clothes I had stowed in a clear plastic bag nearly three months before, from a different year.
For the first time in 3 months my arms were covered. My legs felt warm. My feet enclosed in fur-lined Marc Jacobs boots rather than flopping around in Chinese, black cotton pumps.
The glass door behind which I had been escorted and left, changed out of my baby blue smock and elasticated pants. On that door the deputy had written in clumsy, black letters K6G.
I was on my own. On my own for the first time in 3 months. I could take a shit on my own. I didn’t.
I pulled on the black knitted Ralph Lauren cardigan. It smelt as it looked.
Opposite me, a similar room crammed mostly with Mexican immigrants. Pulling on their terrible street wear. Their grinning, greasy, fat faces pressed up against the glass. They knew what I was, they had seen me in the distinctive costume, they knew what K6G meant. I stared back at them. I wasn’t afraid.
I had not expected to be released. The narrative I had long accepted included: 4 more months in Men’s County Jail, a further 6 months at a Santa Ana Immigration center and a lengthy deportation. I had long given up on ever seeing my home, my dog, my view…ever again.
This was the judgement of my expensive but woefully inadequate immigration attorney. Imminent catastrophe. God, as it turns out, had other plans.
Frustrated by their miserable prognosis I set about firing them and contacted the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project. A Catholic organization run by two super smart, compassionate women and paid for by the Mexican Government.
I had my first meeting with them two weeks ago. They made representation last Friday. Today I was released from the immigration hold that had polaxed me these past three months.
Of course there were people who were very happy that I had been arrested. Thrown into jail. I was told that some were gleeful when I was arrested. ”He’s going down!” they screamed.
I have no idea when this will end. No release in sight. No plea deal. No, no, no.
Perhaps I will never see the Ocean from my mountain ever again? The abrupt loss of life, like a suicide, coming here is like committing suicide. I cannot imagine, dare not imagine returning to that glittering life.
The dream of some future is dashed.
2.
I was arrested on the PCH. I can’t tell you why. You’ll have to find out for yourself. All in good time…more will be revealed.
All I can tell you is this: I was arrested and charged, when I attempted to bail out I was told that due to an ‘immigration hold’ I was to be kept in custody. Sent to jail. I made frantic phone calls, I cried until my face was wet.
At that very moment the line would be drawn between those friends who were able to help and those who turned their back.
After being processed like a bad meat pie out of The Hidden Hills Police Station they drove us to the jail. They took the scenic route. They drove along the PCH, past Tom’s house, David’s mansion, The Malibu Inn where I had watched Pink perform a few nights after I met her.
They drove the same route I had driven many, many times since I had moved to Malibu in 2007. I was in the back of the police bus looking at the hazy dawn, the rising sun over the ocean. The greasy waves flopping lazily over the sand.
They picked up other newly arrested men from an assortment of locations all over Los Angeles.
Those first few days away from home were unpleasant but, thankfully, I remained teachable. I knew that the harder I struggled the deeper the hook. I sat behind my eyes, doing as I was told. Finally, after hours in the bus, we were processed into the jail. A theatrical experience designed to frighted and malign.
“Look at the floor.” they screamed. I looked briefly into the blue eyes of the startlingly handsome officer. He growled, “Don’t look at me.” It was hard not to eroticize his demand.
Flipping from aggressor to victim.
We were given sandwiches and told to sit on metal benches. Nothing you can do will hurt me. You cannot hurt me.
We were interviewed. ”Are you gay or suicidal?” He asked. I knew that I hadn’t lied about my gayness, not now or ever. The moment I told him I was gay I was torn from the line, the general population. My name called out. ”Roy 066!” A huge black deputy cut off my wrist band, looking spitefully at me. ”Gay?” he spat. I nodded. He attached another band to my wrist.
A yellow wrist band, it said: K 6 G.
My life in jail would now be as different as my life on the streets.
Another few days of being ‘processed’. Peered at, prodded, questioned. Many men opted for the gay dorm, straight men, but few achieved their aim.
The straight men want to fuck the convincing trans boys. The straight men didn’t want the ‘politics’. The ‘politics’ in the California jail and prison system means living in the racially divided dorm. If you are black you speak only with the blacks, if you are white or latino you do the same. If you are caught fraternizing with a black, latino or white (or those who have chosen with whom they will run) you’ll get beaten, stabbed or worse.
Even if you know people on the streets…your best friend even…your affiliations mean nothing, could be deadly. You keep to your own.
Sadly, this racial divide is perfectly mirrored on the ghetto streets of Los Angeles. If you weren’t a racist before you went to jail or prison you’ll be one when you leave. Lessons learned, not easily unlearned. Tattoos on face and neck. Tattooed collars, graphic letters…numbers on sculls and forearms. Boys become men when they hold a gun, shoot a stranger, murder their enemies…BK=Black Killer.
I didn’t experienced the ‘straight’ dorm so I can’t tell you what it feels like to make others invisible because of the colour of the skin. I can tell you however, that the majority of the white men I met in the gay dorm were despicable, homeless freaks. Consequently, I hung with my new black buddies. Most of whom, incidentally, had been co-opted into gangs as young children.
When I arrived they were suspicious, when I left the dorm yesterday evening they surrounded me and held me and cried.
When it was time to settle down and open my bunk to another man it wasn’t a white man I chose.
In the observation tank I met my first latino ‘green lighter’. He was hiding. In organized crime, gang and prison slang to green-light a person is to authorize his assassination. Jose. We talked for hours. I found him very desirable. He told me that someone had once paid him 3o bucks for a blow job.
After a harrowing day or so in the vilest of cells waiting to be officially classified as gay they take me to a small office and a distinguished senior officer interviews me. The officer tries to determine how gay I really am. ”Which gay bars do you go to?” He looks at me suspiciously when I tell him that I don’t drink. I tell him that I make gay films. ”Porn?” he chuckles. Finally, I am determined as a convincing homosexual. My dark blue ‘straight’ uniform removed, exchanged for a pale blue ‘gay’ uniform…I am sent to the relative safety of the gay dorm. Dorm 5300.
Nowhere where there are deputies is anyone gay…safe. I have abandoned my cloak of invisibility. They can see exactly what I am. The deputy whispers threateningly, “You gays have a sick life style.” He can’t say it loudly. They can’t beat us, not like they used to…not since the controversial undercover FBI sting that lead to the end of ritual beatings and institutionalized homophobia.
The night I arrived I watched the flat screen TV Robert Downey Junior had bought the gay dorms after his stint at The County Jail. The inmates watch Law and Order. CSI. Anything by Tyler Perry. By the time I left 5300 I had watched everything Tyler Perry had ever made. He makes really bad films.
Dorm 5300 was like an insane and exotic freak show.
There are four gay dormitories, each holding 90 men.
80% pre-op transsexual, 90% HIV+, 50% homeless, 90% meth related crime, 80% parole violators.
The gay white boys had Supreme White Power written on their alabaster bodies. They had badly drawn pictures of Norse Gods. Claiming their white supremacist, Odinist heritage whilst fucking chocolate coloured trannies.
The tranny hookers, the homeless white boys, the squabbling couples who indulged nightly in domestic violence.
I watched in awe as a young man, caught by his fierce tranny wife fucking another ‘girl’, throw a chair through the flat screen TV bought by Robert Downey Junior.
I knew that I had to keep my mouth shut. I had to learn quickly. I listened. I learned.
Statistically, there is more violence in the gay population (inmate against inmate) than in the rest of the 6000 plus general population.
3.
When they finally slept I walked between the serried bunks.
If I stroll between the bunks at dawn I remember what it is like to be at home in England. I can smell the sea, the shingle on the beach crunching under foot, wrapped up warm against the bitter easterly winds, just me and The Little Dog. We don’t need anyone else. Did I tell you how much he loves the snow? Leaping carelessly into the great drifts.
One day I will see you again England. I will walk gratefully in the rain, on the London streets and country lanes. If I am able (if I can get back to you) they will drop us at the edge of the valley and we will walk to the house, past the stream where we would play, the pasture, the forest of rhododendrons, along the drive flanked by ancient Douglas Fir.
The door will open and they will be pleased to see me, hug me, feed me. They will let me sleep until I am recovered.
Yesterday a pair of young film makers turned up at the apartment to work with me on their well written but unfocused script.
The man was leaving as they arrived.
They said, “Wow, he’s gorgeous. Where do you meet men like that?”
Not in clubs or bars, not grindr or Manhunt. I meet men like that as we pass in the street. He said, “You looked mean.” I am…I suppose. I do. Keep the fuck away from me.
Anyway, the film makers sat down and we talked about their script. It was revealed, during our conversation, that one of these young men had recently found out that he was HIV+.
This is the third time I have heard this story, or one like it this past month. His sex partner had not told him the truth about his HIV status before he agreed to have unsafe sex.
He had been lied to.
I was shaking with rage.
Like J risked J’s life when he was fucking HIV+ artist Pal S behind her back, like X had been lied to…these innocent folk had made bad decisions based on the lies they were told.
On each occasion the liar had tried to make it the victim’s fault.
” You shouldn’t have believed me.”
“You must have realized.”
“I can’t talk about this right now, you are complicating my life.”
“What kind of straight man doesn’t play sports?”
He is 25 years old. A young man dealing with a huge problem. He told me that he feels like he has ‘gone back into the closet’, that ‘no one could possibly love him’, that he is ‘damaged goods’.
“How do you feel about the guy who infected you?” I asked.
“He’s evil.” he replied.
“Misguided?” I suggested.
No, I told myself, not misguided. I knew he was right. Deliberately infecting or risking the lives of others…is simply evil.
My phone rang, I made a plan to see a friend the following morning.
The boys looked at me askance. What? I said. ”I’ve never seen anyone make an arrangement like that on the phone. We text each other.” I felt suddenly dislocated from life. How come I didn’t know?
The kid with HIV is now at the mercy of the pharmaceutical companies who stand to take millions of dollars from him as he tries to stay healthy.
The same companies who promote their products in our gay publications… paying top dollar to do so.
Look at the pictures. Strapping, healthy boys living with HIV.
Big Pharma shaping this generations attitude toward HIV as a manageable/livable with disease… just like diabetes!
Turn your back on health education, embrace ignorance and a life shackled to Big Pharma. Enslaved at 25. My heart bled.
When this young man was being bullied at school for being gay he may very well have been reassured by the biggest deception of all: It Gets Better. Dan Savage‘s message of false hope.
It is another gay lie.
We don’t treat each other very well. We don’t talk about not treating each other very well.
They stop bullying us…we start where they left off.
If they don’t damage you…we will…with my lies and infected sperm.
It’s not getting better for the young man I met yesterday. It’s getting a whole heap worse. Straight bullies didn’t lie and infect him with HIV. Gay men did.
Gay men lied to three of my friends…confirming that it is not just an HIV epidemic, it is an epidemic of lies, betrayal and life threatening denial.
Uneducated, shamed, arrogant, drug fucked gay men with no principles.
Just like Jake.
The only reason I have to come back to NYC so frequently is to meet Jake in court. Prolonging the inevitable.
Forced, yet again, to indulge his tantrums, his ego, his selfishness.
Without me in his life to define him as the victim…what is he left with? Without me and his appearances in court…he returns to the mundane fixtures and fittings of the life that was…if one can call it a life?
Yet, when I am here in NYC, I make the most of it. Happily wiling away the days, finishing my novel, seeing movies, hanging with my buddies, walking the dog, enjoying the humid nights tangled in your arms.
When he left this morning we both said, almost in unison, ‘I don’t do goodbyes’. I don’t. He had his bicycle over one shoulder, he didn’t look back. I can still smell him on my fingers.
I have spent the past day or so in bed. The dog is less sick, eating again. We have to get his drain removed. He is wearing the Elizabethan collar but hates it.
My left leg is getting better…my right ankle isn’t. Robby stayed over last night. Today he watered the garden, filled the hot tub, went to the supermarket and ran around the house as I finally caught up on all the various tasks that could be accomplished from my bed.
Jen and Jason were incredibly helpful. Anna brought supper.
Surrounded, as usual, with love. Occasionally it is hard to recognize just how lucky I am.
Robby and I have a wonderful relationship. We talk and play and the more I know him…the more I trust him. In fact, I might trust him more than any person I know right now. He has been a perfect antidote to JB. I feel hopeful again because he brings me love.
Crippled and confined to the couch he was pottering about the house making everything look good.
We were talking about how private one needs to be in life.
He is a tentative soul.
He wondered why I write every personal detail here in this blog. Make public what most people keep private. Something that delighted Jake until (of course) he was part of it, part of the narrative…then it wasn’t quite so alluring.
Learn this lesson: If you don’t like your private life being scrutinised…avoid public figures…you will lose your anonymity.
The reality guy who killed himself this week? He had no idea just how pernicious reality TV really is.
We mused about what remains private and what should be public. I am quite clear why I write everything here.
If, like me, you have lived an audacious, notorious life then for every eager friend there is a fool desperate to pull you down.
It is best to live without secrets. Many years ago I was taught that we are as sick as our secrets. What does that mean? If you are cheating on your wife you will be defined by your deception. If you are lying to your friends you will be hindered by self-doubt.
If I have made mistakes, told a lie, cheated a friend or been generally disreputable then I write it here. My part in what ever unfolding drama is worth noting. We tend to focus on who to blame and rarely acknowledge our responsibility.
Keeping my side of the street clean.
That is why I have struggled so badly with you-know-who. It has been incredibly difficult to own my part. I don’t want to admit my short comings.
I make him responsible. I blame him. I say: He lied to me. He cheated. He duped me. He did drugs in front of me. All of this is true…of course, but has to be balanced with: I am responsible. I lied to him. I chose somebody inappropriate. I allowed myself to be duped. I had no boundaries.
When I point at him three fingers point back at me.
What is the answer?
I aim to be ashamed of nothing. This leads, inevitably, to peace of mind.
You, dear reader, know everything! There’s nothing I’ve not written about. You know every insane thought, every defect, every leak and misery.
You know everything…so I fear nothing. Not one of you has anything on me.
When you live a lie you are vulnerable. I don’t want to be vulnerable.
Back to NYC next month to see JB in court but it’s fashion week and I’ve been invited to a slew of fashion week events. Robby will be in town so we can do some fun shit. I love that boy. Jenny will be there too and wants to come to court with me. Before we vanish to The Hamptons.
There is a great deal to do these coming autumn/winter months.
Through archival acquisitions, oral history interviews, public programming, exhibitions, and publications, the Research Institute is responding to the need to document the historical record of this vibrant period.
Between October 2011 and February 2012, a major exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum will present a survey of postwar painting and sculpture in Los Angeles.
It will be a great deal of fun.
In tandem with PST, Art Platform—Los Angeles, the west coast cousin of The Armoury, is collaborating with Pacific Standard Time to organize an extraordinary series of events and services to highlight this historic period and unprecedented weekend of art in Los Angeles. Rather wonderfully I am part of their VIP Programme.
Tonight Eric is bringing supper. The little dog will get better. I am willing him to. Help me think him right.
It was much easier than one imagined. I walked off the mountain, leaving the dog in the house. I walked the long way down the steep Las Flores Canyon in the blazing midday sun causing blisters and bruising on both feet.
At the bottom of the hill there’s a very convenient bus stop.
On the way there the bus was crammed with migrant workers and mental patients. By the way, even mental patients have smart phones that they check compulsively every ten seconds.
What could they be possibly checking?
I liked the ride along the PCH…looking out to sea, watching cormorants bombing the waves and dolphins making their way west. Everything looked very pretty and southofranceafied.
On the way back, the bus was full of homeless people keeping out of the unusually evening cold. Bad move. The air conditioning made it colder inside than outside the bus.
On both trips I met a few disgruntled European tourists who were shocked by the patchy public transportation: how long everything took and general lack of information, schedules etc.
Had I not used my iPhone travel app I’m sure I would have gotten very lost. Maybe that’s what the the mental patients were checking…their route.
Surprisingly I still have a huge amount of shame around taking the bus in LA. Nowhere else do I feel it. Anywhere else it’s just the way things are.
Getting back to Malibu later that evening was miserable so I aborted the mission and caught a cab from Sunset and PCH waiting in a smelly fish restaurant called Gladstone’s until a jolly Georgian cabby picked me up. $30.
On the way home two large dogs dashed across the PCH. They were not killed but I don’t know how they survived. They survived the mad dash. Thank God. The cabby started shouting incoherently at the owner in Russian and English.
“Fuck you!” He screamed. ”Fucker!”
As he dropped me off he said, “You can never depend on a man but a dog will never let you down.”
I spent yesterday morning in the garden, planning to hang this huge bronze lantern I found on the street. I need a sturdy chain and a butchers hook.
Capitalizing on my confidence surge I arranged to see my Important Producer Friend. It worked out really well. Before I leave LA/USA for good I have to achieve more than a couple of reality TV shows and a revenge novel…oh, and a beautiful garden.
Perhaps I’m being a little hard on myself.
Anyway, after a few moments of timidity I burst into the pitch with passion and verve. He wants to help. He is able to help. Real power in an illusory town. I felt safe.
Whilst I was with him it was easy to identify what has been missing these last two years.
Let’s look at the facts: I can write an interesting script, develop a great idea, direct a compelling movie. Sell it, promote it, open film festivals worldwide. I can really do that. I’ve done that with all but one of my films.
Because I’ve had the wind punched out of me I just couldn’t find the huge strength required to force the film off of the page and into the world. Perhaps I can? Now I have the energy and focus.
Walking down the mountain to the PCH rather than staying at home and weeding the garden…well, that’s the advice I would have given a good friend. Get off your ass and do the deal.
The miserable veil, today…for the past few days has lifted. Let’s see if it will last.
Watching that evocative twenty year old video enthused and invigorated me. I remembered just how much I have to be proud of. At the time I was making theatre, living an idyllic, simple life in Whitstable. Just returned from six months in Sydney, about to go to Film School, hanging with cool people, making love to beautiful men and mostly very happy.
My early thirties were great fun.
I think that’s obvious from those images.
I wondered what it would take to get back to that place. That happy place? Well, I have to think seriously about this blog. Because of you know who I kept this thing alive and by doing so I kept my connection with him alive. Like a daily letter to him.
It’s hard to imagine not writing this blog. It’s hard to let go.
The personal details that I pump daily into the world must stop. I have to get serious. This blog has become a destructive addiction, just like everything else I do compulsively.
My old friend Toby Mott is hanging his show Loud Flash: British Punk on Paper.
While the Sex Pistols and the Clash wreaked havoc on Britain’s pop scene, their disciples were busy with glue and scissors, channelling punk’s energy and DIY spirit into hundreds of posters, fanzines and sleeve art.
Toby’s exhibition brings back these lost classics of the revolution.
Later on in the day Punk Archivist Bryan Ray Turcotte joined Toby at the gallery. Bryan wrote the best-selling Fucked Up and Photo Copied.
I can’t really write about yesterday morning. Needless to say I will. In time. Maybe tomorrow.
Had lunch at the Mercer Kitchen with a friend. There were many, many tired looking servers/shop assistants etc., in New York the day after Pride. Grimly going about their working day at the mercy of rotten hangovers.
Only one of the twins arrived from LA. Miles had to stay home and guard the fort.
Robby has never really been to NYC before; you should have seen his face! He was delighted. He had such a big Robby smile. We wandered the East Village and as much as he complained that smokes were triple the price you could tell that no amount of money spent on ciggies was going to ruin his NYC state of mind.
We took the subway to 42nd Street. Excited to see Transformers 3. 3D.
Tom’s film will have grossed more than 3 billion dollars by the time all is said and done.
I am not going to review the movie. He’s my friend. Watching a friend’s movie is not like going to the cinema and just sitting down and watching a film.
I am already invested.
OK, I’ll just tell you a couple of things. Frankly the film was a bit confusing: the transformer goodies and the baddies melding into one heap of scrap metal with no clear battle, no defining heroic moment.
Even the casting was confusing; I thought John Malkovich was Gary Busey. What has he done to his mouth? His teeth?
There were too many quips and not enough story.
The special effects were remarkable and keep the tension levels high. Somehow watching any well-shot fight captures the imagination even though in this case one might not know what they are fighting about.
The lead girl, a Victoria Secrets model, was appalling, all lips and hair and pout. The camera fetishizing her lithe body. The director forcing his camera into her face, her mouth.
Shia looked worse for wear and has certainly lost that youthful vulnerability that carried him and us through the first of this blockbuster franchise.
The parents who amused us and grounded us in the first film have become irritating non-secateurs. Great actors and not so great actors deliver cheesy lines that segue into another well-crafted fight. The disparity causing some general merriment in the room
Regardless of what Transformers has become Tom’s initial idea had integrity and poise. It is important to remember that.
For the second time in as many days I wished I could have gotten fucked up.
This is getting crazy.
Everybody falls in love with Robby. Robby, quite rightly, drowning in positive affirmation. I am proud of the way he handles himself in these situations.
My big birthday party on Thursday night, there are people flying from Hong Kong, London and LA. It’s going to be a blast. I am really looking forward to it. 100 people. Entertainment. Hootenanny.
I have now re-written the end of the novel and await notes.
Determined that my party will neither depress or stress me.
I have not written this diary properly for a few days. A great deal is going on. Traveling East.
It seemed like I said yes to far too many dinner invitations and ended up cancelling all of them.
I am talking to sales reps about The Picture of Dorian Gray. Finally. It is time. David Gallagher is the breakout star in Super 8 so we may very well sell it. With David looking so amazingly fit and grown up and Aleksa in Boardwalk Empire…perhaps we can sell it for what it is worth. Anyway, I’m talking again to sales agents so let’s see. I just want what it is worth. Not selling it for anything less.
I am still not happy with the edit.
The desert. We drive into the night. The Freeway. Homogenous America. The same 6 restaurant chains, the same names…again and again. Nothing to differentiate state by state. The desert is beautiful. Desolate, hot, 110 degrees yesterday.
I am now in Willcox Arizona, sitting in the Safeway Starbucks where coffee is twenty cents more than The Palisades. To prove that people must be BORED beyond reason living out here I have been recognized more in the past ten minutes than the past ten months.
So, we left LA yesterday morning. The previous day we spent dozing on the beach then had dinner at the rancid Taverna Tony’s. Flayed shrimp. The Beautiful Dane’s Swedish friend arrived and we all stayed in Malibu that night leaving early the following morning with Robby.
The Swedish friend (whose name I refuse to remember) is a clumsy idiot and I don’t expect revising my opinion any time soon. They call each other Bagel. Within ten minutes of meeting me he had knocked my phone out of my hand.
Robby and Miles returned from their wedding weekend, apparently the bride and groom washed each other’s feet in the Christian ceremony. Robby looked great. They are such sweet boys.
Very clean feet.
The Dane sings Riders in The Storm in Danish which is funny.
Picked up a huge SUV at The Dane’s insistence. Expensive, gas consuming behemoth.
We drove to Glendale Station where we picked up another Dane, a girl called Lucie who used to work in the fashion and textile department at the Met in NYC. We had a great deal to talk about.
It seemed like a good idea to fill the car with friends but as it turns out the idiot friend and the Dane have a very specific sort of relationship and Lucie is his ex gf who he took two years to get over.
I began to reassess. My farts stink.
We drove from LA to Phoenix. Dinner at The Royal Palm Resort which is incredibly beautiful. Taco Tuesday. Luxury on a budget. The Swede nipped off with his good-looking friend and bought two dresses from H and M for him and the Dane which they changed into in the parking lot.
We stopped in a gas station and a man told his friend very loudly that the dress wearing men should be arrested. As we drove deeper into Arizona the dresses caused me some panic as I really did not want either of them to get shot.
As you can tell from my voice. I am trying a little too hard.
Stayed in a small motel with wi-fi and a big black dog. The room cost us $60.
If you want to see all of the videos from this trip…go to my YouTube channel.
We are off soon. Long journey ahead. They are playing Joe Jackson’s Stepping Out. The Starbucks girl is blending caramel frapaccino and I will never see Willcox Arizona ever again.
“Don’t pester old film makers about your film making. I don’t care about your process, your poverty or your inertia. All I care about is that you make a film. Just do it and make it good.” Duncan Roy June 2011
So, here I am again. Good morning hipsters! I spent an hour in the garden at 7am weeding and watering. It looks just dandy. Then I came in and within two minutes I had broken a sugar bowl, a cafetière and jammed my fingers into a draw.
I AM ONE CLUMSY QUEEN.
Yesterday Gabe and I went to Paradise Cove Beach Cafe on the PCH for lunch. We were charged $5 each for walking from the PCH where we parked into the restaurant rather than paying $3 to use their car park. I thought they were kidding. A $5 ‘walking fee’? Rip Off USA. It made me so mad. Gabe just looked bemused as I let the manager have two barrels of shit. In turn the manager just looked at the crazy man and rolled over like a puppy.
He offered us a beach side table, a waitress with psychiatric training and a refund.
A $5 walking fee? How can they get away with that shit?
We ate their mediocre ribs, drank their weak tea, sat on their grubby beach. Thankfully we sat next to an attractive married couple from Hollywood who really were worth meeting. He sells sex toys on-line. They were like a gay couple. Hot tub parties and three ways. I really liked them. She said that when they have a baby they might calm down a bit.
Gabe sat on my lap and held my hand, massaged my fingers. It was so sweet. We were the only gays on the beach. The out of towners looked at us suspiciously. Yet again I felt uncomfortable. Fuck! When I was with the Penguin/Matt/Jamie I didn’t care. Because, I suppose, when I was with them I didn’t care what other people thought. It was just us…and as I have said before: I would have defended my love with my life.
After lunch we investigated the pier, the peace paddle (some hippy event) we talked for ages to a lady who had worked in India on an ashram who now sells South Indian food from a food truck. She told us dolefully how the city of LA is targeting the food truck community (there are 500 of them) with all sorts of horrible rules. What ever happened to American innovation being encouraged and celebrated?
(Even the sex toy guy is despondent about how small businesses are treated. He is moving his cash to Brazil.)
Food trucks are a recessionary necessity. A perfect response.
The previous day Anna and I had been on Abbot Kinney. The first Friday of every month the streets has a kind of street party. The galleries open late and every thirty feet there is a food truck. It was so much fun. We bumped into Meg Ryan and her friend Laura Dern.
Anyway, we ate all sorts. We struggled through the crowds. Some man who thought he knew me. Said, “Hey! How are you?” I let him think he knew me. At the end of the conversation he realised who I was and the meeting came to an abrupt ending. This happened in Ojai too. It seems to happen more and more.
Last night I was talking to a young film maker and gave him the advice quoted at the top of the page. Very Ayn Rand of me.
Today I am hiking with Tom. Gabe is coming over to relax. Miles has recovered from his binge. Cooking dinner for us all tonight.
Quite by chance I have fallen in with a bunch of super cool, inclusive gay men.
Men who achieve. Men who live fun, proud gay lives. Because of them I’m really enjoying my life here in NYC.
Don’t for one minute think I take any of it for granted. I know that a life like this can vanish as quickly as it appears. I’m really enjoying the opportunity to connect, feel supported and breathe.
There are many different tribes of gay men in NYC. There are so many of us here.
As usual I couldn’t stay in bed past 7.30am regardless of who is slumbering beside me. I need to get on with the day.
The apartment is being decorated so whilst the painters set up their ladders and pull down the light fittings we went for a long breakfast in the occasional sunshine. Sitting in the sun, eating scrambled egg. Reading the newspaper. Looking at the cute Saturday runners jogging by in their silky shorts.
Took subway uptown and by chance saw an old friend, an actor from my Dorian days. This is exactly why I loathe and love the Subway, you never know who you are going to bump into. Trapped in a subway car.
Anyway, we picked up his suit that needed altering and met up with the boys for lunch. Lunch from food trucks at Madison and 26th. Everyone seemed obsessed with this RAPTURE shit. I think people were half expecting it to be true. The storm clouds didn’t help.
Thankfully it didn’t happen. Or maybe it did?
My dog and Zack’s dog didn’t really connect.
Kaolin joined us in the park. He is so funny. We went shopping for shirts and other essential items for a wedding next weekend in Los Angeles. I bought a vase in ABC as a thankyou gift.
Birthday party at Vig 27. Very lively, good people. Met the sex columnist from Time Out, we bonded with over our respective health issues. We talked about gay men, how they behave. Our self-destruction. A daily fascination.
We talked about Dan Savage, he applauded Dan’s It Gets Better campaign…which, as you know, I think is a load of baloney.
It Gets Better? Better than death maybe…but not much better.
I had agreed to stay until 4 but bailed at midnight.
Stumbled, briefly, into The Eagle.
It is far too early in the year to wear white linen pants. I did anyway.
Realness: Pony, Kaolin, Zach, Lil Dog and me in Martin Margiella
Day after day the sun shines and the people shed their winter clothes revealing their creamy skin. The dog and I traverse the city, traveling from one exciting assignation to another. Yesterday was no exception.
I woke early helping Dan with his luggage. He is off to LA until Wednesday. I really don’t like it when he leaves. We get closer and closer. He is kind, generous and appreciative. We are the same age. Our perspective is very similar.
I have been thinking a great deal about how I am going to spend the summer. I continue to write my film. Bumped into Paul Haggis yesterday who asked about my film. He loved the story…as most people do.
Remember holding his Oscar at the Crash party at the Chateau Marmont wishing it had been mine?
I couldn’t go back to bed after Dan left so I walked the dog around the deserted East Village until I bumped into a young friend of mine. A yoga teacher. We drank coffee and ate pain au chocolate at Ost on Avenue A. He is the sweetest young man. Looks directly into your soul.
We are going to spend the day together tomorrow.
Met Lady Rizo for lunch (chopped salad) then we took a cab to my lawyer on Wall Street. Driving the West Side Highway we passed office workers taking their lunch walking the water front. A brief moment in the sun.
I had to sign a bunch of papers. I signed them whilst Rizo bought us ice creams. As we were in an unknown part of town we decided to explore and ended up in a tiny Italian Deli eating profiteroles and singing show tunes out loud. She has a hugely exciting gig in June. In the mean time come see her perform on May 20th at Joe’s Pub.
Took Subway (I never do) back home and rested for an hour. Met Rizo’s friend Gilly on the corner of Tenth and A just as a skateboarder was nearly run down in front of our very eyes. He escaped death by jumping over the hood of the car.
My second ‘scene’ for the ‘A’ List. Austin is throwing a ‘party’ at this cavernous restaurant called Almond. It seemed designed for me to explain why Derek Lloyd Saathoff had wanted me to be his ‘Mister Big’.
I was uncharacteristically nervous meeting the other cast members. They are all very charming.
Obviously they have their on-screen personalities.
TJ is very ebullient when the cameras are on. Thrown directly into the ‘A’ List mix, TJ positioned me like an on set director and asked acerbic questions and about me and Derek. I came clean. He was quite strident. Off camera he is affectionate and warm. They all are.
Reichen Lehmkuhl seemed reticent and quiet. He has a troubled soul. Very beautiful, great story, gentle. I liked him. His brother lives very close to me in Malibu. I spent the most time chatting with him. We talked a great deal about how one can get ones needs met in a relationship. I told him The Penguin story as my very own reality cast member cautionary tale.
Crazed fans who think you are what you are not.
We talked about how we are edited, how one is perceived. The reality and the fantasy of ones on-screen and off-screen persona.
I really enjoyed meeting Ryan the salon owner. Blond, sweet-natured and very genuine.
This is their second season. They have become very adept performers.
I have no idea if I will ever see any of them ever again.
Stephen joined us and Rizo, Gilly and I ate dinner at Westville. I bought The Little Dog a chicken breast as he had been so good all day.
Tonight is the very last night of Beige the long running weekly party held at The Bowery Bar. It must be twenty years old. I went there first when I was still drinking so it must be ancient. Remember dragging Joe there? I think he enjoyed it despite his protestations. I will be there tonight if anyone wants to serve papers. Zach said, “Nobody gets laid at Beige.” which was never my experience.
I have had amazing Tuesday nights on The Bowery with Boy George, Issie Blow and Leigh Bowery.
I remember staying at The Mercer and dragging a drunk straight boy back from Beige for oral gratification. Oh God, that was many years ago. I remember…do you?
Lunch with Joan L at The Standard Grill. Last time I was there? This time last year, I ate the rabbit pappardelle and was as sick as a dog. This time I managed to keep the fondue in my belly.
This time last year I was with The Penguin about to celebrate his birthday. We stayed at The Jane Hotel. I don’t know if we had a good time, I can no longer differentiate between what was good and what was bad. All I remember for sure was just how uncomfortable I felt, trying to keep that relationship alive even though I knew he was lying to me.
Loving without trusting is a bitch.
After lunch Joan and I looked at $800 leather bracelets and I bought a globe from Martin Margiela.
I could not find beard wax anywhere in the city. Consequently, I combed conditioner into my beard and it held for the duration of the shoot. What shoot? What are you talking about Duncan Roy?
Yesterday I dipped my toe back into the murky waters of reality TV.
As you may know I have been ‘seeing’ this boy. Did you know that or have I been very discreet?
Yes, you betcha I’ve been discreet.
I met Derek Lloyd Saathoff a few months ago. A cast member on a torrid reality show called the ‘A’ List. I’d never seen it. The show is, I am told, a sort of gay version of the ‘Houseives Of…’ franchise.
I’m sure Andy Cohen would be pissed if I describe it like that.
Ironically, when they were casting the first series The Penguin suggested jokingly that we would make excellent cast members.
Everyone who has seen the show is appalled that I agreed to be on it. Everyone is always appalled at every decision I make. That’s par for the course. They describe the show as a ‘train wreck’ they tell me that Derek is a ‘bitch’.
I don’t say a word. He’s just a different kind of gay. All we really have in common is cock. Anyway, we have an arrangement. I’m going to be his…Mr Big.
I am not doing this show for me but to support Derek.
As much as they say they hate it…they seem to watch it, watch it enough to know who everyone is and have an opinion about all of them.
I think appearing on the ‘A’ List will be fun.
Last night I pulled on my McQueen pants and my trusty Paul Smith jacket and walked to 24th Street where a small but well-organized crew were waiting for Derek and me to go on a ‘date’.
Actually, the crew wasn’t that small. Lesbians mostly, which was great. The ubiquitous straight boy producer who everyone finds very attractive. If he were gay would they?
I hadn’t seen D since my last trip. He’s been in the gym. No longer super slim (too thin) and boyish he has put on some very well needed weight. His arms are fleshy, firm and muscular. His ass has filled out very sexily. He feels great.
We picked at the weird-looking food and sampled the virgin cocktails. We discussed our ‘relationship’ and his tanning product. We discussed his imminent trip to LA. I gave him a beautiful watch. Fans came up to him and had him hug them for the camera.
“We are great fans of the ‘A’ List.” One very attractive woman said.
She pushed her fat, gay friend at Derek who hugged him willingly, smiling that winning smile for the camera.
It was all very amusing. A video camera validates ones existence. How can that be? I remember that feeling from Sex Rehab. Just how thrilling everything was. Just how much I loved being filmed.
I was probably a little too bumptious for Derek. Too…rude. Not deferential enough. I made some joke about his Mother being in prison which seemed to shock him.
We talked about getting involved with an LA based charity. I suggested The Triangle Center for the elderly in Hollywood. He liked that idea, he said. Actually, he looked appalled.
We talked about monogamy. He looked baffled.
After the shoot Derek returned my Cartier watch and I popped it back on my wrist. I like acting.
I walked home alone after the shoot as I had to fetch the dog. I came crashing down. The intensity, the joy of being ‘on set’ the focus that one requires. I felt nostalgic…but I have no idea for what.
Perfectly adrift I called Stephen and chatted about his testicular lump. He is scared.
Then, quite by chance, we bumped into Aaron who invited me and The Little Dog back to his apartment on Avenue B where he sang songs and serenaded us with his guitar.
I would usually hate to be sung to but I wasn’t embarrassed because Aaron has a gift, he can really sing.
Gorgeous day here in Malibu. Another day on the beach with the twins. They are dragging me out of the house and making me laugh. More to come. A heat wave with record-breaking temperatures. I may go into rehab sooner than I thought. Long chat with therapist/admin at Pinegrove Mental Health Facility in Hattiesburg Miss.
