Amanda Demme at Obsolete

The days are long, hot and sultry.

After the NYC winter the Californian sun seems unrelenting.  One glorious day folding like melting fudge into the next.

91 degrees today.  A rare winter storm this weekend.  That’s what they say.

My Russian friend makes thick black, sweet coffee.  We sit on her verandah overlooking the sea.  The dogs lay on their backs in the sun.

Anthony calls and talks my ear off.  His brother is in NYC with Amelia enjoying his birthday.

A 5 year old boy shoots his 2 year old sister with a gun recently purchased for him by his father.  I find a website devoted to pictures of white children/babies holding firearms.   It reminds me of Somalian and Iranian militia children holding semi automatic weapons.

Here it is:  Kids With Guns.  I just checked and unsurprisingly ‘kids corner’ has been removed since yesterday.

These people, so it seems, are waiting for the government to come and change their lives irrevocably.

Part of me sympathises with those folk.  The high minded elite looking down upon them scornfully.

At 8pm I take the car into Venice and meet Anthony at a gallery called Obsolete.  Amanda Demme’s vernisage.

There are large, moody photographs of old men and young children and homeless people and people of colour.

The rather beautiful photographs are printed on textured paper.  Like canvas.  It is distracting and tacky.   It’s a problem.

We eat meatballs and salad and fresh almonds.

A tribe of scarified women in their 60′s huddle on a $100k sofa and gossip.  Their surgeries performed to be seen.  What’s the point of spending that much money on plastic surgery unless you can see it?

Amanda introduces me to Sara Gilbert and her other.   Many people are wearing hats.  Wide brims.  Beaver rather than rabbit.

I am wearing a midnight blue velvet suit and red shoes.

A young actor greets me with a hug.  He asks me in that way what I’ve been up to.  He knows.  I tell him anyway.  ”I read about that.”  He exclaims.  ”You’re the real deal.”  That’s the difference between the gays and the straights.

Straight people know I’m a fucking hero.  The gays, huddled around teacher are fucking terrified of me.

And so they should be.

Outside we meet Joaquin Phoenix.  Anthony made a film with him.  I have not seen him since before Heath died.  A flicker of recognition but no more.  He looks like he is made of pale green wax.  He is stick thin.  He looks like a Shropshire farmer.

He said to Anthony,  ”I hear you’ve been making sober calls.  Don’t call me.”   We laugh.

It’s funny.

After the show we have dinner at Gjelina with two art collectors.  Pizza and pudding.  Everybody at the table knows someone else in the restaurant.   We receive.  I forget to stand for one grand dame.  She stares at me frostily.

I know what she’s thinking.  She’s wondering if I left my manners in the jail.

The Day I Met Him Someone Had Built an Igloo in the Dog Park

The day I met him someone had built an igloo in the dog park.

The dog pissed on it.

The sun was shining over the distant, roaring city.

Then, quite suddenly I knew I was in love.

Or at least… capable once again.

 

Christmas 2012 Woodstock NYC

With a last moment, radical change of plan the boy and I found ourselves in Woodstock, two hours north of NYC.

An effortless drive with Amelia and Stephanie.

He had arrived from Toronto the night before… looking even more beautiful than I remembered him.  His flashing green eyes, his perfect pale skin.

The house is cozy and beautifully decorated.  The land around it manicured.

The kitchen well designed for making huge dinners for many people.

We drove into the quaint town of Woodstock for Santa’s arrival.  We arrived too late.

There are very many, odd-looking people in Woodstock.  This seems to be the place where hippies come to die.  During their twilight years communing with the ghosts of Jerry Garcia and Janice Jopling.

We gawped in awe at the Hippy Alternative Santa with his bearded female companion.

We wandered the tiny shops that sell scented candles and argyle mittens.

In one of the curious hippy shops an old man wearing a black robe… playing a long flute asked Stephanie riddles.  She looked askance.  ”I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She said.

It was a bit too Lord of the Rings for me.

A few too many gardenias painted on  the clap board.

Christmas Eve we ate gigot, a traditional French Christmas eve treat.   We sang Christmas tunes in the kitchen as Mary (our hostess) cooked.

A late night.  The boy curled around me.  The dogs at my feet.  The night before Christmas.

We woke on Christmas morning to a light dusting of snow.  Thrilling!

We ate toasted panatone and coffee for breakfast.

Later that Christmas night we scoffed roast turkey, roasted potatoes, sprouts in nutmeg and creme fresh.   I made a delicious gravy/jus from the dripping in the roasting pan and a bottle of port.

The boy and Stephanie made cookies… they tasted divine.

After Christmas dinner we checked our tarot cards by a roaring fire.  It caused Stephanie a certain amount of comfort and tears.

Amelia suggested that we celebrate the solstice with pagan rituals.  We burned the past in the fire and toasted our good fortune.

Late last night we watched The Impossible which made us all sob.

Occasionally we (he and I) would sneak away from the party and… well you know the rest.

Here you go:

NYC NYC NYC

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

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

I can’t show you his face.

Only in NYC.

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

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

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

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

Dead five-year olds.  20 of them.

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

I thought about the little dog facing the lethal injection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dinner with new gay AA friends in cheap diners.

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

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

Then we’re in Barracuda kissing each other.

I’m wearing that huge fur hat.

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

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

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

In the morning my room smells of damp fur.

HIV Negative

This morning Robby picked me up from the house and drove me to Van Nuys.

Court day.

The handsome deputy in the court room gives me a cheery wave, the clerk courteously holds open the door and even the wicked witch looks softer… more agreeable.

She’s only doing her job. I can’t be too hard on her.

After our short stint in the court we had coffee with my lawyer who is, it turns out, covered in tattoos.

Robby then drove me into Hollywood to the Gay and Lesbian Center where I waited in line for my annual HIV test.

Since 1984 I have been regularly tested for HIV. Since I was Robby’s age.

It has always been a fearful time for me. I’m sure it is for everyone.

I was given the wrong diagnosis in my mid thirties. A confused New York nurse told me I was HIV positive. For three weeks I thought I had it. Until I fled to London and the doctor told me I was perfectly ok.

In those days an HIV positive result meant certain death. The kind of death that included cancerous lesions inside and out. Opportunistic diseases caught from potted plants, cats and canaries. Dramatic weight loss and the most painful end.

Now, of course, HIV just means being wedded to big pharma for the rest of your life, a huge liver and for most people… a new closet to live in.

It occurred to me, as I sat waiting for my result, how I would tell you all if I had contracted HIV.

I live a public life. I am sure that the shame I have heard others talk and write about would envelop me too.

But, as I sat there I decided to tweet the fact that I was there and what I was waiting for. I gave myself no option but to come out and tell you… if I was HIV positive. I knew it wouldn’t be like telling you I had cancer.

I asked the counsellor what would happen if I was HIV Positive? He gave me the medical facts. It didn’t seem that bad. But we all know: it’s not the medical implications… it’s the social implication that packs the negative punch.

In the gay community there is huge prejudice around HIV and AIDS. The frank discussion we need to have about HIV is not being had.

After he read the result I looked obviously shocked. I really did not expect to be negative. In fact, I rather thought I might be seriously ill.

“Why?” He asked.

Because, and it grieves me to tell you this but after JB and I saw each other that last time… I had no way of drowning my fury so I trawled the internet and transformed from the ‘curious top’ to the ‘pig bottom’.

The pig bottom who wants to be fed. I think you know what I mean.

“Just cum in me.” I said. They were very eager to please.

“It was a suicide bid. The only one I knew would work. I hated him so much…”

“Did you hate him? Or you?” The counsellor asked kindly.

I smiled wryly. “I’m still HIV negative.”

“You dodged the bullet.”

You see, I have never been like most gay men… craving sex many times a day. I have never visited a bath house or a cruising park. I rarely meet the men I speak with on-line. I am not like you. I tried it once… not so long ago and it made me feel sick.

This week Paris Hilton was caught squealing at her friend’s Grindr. She’s right to be appalled. AIDS has taught us nothing.

Pre bug chasing… I didn’t want to have sex with someone I didn’t know. It kept me negative. I wasn’t about to be shamed into having sex with anyone.

When I was a kid, men would invite me into their homes. The mere acceptance of a cup of tea somehow meant agreeing to full on butt sex.

They try to shame you. Get angry with you… but I fought back. Fuck off. I’m leaving. It saved my life.

Now the youngsters who get HIV are similarly shamed. My friend told me (he’s 24) that a guy he really wanted told him they had to fuck ‘raw’ (unprotected)… when my friend protested his amour said, “What? Don’t you believe me? I’m HIV negative.”

He wasn’t. Now… nor is my friend.

Are we kidding ourselves when we say that we are having protected sex?

There’s outrage because Paris Hilton is disgusted by Grindr. She’s right. We should all be disgusted. My women friends say, “There should be a Grindr for straight people.”

I tell them that a usual Grindr introduction consists of one word: Hung? Then: Clean? Then: Dick Pic?

Women are usually appalled when I tell them the way gay men cut to the chase.

I’m happy that I am HIV negative. I’m happier that my death wish has been thwarted. I’m happier still that all that hate and self hate came to nothing.

Writing my film has had a wonderfully cathartic effect on me. He is just a distant memory.

Even though I see him daily on the page he now exists as I want him to. Suffer and thrive the way I want him to… without ever having to suffer myself.

Today… today was a good day to be HIV negative.

Catch Up

New York City. September 2012.

How exquisite the weather is. How gorgeous the men are. How much the Little Dog loves the street.

For the first time in my life I am staying with friends in Brooklyn. I’ve always been a bit of a snob about staying anywhere other than Manhattan but Brooklyn is a revelation. I love it.

I sit in Cafe Zelda on Franklin and drink coffee and eat the home-made pop tarts full of delicious raspberry jam.

I take the subway to Union Square or to 42nd Street.

Of course I’ve been taking masses of pictures… some of which I post on here.

The other part of the story?

Hanging most days at The Mercer Hotel.

I much prefer The Mercer. I am so over my private club… especially since the piss elegant renovations. The newly decorated corridors in the hotel part of my club look like the old corridors from The Shining… sans creepy twins.

The staff have all been replaced and the service was terrible. Waiting 40 mins for a cup of coffee.

The manager at The Mercer installs me at a sweet little table where I meet actors and actresses. I am currently casting my movie.

I had lunch with Lady Rizo and Alexander. Great fun catching up.

I bumped into the perfectly charming Josh Hartnett and his girlfriend Tamsin. Malibu friend. Josh is very excited about the film he’s directing and Tamsin was off to Spain to make a movie.

Bryan Singer fell into the lobby a little hung over and after a big, sweaty hug sat with his LA friends.

Powerful LA people seldom manage to maintain their power once in NYC. Especially during fashion week. The cheap veneer falling away for all to see what lays within.

Met a very frosty Olivia Wilde with the perennially cheerful Paul Haggis. It was probably my fault she was so grumpy. I said, “Oh hi, I know Tao… your ex-husband.” Her face dropped. “My EX husband.” She stressed.

When are you not meant to mention the ex? I thought their divorce was amicable? Then I made the situation worse by telling her how wonderful she was in People Like Us… considering what a ghastly film it was.

Paul just looked at me fall deeper into the shit storm… of my own… making.

Dinner at Bond St. with CM.

A wonderfully romantic walk by the piers with an occasional love.

All the obvious Fashion Week partying. Mostly fun. Everything except the US Weekly party which was terrible.

Housewives of NYC and second-rate rappers. Food was good tho.

Chatted with a new gay dad who told me emphatically that I should support ‘gay marriage’. He showed me a video of his kid crawling. The video was taken from across the room. He told me that he rarely sees his kid during the week.

I asked him what I ask my straight friends: “Did you take maternity leave?” No! He guffawed. Why would he do that?

The kid is being brought up by nannies. Of course.

It made a bad party worse. I tried not to react… I really tried.

Currently writing my AA expose piece. It’s proving harder than I imagined.

Yikes

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

1.

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

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

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

I faked a dropped call.

2.

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

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

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

3.

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

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

You left an impression.   Creases in the bed sheets.

4.

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

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

5.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.

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

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

Wish me luck.

Inland Empire

It feels like I haven’t written anything for weeks. Living this simple and unexpected life. I’ve no idea what comes next nor do I care. Occasionally I wonder what it would be like to be back at home…Whitstable. It is waiting for me.

Sunday, I drove 100 miles North East to the Inland Empire to meet my lover. We booked into a cheap hotel and spent the day in bed. It was languorous and passionate. We ate free ‘home made’ cookies given to us when we checked in. We left the hotel briefly to buy fried chicken. We looked at the pool but didn’t swim.

After he left I walked on my own through a huge discount mall, I saw vibrant, sequined dressed for unplanned Quinceanera.

On the way home I wondered what the ham hocks would taste like that had been slowly cooking in the stove all day. They were delicious.

I have, of late, developed sexual desires and needs formally ignored. Today my legs are weak from indulging myself.

I may drive to NYC next week to fetch the art that remains in the East Village. Dan has been looking after it.

I like driving across country. I should take a different route but the familiarity of Route 66 lures me south.

I spoke at an ACLU event last week in the lush Hancock Park gardens of a rich gay man. His large mock Tudor home filled with Arts and Crafts furniture and paintings by dead artists like Otto Dix. Even though there were many sofas and well upholstered club chairs there didn’t seem to be anywhere to sit.

The speech was well received.

One afternoon last week (May 1st) I spoke to David Cruz, the KTLK liberal chat show host. I felt primed and confident. It was easier to talk about the LA jail system than it was to talk about Dorian Gray. Ethnic Cleansing. Secure Communities. Institutional racism and homophobia.

I have not been to any 12 step meeting but was stopped in the street by the crazy Sean McFarland sex therapist who kissed me and hugged me. I told him that the deaths of his clients should be on his conscience. He wished me all the best and crawled, like the slimy reptile he is, back into the Porsche despair has paid for.

On Saturday I met another 12 step buddy at Gjelina but we didn’t talk much. I don’t want to hear about the cult. Even though he is an old friend I eyed him suspiciously. We talked about my 85-year-old friend Coach who died last week. I’m glad he never knew that I turned by back on AA.

Robby and I had lunch last Thursday. He is delightful.

I have been ignoring calls from people I’m usually happy to hear from.

Everyday I drive along the PCH to Venice where I drink coffee at Intelligentsia on Abbot Kinney. I take pictures of strangers for my portrait project updated daily.

We peered briefly at the Super Moon. It was large and bright. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as seeing the comet, Hale Bop.

For the past ten days I have logged onto gay hook up app Grindr to see what is going on…what I am missing. I’ve been sent many picture of cocks but had no desire to sit on any of them…many pictures of asses but have no need to fuck. Next week I am going to publish them all here on WordPress in a password protected blog.

Life is all at once full up and completely empty.

Outcasts Always Mourn

Gerard Falconetti looking like Robby

Sunday morning, children all over the bed.  Asking questions.  They want to know everything.  Inquisitive little things.  The sun is bright and warm.  My hostess is making blueberry pancakes and coffee.

Lily, their youngest, had dreams about heaven and hell.  Hell had something to do with a supermarket.  She said, “There were people in hell who shouldn’t have been there.” Which was a very astute observation for a 9 year old girl.

She’s Jewish, Jews don’t believe in heaven or hell.

The Little Dog is confused.  He’s a one man dog.  He’s been with J and J these past few months so his loyalty, understandably, shifted.  We are re-orientating him.  He slept with me last night.  Hung out at the house yesterday.  He lay on his bed as we toiled in the garden.

Robby and I spent the day doing errands.  I have my phone!  The garden is tidy!  The house is returned to normal!  The art is back on the walls!  Lost things have been found! There is food in the fridge!  The dog is happy!

Saw Safe House at the Malibu cinema with Robby, bumped into AA folk.  The film was ok but had one huge and unforgivable plot flaw.

Before the film we wandered down Cross Creek.  Wondering at the night.  The cold, damp breeze on my face.

Robby is the only person I tell everything.  He has seen me vulnerable and survived.  Not like Jennie and the others.  No room!  No room!

Last night we watched September Issue.  Anna Wintour really is an extraordinary woman.  She is also incredibly generous.  You know, don’t you, that she lent us her NYC house when we made Dorian Gray.  Hamish, I wish we had seen more of him.  I remember meeting Grace with Patrick Kinmonth when they worked at Vogue in  London and again, rather obscurely at a house in North Wales  years later.  She stole the show.

God, Andre Leon Talley is such a twat.  The least interesting character in the film…just because he tries so hard to be fabulous.  Inauthentic.  I knew him when I lived in Paris, we met at Karl Lagerfeld‘s house when Karl lived on the Rue de la Universite in the early 80′s.  Gerard Falconetti and I stopped by unannounced.

Falconetti’s brilliant grandmother Maria played Jean d’Arc in The Passion when she was 19 years old.

For some reason I remember touching Andre’s face, his skin was cold and soft.  Like an old handbag.

Gerard was 11 years older than me, so incredibly handsome.  A wonderful lover.  In 1981 Gerard played Meryl Streep‘s boyfriend in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

In 1984 Gerard found out that he had AIDS and threw himself off the Tour Montparnasse.

Gerard was a generous, extraordinary friend.  He played Montserrat Caballe singing Tosca when I was sick with flu, he lifted my spirits with delicate macaroons from Carette.   He showed me the Paris I would later show those who have never been. The secret places we all need to know when we discover a city for the first time.

I have, somewhere, a note Karl sent Gerard referencing his grandmother.

That was then this is now…

I have a million things to do.  A great deal of catching up and making good.

I promised to write about being arrested.  Well, I will…but after conversations yesterday with my journalist brethren I’ll let them do the reporting and I’ll take a rest.  There’s still so much to tell you.

As you may know this entire being arrested thang was to do with this very blog.   What can or cannot be said.

Meanwhile on another part of the internet…you simply have to check out what is being said about me by identifiable enemies: an ex-employee calling me a sadist,  a gross individual from Province Town who attempted to malign me last summer,  some cretin accusing me of killing my own dog…these people are wrought with life affecting, overwhelming resentment.  It is so extreme it makes me laugh.

Baying for blood.  Send him back to jail!  Throw away the key!  If only, in some way, they could find a way of getting me locked up for ever…the death sentence even?

I am chuckling to myself.

Chris Lewis of Sydney Australia thinks I want your sympathy.  If I looked like Chris Lewis I would want your sympathy.  Even when he was young he was ugly.  You know very well that I report as I see…as truthfully as I am able.  It is my unalienable right to do so.  I don’t want sympathy.  I need your support.  Those of you who have stood by me, my God!  I never expected such amazing gifts.

Marilyn Monroe, of all people, said that for every fan excited to see her there were 10 enemies waiting to bring her down.   Being hated is an occupational hazard for those of us who do not live in the shadows.  If you think what people write about me is outrageous…try being Rachal Maddow.

Somebody called from the jail yesterday, he is as well as can be expected.  How quickly one forgets. Yet…you know me.  The lure of the uniform…the smell of ruminating men…ransacked sexual fantasies.

Do you know what a Nonce is?  It’s a slang word for a child molester.  I taught the men in my dorm at Men’s County Jail this very English word.  By the time I left they were calling each other Nonce, it was quite inappropriate…but very funny.

By the way, I didn’t get any Christmas cards whilst I was at the jail, I thought you didn’t care!  I now know that many of you sent cards and letters of support.  Apparently, they were all returned as having inappropriate content.  What were you sending me?

One’s body is weakened by three months of inactivity.  Working in the garden was exhausting yesterday.

Thank God for Robby.

As I lay here, at what ever time during that constant night…the ghosts of Wilde and Cocteau, Rimbaud and Verlaine come to me.  The fragrant, aromatic smoke he blows to me through the tiny hove carved between cells.  The great poet cries, “Hard labour!”  And all…for love.

A famous passage from the Ballad of Reading Gaol:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

The line is a nod to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, when Bassanio asks, “Do all men kill the things they do not love?”

A passage from the poem was chosen as the epitaph on Wilde’s tomb.

And alien tears will fill for him,
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

700 Arrested

A charming, quiet week in Malibu with friends.  The weather has been spectacular since I arrived home from NYC.

Art Platform events all weekend.  Abbott Kinney on Saturday afternoon.  Sunday lunch with Fielder and Danny.  Grom ice cream at the Lumber Yard.

On our way downtown we saw the remnants of the LA Wall Street demonstration.

I bought a small work at the new LA Art Fair by a new artist called Ariel Evestingcol called Labor Plot.  A police officer is beating a man with a baton.  I bought it mostly to celebrate the Wall Street Demonstrations.  Which, I failed to mention in an earlier blog I had seen whilst I was in NYC.

Apparently my more elegant gay friends are not interested in supporting our brave comrades down town.  Perhaps if Taylor Lautner was manning the barricades with his shirt off they would join in?

My friend Zelko tells me that there are lesbians on the front line but no gay men.  One young gay man approached Zelko and asked him what he was doing there.  When Zelko told him that he was supporting the cause the 24-year-old countered that he finds the protesters ‘annoying’ for being loud, naked and stinky.  Zelko told him that those were the exact words that came to mind whenever he thought of a gay pride parade.   He asked him if he’d feel differently if the cause was gay rights.  No answer.

As I have been suggesting for some time, the laissez faire…let them eat cake attitude of both the government and the banks will breed dissatisfaction and insurrection.

Let the breaking of windows begin.

What is just (at the moment) an inarticulate expression of the frustrated, hopeless and disenfranchised will surely shape up into something more potent.  The more the police arrest, the unprovoked pepper spraying of innocent young women, the more like Syria it becomes.

I suspect that the government will tread very carefully around further arresting potential martyrs.

I salute the 700!  Being arrested in the USA has severe consequences.

The problem with this demonstration is the lack of articulated protest.  Nobody really knows how to change the system.  Nobody really knows what changes need to be made.  Nobody seems to use language familiar to European socialists.

Socialism may very well be terrifying to the very people who need to use this language the most.

A fair and equitable world.  The people no longer enslaved with crippling debt.  The rich paying a fair tax.  Human rights such as health care and a good education.  Illegal wars must stop.

These are not outrageous demands.

Those protesting in New York have been circulating a list of grievances, most of which are aimed at corporations that they say are too powerful and often unethical. Among the complaints: bank executives received “exorbitant” bonuses not long after receiving taxpayer bailouts and companies have “poisoned the food supply through negligence” and “continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate better pay and safer working conditions.”

The demonstrators seem frightened at the prospect of issuing demands, formulating their own utopian dream and, as I have already said, using the language and heroes of socialist Europe.

Until these young people begin to make emphatic demands these sort of sophomoric sit-ins will not gain any traction.

The ‘haves and the have more’ will look down their noses at these youngsters.  They will exact their revenge unless these fledgling heroes whip up support all over the country, from Albuquerque to Alaska…harness the raw power of the unemployed and demand that their concerns are as relevant as those of the corporations and the banks.

We will see in good time just how effective these youngsters can be at making change, the very same change the wimp Obama promised us all when he spoke to the people…before he won the election.

How cynical his false promises were.

Last night I dreamt of you know who.  As vivid a dream I could not have imagined.

On a windswept street in Europe we talked about reconciliation.  He was wearing the protective armor of an american football player.

He said, “People can’t imagine what I saw in you.”  And I reply, “Well, you knew what you were getting yourself into.  Everything was out there.  Every defect revealed, written about…mocked.”

I have no idea what he saw in me.  I can only imagine that Anthony Patch from Fitzgerald’s Beautiful and the Damned, his great hero…may provide some answers.

In the dream he kissed a man in front of me and I remember thinking that I wanted him to be happy and free.  I remember thinking to myself…why am I fighting this stranger?   What if he triumphs?  Does it really matter?

He really is a better man than I could ever be.  A better liar, better at sex, better intellect, better looking.

I said to him in the dream, “I am sorry that I wasn’t what you thought I could be.  I wasn’t the rich, handsome, debonaire, literary hero you wanted so badly to rescue you from your dull wife.”

“I am so sorry I was too old and poor and fractured.  I am sorry that there was no huge house, no silk slippers, no deliverance from a mundane ‘virtual’ office job.  That is his role…not mine.  He will come and find you, he will take you home to his mansion, he will let you swim in his pool…he will love you like I could not love you.”

The reconciliation I dream about is as hopeless as the dream some of us have of a better USA.

It Gets Better? Better Than Death?

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.

“I never knew anyone who died of AIDS.” he said.

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 will have a shower when I get back to LA.

Taking Care of Business

Yesterday was unquestionably productive.

The morning spent in airless, 19th floor, mid-town offices.  Obama in town, the city still snagged with traffic.  The sidewalks choked with Ahmadinejad protestors and Palestinian hating zionists.

My foot feels much better.  Walking normally until Midday then it swells a little and I have to rest.

Fleas on the dog, Petco remedy.

Read script by new, young writer.  Charming boys.  Flawed script.

Met Zach for dinner on 10th Street then art event on Lower East Side.  Seemed to have a William Burroughs theme.  The curator was super cute.  I mean…fucking gorgeous.

You know that Burroughs came to my 21st birthday party?  Did I ever mention that?  He arrived with Princess Selima Guirey a descendant of Genghis Khan.  I think both Scott Crolla and I were kind of amazed.

After a very spirited performance by a well endowed, naked man covered in glitter I stood on the street in the humid night chatting with an incredibly knowledgeable boy wearing an out sized base-ball cap who invited me to a Courtney Love party.  I didn’t go.

We quite randomly discussed Herbert Huncke who I had seen read poetry on St Mark’s Place in that church there with Richard Gere who, for a short time, was an acquaintance of mine.  I don’t think many people know this but Gere supported Huncke in his latter years.   He died in 1996.

If you don’t know Huncke…google him.  It’s worth your time to get acquainted with the man known as the ‘Mayor of 42nd Street’.

I first met the very young and very beautiful Richard Gere with Christina Monet-Palaci in Paris when I was Lord Rendlesham.  Lady Jane Wellesley reintroduced me to him several years later in the late 80′s whilst making the ill-fated Baron in The Trees with Marc Warren.

Gere is a huge Italo Calvino fan so we had lots to talk about.   Ah, those were the days.

I wonder if Tim remembers us having dinner at his house with Jane and Jean Paul Gautier?

Have you read City of Quartz by Mike Davis?   We discussed that too, on the hot New York street, late last night.

I left the dog with Z and T and their huge black pit bulls.  The Little Dog loves their bitch Lucy.

Home by midnight.  Asleep by one, up at 6.30am.

Next week I am in LA for The Pacific Standard Time art event and Art Platform inaugural fair.

As for my novel?  My novel has shape shifted from a dark, murderous, self-conscious meander into a funny, adroit tale of kidnap and mayhem.  It’s not high art but it is very readable.

Finally, DADT was repealed.  For the small number of people this affects directly…I congratulate you.

This morning the web is alive with video images of Republican Presidential candidates berating Commader in Chief Obama for liberating gay service men and women from keeping secrets.

The right-wing audience revealing their gay hate by booing a gay soldier, screaming with joy when the repugnant candidates promised reinstatement of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Obama has finally left New York.  This morning the traffic is once again traveling freely up 8th Avenue.

Regardless…

…of what ever dramas he may be initiating.  I am really happy.

Last night I ate with my Ohio friends and a really cool young surfer from Florida and a pot head fabric designer.  Gemma, under The Bowery Hotel.  Service bad.  Food OK.  Conversation riveting.

I was on such good form. Really buoyant and witty.

The whole city was alive with people and late night shopping and drama for Fashion’s Night Out.   It’s like a very chic Halloween.  Fashion week brings out the very best and the very worst of the gays.

We ended up at 3am on the SH roof.  My sanctuary.

I am glad that we got the Order of Protection drama over and done with at the beginning of my month here on the East Coast.  In a strange way I really couldn’t justify coming here so often if it hadn’t been demanded of me.

I forgot to write about my health.  I think because I was scared and made me look weak.

I had my cancer follow up visit to the doctor before I left LA.  All good in the scrotum department.  The colonoscopy revealed a forest of ‘pre cancerous polyps’.   They are doing further tests.  The best bit about it was the sedative.  I’ve never like things in my ass.

I’m just not that kind of gay.

Strangely resilient at the moment.  Happy to be alive.

Yesterday’s drama made me stronger, more determined.  Channeling my father.  Harnessing the strength he had to fight anything and everything that came his way.  I could feel him.  I really could.  Urging me to fight.  For him.

It was the first time in my life that I felt him beside me.  I can feel him beside me now.  Sneering at other fathers.   Their weakness.  Their lack of respect.  I am proud to be a fiery Persian…as was he.

I am no longer interested in being compassionate or forgiving.

A price must be paid when fools rush in.

When your back is against the wall…well, we must do what we must do.

Family Court

So, I went to court today.

If you want to know what happened email me and I will let you know.

I am not going to stop telling you how it feels to be me.

Arrived in NYC two nights ago.

Fashion week!  Fashion’s Night Out tonight.

Yesterday, I had dinner with Dan at Prune.   We had been to the Patagonia party at the Bowery Hotel and then ended up with new friends at Rogan.  Met Greg Long.

I had a great time even though my foot aches like hell!  Met Alex on the street.  He said, “Are you crying?”  I wasn’t crying…but I was distressed and there were huge rain drops on my cheeks that looked like tears.  I was thinking about the following day.  I just kept thinking how I had no desire to look at that man ever again and I knew that I had to.

Alex and I walked back up The Bowery to the Bowery Hotel, ended up at B Bar for new French label Surface to Air party.  Super cool.

I love the rain.  I love the streets.  If my foot wasn’t so painful I would have walked home in the rain.

Breakfast today with Jenny A and Robby at the Mercer.   That woman is a dream…such a dream.

You know that I got sober because of Jenny.   15 years at the end of this month.  After breakfast we went to an AA meeting and I felt the love.  Thank God for AA!

Spent afternoon with the most beautiful Russian at the totally revamped, gorgeous private club.

I love being here.

Jenny sat at the back of the court and was dumbfounded at the ego in the room…mine included.

She said, “Did you see that man’s suit?  Even his wedding ring is cheap.”

Exactly.

I am here all month.

I want to tell you that it is hard work hating someone, anyone.   It was hard hating my step-father.  He was a bad man.  He deserved what he got.

CNN Today

I thought you might wanna see this:

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

Here is a quick recap:

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

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

They were rebuffed.

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

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

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

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

He was petrified that I would out him.

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

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

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

I insisted that he tell the truth.

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

Boy Friend?

Let me reiterate…I would rather work in an office.  I would rather work in an office than have a boyfriend.  In fact, it’s almost the same thing.  Giving up one’s freedom…just to be like everyone else.

Accepting second best.  I can’t do that again.

I have no intention of EVER having a boyfriend/partner/husband.

They say, “You’ll fall in love.”  ”You’ll meet someone.”  ”There’s someone out there for you.” Ha!  It simply isn’t true.  Why?  Because I am not looking, not interested…scared.

It was hot yesterday.  Very hot.  Looks like it’s going to be another hot day today.  BAFTA garden party at the British Embassy this afternoon.

My ankle is not getting any better.  My ‘wait and see’ policy worked on the left leg but not on the right.  I am shuffling like a decrepit.  Doctor on Monday.  We shall see.

Zachary came by yesterday and we hurled ourselves up the 101 and into Hollywood.  Hanging with some New York friends on Doheny.  A gay event…cute, pleasant people.  One of them had seen the ‘A’ List and asked…about the watch.

We ended the evening slumping into sofas at a private roof top club receiving all comers.  We had a pack of American Spirits so were very popular out there on the terrace.

Zachary is a dancer/performance artist.  He is off to Rome to show his work in a prestigious gallery.  I like his zeal.  It reminded me just how much fun touring a live show can be.

Samantha joined us, she was wearing knee-high leather boots, her hair tied back…she looked like Theda Bara.

We chatted with super chic Kelly Osborne.  We met a gay couple in an open relationship.

We drove home at midnight past a very fresh accident on the deserted PCH.  An inebriated man sitting at the edge of the road wearing a white button down…clutching his bloody chest.  His girlfriend standing by…weeping.

A two car collision.  His car visible, the other car (a police vehicle) had, it seemed, crashed over the edge of the PCH and into the Pacific.

Gawkers looking into the black sea.  The deputies, I read this morning, were not drowned.  Look here.

I am in NYC next week, post Irene.  Robby is there to see but he has a life in NYC (at our instigation) and I may very well not be a part of that.  That’s OK, he’s appropriately grateful.

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980

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.

LA will be hosting Pacific Standard Time the culmination of a long-term Getty Research Institute initiative that focuses on postwar art in Los Angeles.

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.

Patti Labelle

Apart from astronomically good but addicting blog figures, rancour toward Jake and a gopher issue (he/she is presently tearing up the vegetable patch) I am very well indeed.

I am enjoying ranting against JB’s lawyer, leaving vile reviews about his restaurant on Yelp and Tripadvisor. Who would have thought Ross (of all people) would have been a slasher?

There’s twitter consternation. Some guy who thinks I should give a shit about my character on the show. Apparently his friends, over a cocktail in the local gay bar, think I lured Derrick into my web with ‘shiny things’. They have built an entire world around my one appearance in one episode of The ‘A’ List.

I love TV. Perhaps I should get one?

My twitter friend wonders why I am asking Restraining Order advice from my blog readers. Babe, I am not asking advice…I’m asking for shared experience and so far I’ve had really useful responses.

Thanks everybody who took the time to tell their stories.

A woman wrote asking if I thought her BF might be gay. Send me a picture.

In the real world…far beyond planet Jake. I am having a laugh.

Joe is staying here from NYC so we are having a very cozy time at home. Six foot of pure Jersey muscle. I will post some pics tomorrow of his perfect bod, great ass and sweet smile.

Met Sharon at The Chateau with Joe and Henry. We sat in the sun, enjoying Arnold Palmers, giggling. We hung out at Urth Cafe on Melrose. We changed for dinner. I met CC with her friend Patti LaBelle who was more than complimentary to me. In fact, she said things that made me blush.

She asked my age and I mumbled it. She said proudly, “I am 67 years old.” But you are Patti LaBelle, I thought. You can be 100 years old and you’ll still be a superstar. The rest of us struggle with getting older.

CC was with gay boys who wanted to go to The Abbey but I really didn’t want to go. Joe would have been mobbed. He has that look that gets him mobbed in gay bars…I really didn’t want to share him.

So we stayed put and Russell Brand sat nearby and then Leo Dicaprio rolled in with his buddies.

Home by 3am.

On a serious note. Those of you who sneered at my ‘Palin and her ilk’ prediction…take a look at Rick Perry. The newest warrior of Christ who wants to be President of The United States. If you thought Palin and Bachmann were bad…read this.

Again, we may laugh at how absurd it is that these people would want to lead the free world or be elected in free and fair elections to do so…but that’s what the intellectuals did during the Weimar Republic. They laughed at Hitler. They ignored the desperation of the beleaguered German people desperate for change…any change.

Change they could believe in.

Obama hasn’t delivered. Rick Perry and people like him just might do the trick.

Stop laughing. This is NOT A JOKE.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Only three weeks until I am yet again due in Family Court to fight the spurious accusations, lies, falsehoods from that dwarfish, dishonest man who lied his way into my life, my wallet, my heart and my underwear.

This vile fame-whore will rip me out of paradise.

Some cheap liar who had devoted every day of his 30 years to deception.

When he saw me on TV he merely saw his next victim.

Someone else he could use in his war against a woman he said he loved.   Risking her health, her sanity.   Someone I heard blaming for his shortcomings.  He was so angry with her that she didn’t see things his way.  A woman who had blindly believed in her man, who will never do so again.

The bigger problem when you let a liar into your life…you end up never trusting.

Every man I have subsequently met I have looked upon with suspicion.

If YOU have had experiences of spurious restraining orders or false orders of protection let me know by emailing me on duncaninla@mac.com or leaving a message here.   If you want to come to court in NYC and support me on the 8th September 2011, let me know.

If you want to cover this story for your gay publication…let me know.

If you have been fucked over by an ex, lied to, cheated to, infected with HIV by someone who said they were clean…if you have never had recourse to get revenge.  Let me know.

Men or women.

Let me know.

If you are sick of keeping quiet about the way gay men…men treat each other or women.

Let me know.

Dan Savage‘s It Gets Better campaign may save teens from killing themselves, but what next?  We don’t treat each other very well.  Sometimes I think that Better than Death is not good enough.

I used to have compassion for that man.  I used to make excuses for him.  I stayed up waiting for him to call.  Worrying about him.  I urged him to tell her the truth. I convinced him that the truth would set him free. Until recently I thought he should be forgiven.  Some people can never be forgiven.

He may have learned his lesson, maybe he tells the truth nowadays?  Regardless, he has unfinished business.  We need to deal with it.  Some day soon the truth will be revealed.

Orders of Protection are well-known for inflaming benign situations, creating malignancy where there was none.  He has done just this.   The cells of resentment, hatred and revenge are multiplying before my very eyes.

Hey..and before you lecture me about how stupid I was to fall for him.  That he was just a 30-year-old kid…look at the men who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Teenagers. If you think that love has logic?   Take a look in the fucking mirror and tell me you haven’t done the same.   Before you advise me to let go of my resentment, tell me why I should.  This may be eating me alive but that’s better than being dead.

He could have killed me.

Before I get advice from angels…take your own inventory.  Your own moral pulse.

P.S.  No, I don’t have HIV but I hear plenty stories of men who have been cheated out of their negative status by lying queens.  Just another thing our fucked up gay community wont talk about.

Duncan Roy The ‘A’ List

Regardless of why I decided to get involved with Derek or The ‘A’ List I’m glad I did.  Our pretend boyfriend scam…it was fun.  Even though I have been portrayed as a smelly old man.

Pretending to be his boyfriend was absurd.   A joke.  I don’t know if that comes across on the show?  That we were faking it?

Occasionally I throw myself back into being ‘gay’.  I don’t have a very gay life on this mountain.  Most queens are totally appalled that I live here, so isolated, away from the urban gay idyl.

Tom calls it my Shangri-La.   Some men love it and for those I hold a special place in my heart.  They get it.  The dream of self-sufficiency, off the grid, chickens and home-grown vegetables.

When I pull off my country clothes (albeit RRL) and slide into something leaner I am dressed for the city.  Whether it is WeHo or Chelsea, Soho or The Marais I am there to be seen, acknowledged and play that peculiar game of being ‘gay’.

I can live two distinct lives, maybe more?

In England my snooty friends called me a chameleon, meaning to insult me.

Surely being able to change ones color to blend in…is rather good?  To adapt and change as the situation requires.

In England, my England I learned to speak with a different accent, merely to be heard.

I am a cock sucking homosexual but I wonder if others see it that way?  What kind of gay am I?

Perhaps my lack of interest in sex makes me less gay, less human?

Remember when I was on Sex Rehab and admitted that the sex I had with men was traumatic?   People wrote to me and told me that I wasn’t gay.  ”If Duncan Roy doesn’t want gay sex, he isn’t gay.”

They tried to throw me out of the gay club…for having an opinion.

Meeting the cast of the ‘A’ List was memorable because they have become, in their own way, icons.  For good or for bad.  I met most of them just once. At least three of them have admitted drug and alcohol problems.

I really liked Austin and his husband Jake who I could very easily imagine seeing here or in London.  They are good people.  I like Austin’s authenticity.

The worst of the bunch has to be…Derek.  As you will see tonight (if you can be bothered) I enjoy ribbing him on camera.  I used stock lines, old jokes that an overly sensitive American queen did not find very funny.

When the food arrives I say, “That looks like something that came out of your nose.”  That’s funny isn’t it?  I used it before and my friends laughed.

We hung out a few times but really, his lack of sophistication, curiosity and insight were wonders to behold.  He seems so incomplete.  Derek’s consumption of alcohol masking a sadness at his core…like so many untreated addicts.  A problem that a huge number of gays share but have no intention of resolving.

Derek has no business to be anywhere but where he was born.  Like so many gay men he has been forced into New York by small-town prejudice and an insatiable desire for cock.

A bland, mid-western bag of meat and bones.

He had no truck with history, our history, any history…he knew nothing of the city where he lives, of commerce, politics or God.   Eking out an existence with appearances at provincial gay clubs and gay pride.

Derek lives every moment in the moment, no awareness of where he had come from and no interest in where he is going.

Did he read Eckhart Tolle?  I’m kidding.

The power of now and only now and God forbid that you make me consider anything other than right now.

I am without context.  I am without past or future.

Damn!  This Queen needs a drink!

He is the antithesis of everything the other was.

I looked at Derek as one might a monkey in the zoo.  The gay zoo.  Trapped like a miserable, half naked gogo boy in his techno cage.   Evidence of his genus.  The sub species of gay to which we must all aspire.

Cocktails with orange slices perched on the rim.

Moisturized, combed, overly tanned.  The shrill laughter and meaningless conversation hurt my ears.

I can’t imagine what the viewers of the ‘A’ List will make of me but…we’ll see.  I am old.  I am not Peter Pan.  I have a beard.  I live on a mountain.  I have no sexual traction…time has eroded my usefulness to the gays.

It was an adventure into a life I have only the barest knowledge.  A sociological exercise.  Ripping open the wasp’s nest.

I hung out at bars and in clubs.  I questioned who I was and the choices I have made.

When I was approached I politely declined.  When they spilled their drinks on me I didn’t say a word.

The Scarlet Empress

My 500th Blog!

Such delight and disdain it has caused.  Such heartache and joy!   Thanks readers.  Thanks.

Duncan x

There’s almost too much going on inside and outside of my head.

Firstly, the garden.  Every day for the past few weeks I have worked in the garden.  Pulling tons (literally) of weeds and leaves out of the flower beds.  Reclaiming the paths.  Defending the vegetables from the gophers and rabbits.

I have planted Datura and Hibiscus.   Salvia, basil, onions, beans and tomatoes.

A bumper crop of plums this year!

For the first time in 4 years I managed to get to them before the birds.

Have hooked up a pump to the spring water reservoir.  It’s located at the bottom of the garden, now watering parts of the estate I can’t usually justify irrigating with expensive, potable water.

The previous owner built the two huge tanks.  Until last week I just hadn’t gotten around to buying the small, inexpensive pump.  Absurd isn’t it?

Having this free supply of water means that I can clear part of the garden and lay turf which in any other situation would be immoral, irresponsible.

Everything in a tropical garden has spikes or thorns or needles.  My hands are cut to ribbons.  Robbie has been here twice this week helping me and his arms and legs, poor thing, are shredded too.

Dinner last night with Anna and Jeff at Nobu in Malibu.

Apparently I was mentioned in passing by Derek in the ‘A’ List last night.  I can’t imagine that I will escape lightly from this situation.  I am perfectly sure my posing as the ‘Mister Big’ will make me the laughing-stock of Gay New York.

Whatever.

The weather in Malibu is perfect.  Hot as hell in the sun but a delicious sea breeze blowing onshore.

The crows are hunting chicks.  They bombard the trees. Tiny dead chicks on the paths.  So sad.

I took the picture at the head of the post last weekend at the Piette’s.   Their house is soooo depressing.  Even though it’s located on the lake and the twins are living there now.  It’s so dark inside at night.  Gloomy.

You know what?  I should be getting on with something else.  I should be leaping all over my novel.  I should be writing the film.  You know what it’s about don’t you?

Two gay men want a baby but end up with an old man instead.

This was one of the videos Charlie and I shot when we were researching our film.

Trans Alexis, The Scarlet Empress, must be in her 80′s.  She was at Triangle House, a home for elderly gays and lesbians in Hollywood.  Getting old is a pain in the ass for everyone but elderly gays seem to find it particularly difficult.  Most of the men and women at Triangle House have endured homelessness.  Old age, as they say, is not for the faint hearted.

Lesbians, apparently, don’t seem to end up so isolated but gay men do.  Lesbians are often dialed into an extended family of other lesbians and are less ageist.

Anyway, I’ll write more about Alexis and our film which maybe should be a documentary.

I don’t know.

The elder gays we met were really quite wonderful.  The gay men we met who had surrogate children or were going through the surrogacy process were less wonderful.  Downright awful in fact.

Robby is on his way over to help me in the garden.

Is Toby right?  Do I live in the past?  Am I addicted to what was rather than what is or what could be?  Fuck.  Maybe he’s right?

Amy Winehouse is dead.  It comes as no surprise.  She was an out of control drug addict and alcoholic.  She dies alone.  She died an addict.  I am sorry for her family.  It is always the family that has to pick up the pieces and go on living.  Amy did not choose life.  She sneered at the prospect.  She thought she could get away with a dance with death.  She failed.

I will remember her like this:

Happy Birthday Me

Here are some of the pictures Dan took last week at my party…I will add them as and when they arrive.  I am having my LA birthday party tonight….should be fun.

Lady Rizo

Lady Rizo sang Lilac Wine, Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend and a Brittany Spears mash up.

Devon, Aleksa and Me

Aleksa came with her husband Devon…straight from the set of Boardwalk Empire

Dan and Stephen

Dan took all the pics but thankfully had one of himself.

Ian and Bradley

Ian Drew and Bradley from US Weekly…who told me yesterday that I am indeed in the upcoming A List.

Rob Roth who sang ‘I’ll Melt With You‘ rather wonderfully and the legend who is indeed Chandler Burr.  The performance artist and NYT scent editor…

Duncan and Robby

This trip to NYC changed darling Robby’s life.

Sweet friends from LA Jess and her lover.

Victoria Whitbread and her friend Tom with Dee Mansfield who flew from Hong Kong for my party.

Yaniv, Michael (GLADD) and Cyndi Stivers who started Time Out NY

The Black Soft

Chase and Joey from The Black Soft came and not only performed their new song for me but totally wowed their new audience.

Zach and Alex

Joan, Lady Rizo and Joe

Greg Lucas and David Stillman Meyer

Kaolin, Friend and Zach

Lady Rizo and Donovan.

Duncan, Charlie Parsons and Tom Desanto

Jeff and Robby

And over to you LADY RIZO!!!

OK, that’s it!  More tomorrow from tonight’s party.

Devon, Aleksa and Me

Dan and Stephen

Lady Rizo

The Black Soft

Ian and Bradley

Duncan and Robby

The Invasion

I am flying to LA today.  My work here is done.  I will be in LA for the rest of the summer.  There are tomatoes to look after.  Twins to tend.  Well, not all the summer…I’ll be back.

I am going to have a dinner for my actual birthday next week.

Yesterday I returned to the city from Fire Island.  I woke at 7am and after my rather wonderful encounter with Neil we cleaned the house, made breakfast and fought our way to the ferry through the invading drag queens.  Do you know about this Fire Island tradition?  Every Independence Day the trannys of Cherry Grove invade The Pines.

That’s it really. A bunch of trannys get on a huge boat, one full ferry boat after another, land in The Pines and start drinking…and drinking.   During all the years I lived on Fire Island with Joe I only ever saw the Invasion once and that was as I was leaving on a ferry for higher ground.

The train to Penn Station was all fucked up.  When I arrived in NYC I hung out with Alex and Toby at The Soho Grand.

FJ invited me to his apartment to see the fireworks but we decided to walk to the river with the people and watch what turned out to be a remarkable display.  Bumped into various friends including Alexei Muniak from LA.   Ate middle eastern food and chocolate.

I really wanted to see the fireworks.  Last July 4th Jake and me were flying over the very same fireworks on our way to Paris.  I remember quite clearly being very fearful.  Before we left I sat him down and told him how worried I was that when we came back I would miss him badly.  I was really scared.  He said, “We’ll deal with that then.”

We never dealt with it.  It festers in me to this day.  In September I return to the city and we will yet again face each other in court.

Is this the way he ‘deals’ with things?

Neil Sedaka

7am 4th July. Yesterday I must have walked between The Pines and Cherry Grove a dozen times.

I woke up in The Pines and fell asleep exhausted in Cherry Grove.

Benoit and I went to a ‘media’ party in some huge house on the bay. What differentiated it from any other party was not immediately apparent.

The half naked men and boys looked identical to all the other men and boys at similar parties elsewhere.  I was introduced to the new editor of the Advocate. He too was half naked. He looked at me suspiciously and so he should. I have no interest in him.

By 2 in the afternoon everyone was trashed and the toxicity began to get to me. I kept thinking to myself how much fun Jake would have here. How he would fit right in.

Later that day I met Stephen Macias my ex manager. He is a truly vile individual who fully took advantage of my Hollywood initiation. I will write more about that at a later date.

He looked good for someone with ‘issues’. He told me proudly that he attends Barry’s Boot Camp in LA.

I saw Mark Beard the muralist. He paints all of those Homoerotic murals in Abercrombie and Fitch. He looks like a scull on a stick. My ex Joe helped him buy his huge studio in Hells Kitchen.

Mark’s boyfriend Jim still looks great.

I hung out with Zelcho, Caroline and Todd. We ate lunch at Cherry’s. I kissed a beautiful man who I met waiting for the water taxi.

I thought more about Jake every time I felt uncomfortable. I damned myself because I had inadvertently let one of these people into my life. One of these party boys. Even though when I met him he was merely a party boy in waiting.

Later that night Caroline cooked a delicious dinner and then we met Benoit and his friends at The Top of the Bay ostensibly to listen to Neil Sedaka sing but when we got there Neil looked frail and left with his friends.

He was being bullied by an Easter European woman. He asked her, “Do you like me for me or because I’m a famous singer?”

We chatted for a while about his children and grand children and West Hollywood where he still lives with his wife of fifty years.

Benoit’s politician friend told me his coming out story. Outed at 30, left his wife. Lost his important job in politics. I asked why he hadn’t come out sooner (read get honest) and he said that he didn’t want to lose his family.

Earlier in the day I went to the AA meeting at the Fire House (6pm) where I listened to group therapy and not one word of recovery. The good looking men only listened to the other good looking men and chatted amongst themselves if the speaker was fat, old or ugly.

On several occasions I wanted to get back to NYC. Every man on the boardwalk held a cup brimming with a lethal amount of alcohol. By mid afternoon many men were staggering or slumped or glazed.

The little dog chased a young buck with velvet antlers.

As I was writing this Neil Sedaka sat with me and told his life story. He is such a delightful man.

I applauded him for not performing last night.

He told me how Elton had given him a second chance. He told me how he had filled the Albert Hall two years ago and he asked if I had ever been in love so I told him about Jake.

He said, “It’s rich material.”

We talked about Carol King, Sinatra, Elvis and Joni Mitchell. It was compelling stuff for 9am on a balmy Fire Island morning.

Transformers: Dark of The Moon

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 42^nd 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.

Sol Lewitt

It is 6am. Monday morning. The day after NYC Gay Pride. I am sipping strong black coffee like a man who has a hangover and a job. I have neither.

There is a great deal to do today. Mostly unpleasant. The Transformers 3 party tonight. The twins are winging their way to New York. Robby called me late last night. I was too tired to talk. I wonder if he changed his mind?

Let’s talk about yesterday.

I can’t remember what I did before 12. It is lost.

At around one o’clock I wandered down tenth street to see the parade. I thought I might meet Tom and pals but they had other plans. I had a great day on my own and not on my own.

I made a few out reach calls.

Let’s face it…that’s what I like best. I like being on my own or with strangers who don’t know me.

I carried the little dog in my arms through the drunken crowd. I saw Dan Savage on the first float. His very own apotheosis. I watched Andew Cuomo, recently beautified by the gays for the bone that he threw down at us…like a fake holy relic. The body guards around him formed a tight cordon. It was funny that he should be so frightened. Needing that many body guards. We need him to guard us. Protect us. His appearance in the parade was unashamedly about his re-election.

Those about me thought that what he had done for them was wonderful.

“It’s a start!” They explained to me as if I were retarded. I have given up trying to explain my position. I just look at these men and smile weakly.

I remembered being in the Sydney Mardi Gras. How many years ago? 1990. I was covering it for the BBC. I made a BBC Radio 4 documentary. I was entranced. I should fetch out my old diaries. I should try and find that material. I don’t have any record of anything I made for the BBC.

Mardi Gras. Being in the parade. From the street looking up at the millions of faces staring down at us from every window on Oxford Street. I remember taking ecstasy and wandering into the rancid, hot bathroom and watching men fuck each other. I stayed in Sullivans on Oxford Street just like I always do when I return to Sydney. Where I will be this winter.

The parade and the party afterwards. I accepted the decadence. It was as if in that sinking ship…we had no option.

I did not question our behaviour then because it was my behaviour.

If young documentarian Duncan chanced upon yesterdays parade. Given that ship is no longer sinking? What would he learn about being gay in 2011?

Well, if I was as fucked up as I was then I might have come to the same conclusions. I was just chasing a drink, a line and some tail. Loving the attention that a young gay man gets.

The attention has waned.

I thought about Paul Keeting the Prime Minister of Australia being so publicly inclusive. Letting us know that his government included/represented us too. It was the first time in my life I had ever heard a world leader positively acknowledge my existence.

Keeting reminded fellow Australians that the LGBT community paid taxes, were less likely to cause trouble or end up in prison…he then signed an anti vilification bill into law which really felt like it was real. It was. It made people think about what they said to us and how they treated us.

Yesterday, every elected politician in the state made an appearance in the parade. The police were cheered heartily as they are every year in every GLBT parade and I wondered why? Even as I was wondering why I felt the same wave of emotion that everyone else seems to feel.

I bumped into Jeremiah Newton.

He took me briefly to a tranny party in an apartment overlooking the parade. I thought of Diane Arbus.  The apartment was very dark and decorated crudely with red plastic. The ceilings covered in rainbow flags made of cheap gauze. It was too depressing. There was some sort of tranny chaser sitting on his own in the kitchen under the flourescent light. He directed me to the chicken pasties. I ate some jelly beans.

I left.

I bumped into a beautiful couple I had met on-line in Los Angeles. We ate a very late lunch at Westville (not east) and fed the Little Dog a huge chicken breast. The food seemed better (cleaner and fresher) at their West Village location.

We separated at around seven. I will see them again.

That night I thought I might watch the fireworks or go to a club. If I had been drinking or taking drugs I might have. But not drinking and not taking drugs somehow lessens the experience of being gay.

Of course I thought about Jake in that melee. What a perfect gay man he most probably is now. Drugging, drinking, fucking. Selfish, self obsessed. And I wondered if I was jealous that he could do those things and I could not. I wondered if I was missing out on being gay? I wondered if I could still be dignified and take a drink.

I thought about taking a drink a great deal at Gay Pride 2011.

Dan came home and we rearranged art on the freshly painted walls. He showed me a picture he had hidden in his office that he thought might be Sol Lewitt. He doubted it. I knew the moment I saw it that it was real but we shucked the frame and there was the neat signature.

Consequently it is off to be reframed in something more befitting.

That’s how important art work gets lost. People forgetting, not knowing. Not believing.

Related articles

• Dance review: Lucinda Childs revives ‘Dance’ at Royce Hall (latimesblogs.latimes.com)

Austin/New York

 

Last night I slept in a bed.

The previous nights I slept whilst they drove the car. Thomas in detention. The Dane miserable and grumpy because his best friends New York life had crumbled to dust. Lucie just trying to make the best of a bad lot.

I left them in Austin and settled into the four-hour wait for my flight to NYC.

I had nothing better to do so decided to get my hair cut. I walked through the oppressive heat to Birds Barbershop under the freeway at the ghetto end of 6th Street. Walking less than half a mile from the city center Austin’s miserable underbelly reveals itself.

Firstly, and most oddly, dogs are not allowed in barber shops in Austin so the Little Dog sat in a shady spot outside. Lara was assigned to cut my hair.

I asked for a number two buzz all over my head and beard.

Lara, less than five foot tall began shaving my head. She told me to uncross my legs. She told me to sit straight in my chair. She told me to put my feet on the foot rest. Then, when things were obviously not finished she announced that she had finished and how did it look? It looked terrible. It was perhaps the WORST hair cut I had ever had.

I told her to re buzz it so it might at least look even. She said, “I’m not comfortable with that.” As if she had been taught in some barber class how to avoid unwanted advances.

She picked at the mess of her own creation with a pair of scissors. Then she started trimming my beard. The past few days had been so exhausting I just let her hack at my face.

I paid the $25 and walked away.

In Austin airport I sat next to a thirty something French man who I ended up in bathroom stall. He has a huge, uncut cock.

My plane unloaded in Charlotte but the plane to Newark was cancelled. Charlotte airport is just packed with army boys. I could live in Charlotte airport.

Finally, after resigning myself to a night at the Novotel in Charlotte, I found a flight to Newark. On the plane East I completed the end of my novel and started sketching out the associated film idea. Because I now know the story so well it was easy as all hell to write the treatment. In fact, it may be one of the best things I have ever written.

As I sat in Charlotte thinking about the curious French man with the beautiful penis Dan texted me to say that same-sex marriage was now legal in NY state. I had two opposing thoughts, it struck me that even though the gays would celebrate this change in the local law it is actually merely a sop to us.

So? So? I thought angrily. This isn’t going to help Zach and his Scottish boy friend. If they get married immigration will not recognise their union, no one official anywhere is obliged to recognise this marriage anomaly other than the states where segregation is outlawed.

Then I wondered if Jake celebrated the change in the law, whether he owned that this vote applied to him. I thought about him getting married to a man, taking that man to his parents house. If he could stay loyal and monogamous?

I thought about gay marriage and just because we can…should we?

Arrived in the East Village just after midnight. Walked dog. Slept really well.

Party tonight and Monday night.

I have boring admin stuff to do this week. Then…thank God…I have my party.

Desert Flower Day Two

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.

They are playing Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues.

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.

We are on our way to Marfa, Texas to the Donald Judd hangers.

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.

Pilgrimage

Dawn.  Crows cawing.  Dawn chorus.

There is so much dew it looks and smells as there has been heavy rain.   I spend an hour every morning watering whatever I can from the path at the top of the house.   I enjoy this.

There are so many snails.

Had lunch in Hollywood yesterday with a writer.  Actually, we didn’t eat lunch.  I drank some iced tea. Met the man who owns Mama Shelter in Paris.  I have known him for years but I just didn’t know that he owned that hotel.  You know we stayed there don’t you?  This time last year.

How can I spend so much time wishing away the past?

Long conversation with a man in Sonoma who makes chicken coops.  They are expensive but look great.

Jennifer bought fresh garbanzo beans which seem like they might be easy to grow in my garden.  The melons are growing.  The black tomatoes are doing well.  Something ate the pumpkin seedlings.  The lemon trees, after the wet winter, are laden with fruit.  There are figs and plums and ruby grapefruit.

There are roses blooming all over the property.

What else can I tell you? I write my novel as per suggestion.  It gets better and better.  Perhaps I get better?  It started as one thing and already, with a little intelligent coaxing, is evolving into something quite different.  It started with vengeful intentions. Now it is getting funny.  It started with a view to kill.   Now it embraces the will to live.  These are not my ideas.

I would prefer my original plan.

I have just a few weeks to finish writing The Scarlett Empress. It is by far the most commercial thing I have ever written.  It is helping me though.  Helping me think in a different sort of way.

The more I write the other stuff…the less I want to write this.  Yet, this spurs me into action.

Three days until the ‘Big Adventure’.   The Dane arrives from NYC on Sunday.

Becoming a Pilgrim.  You’ll enjoy reading about it.  I have had to keep the plan a big secret.  I don’t want anyone ruining it.

The twins are running around the house in their boxers.

Pains in chest and arm.  Balls ache once again.  Nasty cough.

Brothers and Sisters

Wild Sage

Yesterday we went for a long hike though the Malibu Canyon State Park.

Beautiful wild flowers.  The Little Dog in 7th heaven.  Drove home via the Malibu Farmers Market and prepared fresh chard for dinner.  Bought delicious goats cheese flavoured with lavender.   Made dinner for three of us then slept FITFULLY as the dog was up and down the stairs all night barking at wildlife in the garden.

Saw Chris Cortazzo the local, gay celebrity realtor wearing jeans that were far too tight for a man of his shape and disposition.

Did you know that I am the eldest of 11 (maybe 12) children shared between my Mother who had my half brothers Stuart and Martin and my errant father Kuros Khazaei who had 8 or 9 further half brothers and sisters with 4 or 5 other women depending on which story you believe.

I have met all of my half siblings except Jonathon (no contact) and Natalie who I have spoken to on the telephone. So, here goes, here are the rest of my half blood brothers and sisters born in wedlock/legitimately by my father:  Dominic, Michael, Natalie, Jessica, James, Rebecca and Jonathon Khazaei.  Illegitimately by my father Karen and there maybe another called Roya…but this might be a paternal myth.  Like the diamond heist.  Can anyone shed any light on that?  Or that the Kray twins threw him out of a window?  Or that he carried a tape recorder everywhere with him?

That’s all there is to tell you about them.  Just wanted you to know.  Some of you think I am an only child.

The beautiful Dane arrives from NYC next Sunday and a couple of days later we will head off on our ‘Great Adventure!’ all of which we will document here and on YouTube.   Obviously it was at about this time last year that The Penguin and I went to France.  I’ve been reading over my rather romanticized blogged version of those weeks.

My anger refreshed.  Remember, the night I arrived in NYC he was already (I later discovered) seeing someone else in a ‘non exclusive relationship’ and decided to fetch his stash of meth from under his bed and snort it in front of me.  I feel so angry writing this.  That he would take such a risk with my sobriety.

By the time we left for Paris he had no respect or love or care for me what so ever.  He just wanted the free ride.

Whilst we were in Europe he was hooking up with other men when ever he could, using internet pornography, skyping with his ‘non-exclusive’ boy friend and lying to me every single day.

I think of those weeks in Europe and my heart sinks.   Mind you, how must his ex girl friend feel?  That on every vacation they ever took together during their 7 years he would do exactly the same.  Hooking up with random strangers in bathrooms then slipping into bed with her.  Her sucking a cock that had just been up a strangers ass.

I have just been writing the final pages of my novel so this revisited fury has some provenance.

As for the novel?  Anything I put my mind to…my heart into…what seems for others a long and painful process has become quite effortless.

I am now working with a book editor from the not so niche publisher.  It is most often described in the press as a ‘leading independent publisher’.   The time difference means that notes were waiting for me this morning when I woke up.  My first notes.  I was so excited I almost couldn’t look at them.

Wow, this editor thang is a revelation.

Working with someone who helps shape, define and redefine the work I am doing.  Helping me be less self-conscious.

As for the imprint by whom I will be published..their rosta of edgy authors is very impressive indeed.

I just heard that Laura Ziskin died of cancer yesterday.  Now I feel terrible.  She was a great friend of The Penguin.  I’m so sorry.

Yesterday I wandered the garden taking pictures.  Here are some of them: