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Archives for category: Los Angeles
Gays: In The Age of Consent. Mario Testino and Bruce Weber.
January 16, 2018 //
Mario Testino was a friend of ours. He had a studio in an abandoned hospital on Soho Square. Scott Crolla, Georgina Godley and others were frequent guests. My boyfriend in 1981 was Mario's long time friend and collaborator Patrick Kinmonth.
Patrick lived in a tiny apartment in Holland Park, deliberately disheveled, dusty yet filled with beautiful object. The place was brutally cold in the winter and a furnace in the summer. Patrick, according to the artist Craigie Aitchison dobbed me in to the police when they were looking for me to ask questions about my credit card and why I hadn't paid the bill. It was Patrick who lent me money to buy my Peter Doig and it was Patrick who encouraged me to make art. He was a vicious snob, exquisitely beautiful and at that time worked for Vogue magazine. He amused us all by mimicking Mario's Peruvian lilt. Patrick is a deft impersonator. The problem with Patrick? Nothing ever came of his own talent. He lives with the painfully shy food photographer Tessa Traeger in the West Country. He designs opera sets for out-of-the-way operas but never became the great anything everyone thought he might become.
The last time I saw Mario and Patrick we were in LA at The Chateau Marmont. I was having dinner in the garden they were having a party in the lounge with a bunch of gorgeous boy/men models. I sat beside Patrick for a moment but I didn't stay long. He enjoys scolding me. I made amends for some indiscretion and left. Mario looked at me disdainfully. Patrick enjoys being on Mario's winning team. He wrote the forward to Mario's book and he styles the most interesting shoots. Neither of them wanted me hanging around. You've seen pictures of young girls on a yacht wearing bikinis, oggled by old men? This was Mario's gay equivalent. I'd already ruined things by talking to him and Patrick, bathed in Mario's reflected glory, wanted me gone. He looked down his aquiline nose and told me I could have made so much more of myself. Yeah, I thought… if you hadn't worked with the establishment to destroy me. I probably could.
You know why old men put young girls on yachts? You'd think… so the girls can't escape. No, it's so their old men friends can't join the party. I returned to my dinner in the garden. Soon I saw Mario, Peter Pan like… screaming and laughing down the stairs with his crew. Patrick lagging behind like a heavy train on an old dress.
I've never written about Mario. Now, within the context of the salacious revelations and accusations leading to his spectacular firing from the Conde Nast creative family I revisit my association with him. Let me say immediately, I didn't know anything untoward was happening. I had never heard anything. The towel series he shot with models were obviously designed to get the model naked and to legitimize Mario's pervy intentions but I never heard from models who worked with him they felt uncomfortable.
Many of those same models who worked with Mario were not so discreet about their working relationship with Bruce Weber. For a decade or more I heard story after story from young men who had worked with Bruce and the discomfort they felt being 'relaxed' with his hands on their bodies, the 'breathing exercise' or asked to take off their shorts when they were alone with Bruce. I heard again and again about the notorious 'private archive' for which Bruce said he wanted their naked picture. I heard how he tantalized young men with lucrative campaigns and the promise of a life beyond their wildest dreams. I heard how he set models against each other, how within minutes of the private naked shots… would change his mind about the campaign promise he'd made, playing with them, manipulating them.
Yet, it seems, many models were perfectly happy to have their bodies used by Bruce. Yesterday I spoke to a male super model I know in NYC. Last year, after a few drinks, he described in detail how Bruce molested him, removed his underwear and taken pictures of him naked. I asked if he was willing to come forward, speak publicly. He told me I should be ashamed of myself for suggesting he told tales on Bruce. Thus we understand how Bruce, inspiring loyalty in others, groomed them for sexual molestation.
I've had my run ins with Bruce over the years. I asked him to take the Dorian Gray portrait. He curtly suggested that I wasn't the sort of person he could do business with. Oh… how the tables have turned.
Sunday. I had a late lunch in Hackney with a young gay artist. We talked about Mario and Bruce. He asked the difference between flirtation and harassment. Worried his flirtation might be misconstrued. How would he know? Of course, one asks ones self: why doesn't he know? He's a bright lad but his white male privilege is so ingrained he cannot differentiate between the two. He asked if the men now making complaints were somehow complicit. Many gay men make excuses for Bruce and Mario habitually devaluing our lives by suggesting the men who agree to work or consort with us are suspect or complicit. We remain baffled by the notion of consent. They knew what they were getting themselves into.
"Consent, that's for straight people? Women? Isn't it?" He looks confused.
We talk about the abuse of power between men (beyond top and bottom although that too) and how our anti social behaviour and lack of morality has been largely ignored by heterosexual society firstly before equality, because straight people found it distasteful and didn't really care. Then, after equality straight people were too embarrassed or confused to question how we lived in case they were accused of homophobia or insensitivity. Recent gay celebrity scandals have shocked many of our straight allies, realizing they don't know anything much about their gay friends at all. Like rats we live discreet and cautious lives just a few feet from theirs, scurrying from one assignation to another.
We've done a great job passing. For many years the only evidence we existed? When the police arrested, tried and sent us to jail for being gay. Cottaging. Tricking. Dressing up. Without these occasional mentions in the newspapers our gay lives would remain completely invisible. I broke the law simply by being born, alive and sexually active. Straight acting wasn't a fetish, it was a survival strategy… saving a young man from a beating or death. Ironically, this parallel life served many of us very well. As a young British gay man I enjoyed social mobility, sexual freedom and access to extraordinary financial opportunities my straight peers could only dream of. Yet, I paid the price for all of those benefits by surrendering my moral imperative.
Paris Hilton is maligned in the press for saying gay men on gay hook up apps are 'disgusting'. Which, after being sent 50 or so asshole pics this week… one might be inclined to agree.
With equality comes responsibility. Some fought hard to enjoy marriage equality. We fought hard in the UK to have homophobic laws like section 28 overturned. In the UK these laws were ratified in Parliament and are hard to revoke. We are tentatively exploring a new moral landscape. Morals defined by heterosexuals, most gay men are unprepared for these changes and how this shift toward 'normalcy' may affect our lives. Simply, our lifestyle compared with that of the average heterosexual may not bear scrutiny post Weinstein and Mario, Bryan, Bruce and Kevin may just be the very tip of the iceberg.
Entitled, affluent gay white men are especially morally impoverished. Many still live secret, compartmentalized and shameful lives blighted by addiction, alcoholism and mental illness. To many straight people we may seem carefree, highly entertaining, a cause to celebrate 'gay pride' and drink rainbow cocktails… but, on our own with our second screens we indulge less salubrious, secret lives using hook up apps as the portal, through which many enter a dark and disgusting world of chem sex, lies, cheating and despair.
They say, everyone lies on-line. We live in lying times. Acceptable lies are now morally ring fenced. The lies most gay men tell before they come out are perfectly… acceptable. A habit we are loathed to break. Most gay men are addicted to lying. Only yesterday I met a closeted 25-year-old gay man. I asked him why he was in the closet? He described the same feelings of shame and despair I felt nearly 40 years ago. Some things never seem to change… however much I am told, 'it doesn't matter, nobody cares'. I explained to him why he needs to come out of the closet. He needs to stop lying. The more he lies the less respect he will have for the truth. As I mentioned in my previous blog gay men get into nasty habits around the truth and the sooner we embrace the truth the less damage is done to our morality and our integrity.
The last time I saw Mario he was skipping like a teenager down the stairs at The Chateau Marmont surrounded by beautiful teens. Like Peter Pan, a 60-year-old man unable to face the truth about his failing body and his failing ability to make good decisions. He could not stop himself grabbing them by the pussy. He is the same as Trump. Made of the same stuff. Gripped by power, fame and entitlement he understood himself to be unassailable. Nothing would ever bring him down… his legacy would glitter in perpetuity. The dream maker, the fantasist, the story-teller… the liar. Conjuring a universe of beauty, Mario forsook a life of loving relationships for an abuse of power.
Anna Wintour, who I confronted publicly about her reticence to stand up to Weber, made this statement last week.
Today, allegations have been made against Bruce Weber and Mario Testino, stories that have been hard to hear and heartbreaking to confront. Both are personal friends of mine who have made extraordinary contributions to Vogue and many other titles at Condé Nast over the years, and both have issued objections or denials to what has emerged. I believe strongly in the value of remorse and forgiveness, but I take the allegations very seriously, and we at Condé Nast have decided to put our working relationship with both photographers on hold for the foreseeable future.
Of course Anna Wintour is torn, it is hard to align what she hears and what she knows of her friends Mario and Bruce. She is rightfully appalled, but thankfully she doesn't know the half of it… she merely glimpsed, very briefly into the dark heart of every gay man I know.
Tags Anna Wintour, Bruce Weber, Chateau Marmont Hotel, Craigie Aitchison, Dorian Gray, Mario Testino, Patrick Kinmonth, Scott Crolla
Categories Fantasy, Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Queer, Whitstable
January 9, 2017 //
It's the morning after the Golden Globe awards. I don't have a hangover but I do have a severe headache. Ahead of my rant, the first order of the day? Congratulate Barry Jenkins who brilliantly won the best drama golden globe for his exquisite film, Moonlight. By awarding this black/queer film best drama the HFPA have thrown down a gauntlet to Hollywood. They are daring The Academy to address its crippling lack of diversity. I predict that Moonlight will go on collecting nominations and awards (will win SAG, Spirit Awards) but can it win Academy Awards? Here lies the rub. The only two bankable commodities in this little film are Jenkins and Harris who are both Hollywood gold.
The liberal, Hollywood talent elite are trilling about Meryl Streep. They forget the less liberal Hollywood majority booed Michael Moore after receiving his Bowling for Columbine Oscar and using the academy podium to remind us of President Bush's fictitious reasons for invading Iraq in his brilliant and oft quoted 'fictitious times' speech. President Obama of course, perpetuated those fictions but did it by stamping out dissent and whistle blowing within the United States. Snowden, Assange, Manning. My heroes.
The real money in Hollywood is behind Trump… the power. The talent can make art out of outrage and in turn make billions of $ for the white Hollywood establishment. I can't imagine former friend and UTA boss Jeremy Zimmer is anything other than thrilled by the prospect of a Trump presidency, salivating over the kind of big money he's going to make these next four to eight years.
I wonder who reps Barry Jenkins? I can tell you one thing. He won't have a black agent or manager at one of the leading agencies or management companies… because there aren't any. Until there are black faces repping big money at the agencies, black faces producing movies or living on Carbon Beach in Malibu or heading up the teamsters union… Hollywood will be as is it always has: racist. A white industry where predominantly white men control the money. It is not a place where your dreams will come true, it is a place where old white men will decide which of their dreams will come true using your talent.
It's simply not good enough to call Trump names at award shows. Yeah he's a prick, yeah he's hollow, yes he's predictable. Are we gonna repeat ourselves every day? Expecting a different outcome? Let's call him what he is: Donald Trump is the most powerful white supremacist in the world. Riding an international wave of fascism. Your president is a white supremacist.
As I've asked a million times before, are you willing to put your life on the line to fight fascism? Are you willing to demonstrate, be interned or tortured or imprisoned? Sooner or later Facebook rants and memes just won't cut it. History proves that when things get nasty the people do as they are told. However brave they say they are before the black shirts arrive. It's my guess that you'll put up with it too. You'll go on the one million woman march… then they'll round-up the South Americans in California and what will you do? Then they'll go after lgbt rights… and what will you do? They'll outlaw abortion. What will you do? They'll shoot to kill and fill the prisons with any and every black man who looks scary and what will you do? Tweet?
You'll tweet about it.
I'm very slowly going blind. Foolishly, after many years of not looking carefully at my plate, I started wearing my glasses when I eat. Oh My God, revolting! Gelatinous sauces oozing from the edge of beef and chicken. Seeds baked into bread. Glazes and jus and creamed potato sprinkled with chives. I want to vomit, overwhelmed by the detail, the slightest movement as you press down onto the burger and my lunch becomes a suppurating sore discharging blood, guacamole and mayonnaise. I am captivated by gravy as it seeps under and drips around roast pork. Nauseated, I have to take my glasses off. On Saturday night we had pasta with sea urchin butter and caviar at Fish and Game in Hudson. Although delicious, I couldn't fully enjoy it until it was just a blur on my plate otherwise, it was a mesmerizing… awful experience.
The dogs know it is bitterly cold this morning. Minus 13. They are under the covers. Hidden away. Unlike England which is cold, wet, dark and raw thankfully it is bright and cold here upstate making the day less of a chore. Our store, Tivoli General is open and there are AA meetings in Hudson.
I stayed in bed, too distracted by pain. The infection in my jaw getting worse.
The third Monday of January is notorious for suicide. This third Monday in January will be no different. A mass suicide event will take place in the USA and nobody will say a word.
Did you know I fell out with Stephen Fry a year or so ago? I had the audacity to mention the freedoms and privilege a celebrity enjoys. Celebrities HATE when you discuss their fame. Or in his case… his twitter feed. We then had an email fight about God and the existence of God. I asked him if he realised almost all of his sober friends have a god in their life. He reluctantly accepted that spirituality may be very loosely beneficial for some people but that's that. There's a connection (if you can be bothered to work it out) between his reluctance to discuss celebrity and his eagerness to dismiss a certain kind of God. "Stephen, you don't have to believe in God," I said. "As long as you know you're not God."
He said rather ominously, "Be very careful."
Not being very careful, I asked, "So if you don't belive in God… who do you cry out to every time you try killing yourself?"
That was it. No more Stephen Fry.
Tags Chelsea Manning, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Jeremy Zimmer, Julian Assange, Meryl Streep
Categories Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Queer, Tivoli NY
Christopher Cortazzo Realtor: The Bad Gay
Malibu California
Prologue.
Should I dedicate this blog to affluent, gay, white male: 'The King' Chris Cortazzo?
Chris Cortazzo, Coldwell Banker's top-selling Malibu realtor. Remember? He accused me of extortion when I threatened to blog about him? Chris and his legal team predicted a felony in my future… an automatic deportation.
Chris wanted to fine me, humiliate me, take away my home and most importantly he wanted to silence me… yet, after months of bargaining with expensive help from his Super Lawyer Bryan Freedman… Chris Cortazzo accomplished no fines, no deportation, no felony.
When all was said and done Chris achieved a wobbly misdemeanor and a recently expired, three-year gag order… as part of a convoluted plea deal. The ubiquitous plea deal routinely offered to people like me in the USA who couldn't afford a fair trial.
No. Chris Cortazzo is undeserving of any dedication. He is a very, very bad gay.
Instead, I dedicate this blog to every man woman and child presently held illegally in jails and prisons all over 'the land of the free'. There are presently 2,500,000 people in US jails.
Two and a half million people.
Private and public US jails and prisons are crammed with brown men, women and children who could not afford a fair trial and under hopeless duress accepted a plea deal. Worse, there are corroborated stories of pre trial detainees tortured into signing false confessions or incriminated by the police and corrupt, racist prosecutors.
Thanks to organizations like the Innocence Project hundreds of men and women have had their convictions overturned and on occasions released from decades of solitary confinement for crimes they did not commit.
Cowed by PTSD many will not survive their freedom. Suicide and terminal illness rates are high. It is hard for them to live normal lives. They return to unrecognisable neighbourhoods, children estranged, families and friends scattered. In some states they are barred from voting. For the decades of torture they endured many sue and win handsome payouts but after huge 'civil rights' attorneys bills, taxes and years waiting for payment they receive only a little remuneration.
Fearful, white tax payers unquestioningly pay whatever it costs for more prisons, death row, jails, the police and the military. They believe mass incarceration makes them safer. They rarely enquire: Who profits from mass incarceration? They are unaware that the same people profiting from corrupt and illegal wars in Iraq and Libya also own the jails and the prisons ignoring the untold suffering within.
Whilst the 1% get richer on the backs of the poor, hiding their ill-gotten gains elsewhere, avoiding taxation… disenfranchised people of color are radicalized by brutal treatment whilst incarcerated. The poor know they are easy prey. Inside the big house they are gouged further by deputies who own and operate vending machines. A 50 cent pack of noodles sold to those who can least afford it… for $3. Loved ones forced to pay 1000 times more than you and I to receive phone calls from the incarcerated.
In America… if you are poor, vulnerable or sick… expect to be enslaved by the state.
Black communities are bullied by a police force trained to raise revenue by issuing hundreds of bogus tickets. In Ferguson MO 80% of the residents had been ticketed for minor infractions, raising millions of dollars for a failing local government. Private prisons are kept profitably full by agreement between local politicians and prison owners. Remember Judge Ciavarella, jailed for receiving payment from a prison owner for imprisoning innocent children? Some of those innocent kids killed themselves.
Two million children are arrested every year in the US, 95% for non-violent crimes. 66% of children incarcerated never return to school. The US incarcerates nearly 5 times more children than any other nation in the world.
Ferguson and Mark Ciaverella are just the tip of the iceberg. As in any tin pot dictatorship, powerful Americans use jail to silence whistleblowers and truth tellers.
This is my story: the story of rich, entitled white folk taking down and silencing enemies using the public court system as their personal weapon.
The blog referred to during this post is the blog I allegedly 'threatened' to publish if Chris Cortazzo didn't right his wrongs. The original blog exists publicly in its entirety as court records, evidence submitted by the prosecution during my pre-trial.
Why now? Why write this 4 years after the event? I might have left my story in the past but this story became unexpectedly relevant. I was recently contacted by lawyers who revealed I wasn't the only Malibu property owner who had fallen foul of realtor Christopher Cortazzo.
Powerful friends, they say, make powerful enemies. Chris and his friends proved they could do anything they wanted to me and others. There were times when I suspected my very own lawyer had been bought by the other side.
This is a Hollywood story. As with any epic Hollywood story it requires a suspension of disbelief. This narrative snakes in and out of reality tv, multi-million dollar homes, secretive Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and into the many canyons of Malibu, Bel Air and Beverly Hills. It stars 'A' listed talent and their representatives, a cast of corrupt policemen, prosecutors and the judiciary. It is the story of shameful… affluent, white gay men and their friends.
It is fortune lost and found.
Dear Chris,
Let's get one thing clear before we go any further. I don't want anything from you. Nothing. I don't want your money, I don't want your time, I don't want your body. I want nothing from you… never… ever.
This is the blog you didn't want me to write, the blog you spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to kill. This is the blog I sat in the Los Angeles Men's County Jail contemplating. This is it. This is the blog you wanted me to regret.
Chris. Are you ready?
Before I start, I have two words to say to you: Hiroshi Horiike.
Hiroshi Horiike on the steps of his Malibu Mansion.
This name probably means nothing to your starry friends and clients, your 1% billionaire neighbours or the older Malibu home owners you nurture until they are ready to sell their ocean side properties. The celebrities with whom you carouse all over the world may not be aware of Hiroshi Horiike. I doubt if you make mention of his name in the many mansions, yachts and fast cars you inhabit.
Let me educate my readers.
Millionaire Hiroshi Horiike spent two years searching California for a dream home, one grander than any he could find in his native China.
After visiting more than 80 properties in the Los Angeles area with an agent from Coldwell Banker, Horiike paid $12.25 million in cash for a four-bedroom, six-bath Tuscan-style mansion with a swimming pool, spa and guest house on 5.1 acres (2.1 hectares) overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
There was just one catch. After settling in, Horiike found the Malibu home had less living space than he'd been told — a third less. It had 9,434 square feet (876 square meters) instead of the 15,000 square feet shown in marketing brochures from the seller's agent, who also worked with Coldwell Banker.
You were the realtor repping both Hiroshi and the seller. You were the realtor. Chris, you were the realtor referred to in this quote and subsequent court documents. Sounds dodgy doesn't it? No wonder you wanted to shut my big mouth.
Horiike, who also goes by his native Chinese name Peng Hong Ling after adopting a Japanese name as an adult, claimed he was cheated and sued the agent and the brokerage. He won a state appeals court ruling that sellers' agents have a fiduciary duty to protect buyers' interests, not just those of their clients, when there's only one brokerage involved in a deal.
Of course you and Coldwell Banker have been defending yourselves vigorously in the courts… there's a great deal at stake for Californian real estate agents.
If left standing, the decision could compel disclosure of confidential client information or force brokerages to drop out of transactions where they represent both buyers and sellers, threatening commissions on tens of thousands of deals.
Have you fucked it up for your Californian realtor colleagues? Have you derailed their gravy train?
Horiike and I have a great deal in common when it comes to you, Chris.
Horiike and I were both US property virgins. We foolishly thought we could trust our realtors. We were naive, we were excited, we were unaware… in the unlikely event we were duped by unscrupulous realtors when we purchased our homes… we only had two years for discrepancies to reveal themselves before a remarkably short statute of limitation kicks in. I discovered my geological discrepancy after two years… some people must have rubbed their hands in glee.
Hiroshi, he's the Mensch! Hiroshi is the man who won't let go of the bone, Chris. And you… you are Horiiki's bone. He's taking his case all the way to the Supreme Court because, like me, he had his dream shattered by realtors.
But let's concentrate on us for a moment Chris. Just us. Before this blew up you already had a very low opinion of me. An opinion you share with many white, affluent, gay men. Chris you described me, after our couple of dates, in court documents as 'dark and creepy'.
Let's cast our minds back to happier times. Chris, let's remember when I arrived with society photographer Todd Eborle at the annual Barry Diller pre-Oscar garden party a few years back (I sat between you and Helen Mirren) we had a nice enough time. We ate from the buffet. We marveled at Rupert Murdoch and David Geffen chatting animatedly at the edge of the garden.
As I mentioned earlier, we'd had a date or two in West Hollywood but it didn't work out. You claim we didn't have oral sex. If you can't remember sucking my cock, I'm perfectly happy to forget it too. The next time I saw you? At the house on Hume Road, Malibu. I loved that house like Horiiki loved his, and a little like Horiiki I'd seen a ton of houses before I found my dream house on Hume Road.
Corey Nelson my dumb, good-looking realtor was sick of showing me property. He had shown me hundreds of homes. Sometimes… I wouldn't go inside. Rude!
Corey Nelson
The purchase of Hume Road happened before the crash when realtors didn't have to work very hard to sell a house. We had given up looking. Corey Nelson and I hadn't spoken for months. So, when I found my little slice of paradise I called Corey because I knew he would appreciate making a sale. I could have called anyone but I felt loyal to Corey. I had no clue his inexperience and ambition would severely compromise me.
I was renting an apartment in Hollywood that had once belonged to Joni Mitchell. Every day I would drive from El Cerritos Place to the Malibu property and sit in the garden, sit on the terrace and gaze at the view. I was desperate to buy the house on Hume Road. Indeed, my enthusiasm predicated just how much of a liberty you two groovy hucksters might take with me.
I met the owner of the Hume Road House, Kelly Mormon. He asked if I wanted to move in before I bought the house. I moved in. I explored the neighborhood. I saw a family of bob cats and eagles wheeling through the canyon. Humming birds fed from the passion fruit flowers that grew on my terrace. Walking Las Flores Canyon one warm evening I met a grumpy man from Cal Trans who told me buying a house on Hume Road was a really bad idea. He told me the city should buy the houses in the canyon and demolish them. I'd heard rumors the land was unstable. The neighbours denied it of course. They assured me everything was just fine.
I wrote to Corey explaining my fears. When we subpoenaed his emails it was revealed soon after I wrote that email… Corey Nelson wrote you Chris asking what he should do about my cold feet. Your reply was chilling. "Call me," you said. I can't imagine the plan you hatched during the call.
Corey abandoned his fiduciary duty when he made that call to you, Chris.
PRE-HISTORY
Let's talk? You and me? Can I confide in you?
Do you remember the film? I'd made a film people loved and I'd been nominated for a British Academy Award. They warn the foolhardy: never move to LA unless invited. Industry people (my agent and manager) told me my interests would be best served if I moved to Hollywood. In 2007, after 35 years, I sold my beautiful sea-side house in Whitstable Kent. I started house hunting in Los Angeles.
I met Corey Nelson from Sotheby's a well-known realty company. He was one of those cute ex Bruce Weber models who would do almost anything to make a sale. I met him with an older gay realtor who claimed he was fucking him. We met at Joan's on Third in West Hollywood. I love Joan. She's a romantic! Have you heard her story?
Corey and I spent a long time house hunting. I looked at hundreds of houses, none I liked. Corey was cute and fun. We spent time together socially, we climbed Runyon Canyon. I trusted him. I believed realtors in the USA behaved like estate agents in the UK: with honesty and accountability.
Months into our search I had still not found a house.
My recently deceased friend Jean Perramon lived in The Santa Monica Mountains. His house had views stretching from Santa Monica to Point Dume. Walking his neighborhood one evening I peeked past a large For Sale sign through the gates of an abandoned estate. To Jean's consternation I opened the gates and wandered down the steep drive into two acres of lush, semi tropical gardens. Huge cactus trees, ancient palms. Bananas, citrus, plums. Stone paths weaving through the landscape. At the end of the path an empty, unlocked 1970's post and beam family home divided into two apartments.
I told Corey about the house and he introduced me to Chris Cortazzo, Kelly's agent.
Well, we scarcely needed introducing.
Listen, let's face it…Chris has done very well for himself. He comes from a humble Malibu family, his mother is often seen eating lunch in the garden at Cross Creek. His fireman father is dead. He sells more real estate than any other broker in the USA. For a man who is scarcely literate… he has done very well for himself. Perhaps it is gay mythology but your story includes a romantic liaison with billionaire Barry Diller who, it is alleged, set you up as a realtor and let you sell his property. Is that true?
He writes this about himself on his own website:
Yes, Chris Cortazzo's name is everywhere in Malibu, because that's what happens when you're "The King." It was actually the Bravo TV program Million Dollar Listing, in which CC was profiled among several other L.A.-area top-producing agents, that coined the term "The King of Malibu". Perhaps it was his incredible production that earned him the title. Perhaps it owes to the type of clientele he often serves, namely some of the biggest names in entertainment and business.
After renting the Malibu house on Hume Road for a couple of weeks I asked Corey to write an offer. The house had been on the market for a year or more hand had a price reduction. I live in a country where houses languish on the market for years, it did not occur to me that if a house had been on the market for a few months it may be problematic. Nor did it occur to me that I may be working with a couple of realtors who were determined, at any cost, to sell me a doozy.
My soppy, inexperienced realtor wanted his commission and was sick of showing me endless properties. We had written offers before but they had not been accepted. I had never ordered an inspection.
The problem with the beautiful house? During the past ten years there had been landslides on either side of the property. There was illegal construction in the garden including un-permitted retaining walls and water tanks degrading the land, making it more liable to slide.
They knew if I had this critical information I would not buy the house and more importantly… it would be worth far less than the 1.4 million dollars I paid for it.
Neither the seller nor Chris disclosed this information. Information, by law, they were required to reveal. Corey told me a thorough geological report would cost me $10,000. So, using the excuse I would save money I needn't spend, they presented me with an expensive and thorough looking geological report conducted in 2004. Corey persuaded me this report was adequate for my purposes, advising me I should have a verbal report from another geologist to confirm nothing seismic had happened after the 2004 report.
The difference between 2004 and the year I bought the house? The house no longer sat on an HISTORIC slide as the report stated. A historic slide means that during the past decade no noticeable seismic activity had taken place within a thousand feet of the property and the land was stable. In 2004 the house sat comfortably on the ridge line, foundations built on bedrock.
However, shortly after that 2004 report was written large parts of Las Flores Canyon including Hume Road began sliding into the sea. My house now sat on an ACTIVE slide. This important information was deliberately kept from me. Moreover, Corey told me that he could not find a local geologist who would come to the house so we hired a geologist recommended by… Chris Cortazzo. I was assured by Corey that the 'verbal' geological report from a geologist was perfectly normal. Again, abandoning his fiduciary duties.
The young, good-looking geologist sat uncomfortably with us in the garden, Corey at his side. He held the 2004 geological report. I asked if there was anything I needed to know that may influence my purchase of the property. I asked many, many questions. I needed to know everything before I invested my hard-earned $1, 500,000. Without looking into my eyes the 'geologist' told me the house had a "reasonable half an inch of 'creep'" but failed to mention either of the recent slides or the illegality of the un-permitted terracing.
I bought the house. After we signed contracts at the close of escrow, Chris shook my hand and said, with half a grin, "You're going to own that house for a very long time."
Only when I tried selling the house… did I learn what he meant.
The next time I saw Chris Cortazzo he was sitting in a sex addict meeting where he claims he was 'helping a friend'. After seeing him at the meeting I wrote a sweet email welcoming him to SAA. It's hard to admit a problem like sex addiction. I wanted him to feel safe when he returned. That's what we are taught to do in AA SAA etc… we look out for each other. We reach out. Almost immediately the troubled transphobic sex therapist Sean McFarlane who lead the meeting told me not to contact Chris again… under any circumstances.
Sean McFarlane chaired the Brentwood Sex Addict meeting (ironically held in a middle school until the school realized a famous pedophile attended the meeting) for over a decade, a serious break from the 12 traditions and frowned upon within the Anonymous community. McFarlane didn't seem to care much for the AA rules unless others broke them. His personal recovery, doubted by many, seemed 'unsponsored'. He tells a melodramatic, highly questionable personal story and is well-known (to those within the addict community) to prey upon vulnerable celebrities eager to keep their failing marriages.
Consequently, he has a gang of loyal Hollywood/sports celebrities with whom he consorts in and out of therapy. He would boast how he taught Mike Tyson's daughter to swim. The daughter who tragically… drowned. Our 'trusted servant' McFarlane rarely accounted for the huge 7th Tradition purse he collected every week and handed over to his 'treasurer', John Artz.
It is rumored Sean McFarlane would take sex addicts through the 12 Steps… if they paid him. Again, discouraged within the anonymous cult who pride themselves on sharing their sobriety with newcomers… for 'fun and for free'.
Sean 'no shame in my game' McFarlane is a transphobe. I never once heard anyone in that Sex Addict meeting challenge his transphobia. He considered all trans people 'evil'. Whenever he had the opportunity he told graphic tales of his own heroism in the face of evil transsexuals. How he saved one or other of his many trans chaser clients from the grips of an evil 'tranny hooker'.
The group would cheer Sean's transphobia. Lawyers, agents, actors… casting directors. Collectively witch hunting the trans people Sean considered evil. Lately, as the Hollywood conversation turns toward inclusivity, color blind casting, gender neutrality… one wonders how Sean and his creepy white guy transphobic friends in the entertainment industry will survive?
THE REVEAL
The last time I heard from the 'geologist', he had turned to Jesus. I was in my bed… at home in Malibu. It was dark. He called from a blocked phone. He was distressed. He apologized for calling late at night. He stumbled over his words. He told me Corey instructed him not to mention anything that would influence me away from buying the house. The 'geologist' felt guilty. He omitted to tell me the status of the slide had changed from historic.. to active.
He told me the lie plagued his conscience.
People ask: What did you do when he told you? What could I do? I tell them. "I listened."
When we subpoenaed the geologist during my pre-trial… a completely different man (50 years old and morbidly obese) arrived at the court-house. He didn't want to be there, he was sweating bullets. It was all the proof I needed but the pre-trial judge refused to listen to our evidence. It was one of your triumphs, Chris. The truth couldn't help us. The statute of limitations had long run out.
When I spoke to Corey he said, "I knew this would come back to haunt me." You're right Corey, if you have any conscience, it's going to haunt you… the rest of your life.
After the geologist's late night call I emailed Chris letting him know I'd give him time to 'do the right thing' and find a solution including a 'fair and equitable' settlement… or I would start a campaign against him… including paid advertisements in local newspapers, national news articles and a revelatory blog.
Soon after writing this email I was arrested and held without recourse to bail in LA Men's County Jail.
TP… the bug-eyed, ex head of a major film studio and his son were Malibu neighbours and regular faces at my sex addict meeting in Brentwood. TP's son described sex therapist Sean McFarlane's reaction when he heard I'd been arrested,
"Sean leapt out of his seat and punched the air screaming… 'he's going down'."
Bryan Freedman, John Adler (my SAA sponsor), TP and others smiled broadly at the news. The men in that sex addict meeting coalesced around you Chris, you became one of their walking wounded.
Bryan Freedman, another self identified sex addict/alcoholic I saw almost every morning at either the 7am Palisades AA stag meeting or the Sex Addict meeting in Brentwood.
Chris, how did you meet Bryan Freedman? Did you meet him at the sex addict meeting? Did transphobic sex therapist Sean MacFarlane introduce you? Bryan is a great fan of transphobic sex therapist Sean McFarlane.
Bryan Freedman's firm Freedman + Taitelman would represent your interests against me.
Bryan J. Freedman was selected as one of the most influential entertainment litigators in the country by The Hollywood Reporter in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 and in all eight years has been named in the Top 100 Power Lawyers list. Additionally, Bryan was recognized as a Southern California "Super Lawyer" in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, a peer-based award reserved only for the top 5% of all lawyers in Southern California. Also, Bryan has the unique distinction of being 1 of only 22 selected Honorees to Variety's 2015 Legal Impact Report.
I know a very different Bryan Freedman. This is the man who wept in AA meetings because he couldn't bully his son into being the first jewish NBA basket ball player. This is the married man who confided in a public SAA meeting he couldn't stop intriguing with women… looking at small ads whilst his wife slept beside him. This is the man who would high-five the equally despicable UTA Talent Agency boss Jeremy Zimmer at the AA meeting 'above the bank' in the Palisades where we sat together for more than a decade.
How involved was Bryan Freedman? How much money did you pay him to have me vanish into the jail system? I'm guessing he was involved with the plan? He's a Super Lawyer. His plan might include a cast of corruptible characters. How much did they have to do with my illegal incarceration in the Los Angeles Men's County Jail?
You and your advisors believed I might bend to your will if you held me in jail long enough.
Remember, we have to suspend our disbelief:
Just about every branch of Ferguson government (police, municipal court, city hall) participated in "unlawful" targeting of African-American residents for tickets and fines, the Justice Department concluded this week.
At first, the plan unfolded splendidly! We understand how utterly corrupt American prosecutors are. Existing in a semi secretive world of grand juries and trumped-up charges designed to protect the rights of the 1%. County prosecutor Anne-Marie Wise is no different, she played out your rich boy charade very admirably. Anne-Marie, persuaded there was a case to answer by your impressive lawyer, sent her ZZ Top cops to arrest me. They kept their cop badges under their waist length beards.
I agreed to meet Chris on the Pacific Coast Highway outside the Country Kitchen in Malibu (opposite the home of Tom Pollock) where he had offered to make his amends for ripping me off. Instead, as I ate my breakfast burritos the cops arrived. As I sat handcuffed in the blazing sun a black Rolls Royce with blackened windows cruised past, it lingered. Was that you Chris? I knew the Rolls had something to do with you, Chris… so did the cops.
Did you enjoy watching me handcuffed Chris? Did you take photographs on your cell phone?
ZZ Top and I headed up Las Flores Canyon to Hume Road. The crazy bearded cops ran around my property with guns. Why? Because this is the melodrama of over paid, over weight, underutilized… LA cops. Once in the house they meaninglessly tossed furniture and emptied my draws. They seized my lap top and took me to the Calabasas police station where they interviewed and charged me with a felony extortion. Extortion (for those who remain confused) is either threatening to reveal a secret or a crime unless money is paid. It usually accompanies threats of violence.
Even though I had a valid US visa I was informed I could not post bail because of an Immigration Hold. If an alien in the USA is charged with a felony they can be held for up to 48 hours by ICE to determine if they are a threat to the nation.
Your plan was working.
A day later I was taken to The LA Men's County Jail. Processed. Screamed at. They gave me a chest X-ray. They fed me a baloney sandwich. They asked if I was either suicidal or gay. I told them I'm gay because I'd heard from Robert Downey Jr this was the only way to survive the jail and anyway I'd been out of the closet for a long time and I wasn't about to crawl back in. Not on your account Chris Cortazzo.
48 hours passed. I was not released.
Whoever flicked the switch… whoever threw away the key did so at this moment.
To achieve this plan they needed a dependable federal government insider: someone prepared to override ICE protocol and keep me detained for longer than the mandatory 48 hour Immigration Hold. This part of the plan required someone important in Federal Government to break the rules. At the final reckoning I was held longer in Men's County Jail on an ICE hold than any other pre trial detainee… ever.
Keeping a pre-trial detainee in jail until they bend to the will of the prosecutor is a common ploy. It happens all over the USA. It is happening right now as you are reading this blog. People agree to anything to get out of jail and they assumed I'd plead guilty to felony EXTORTION and an automatic deportation.
As you can imagine, the jail is a dangerous place. I had to get a grip. Surprisingly I was very well equipped to deal with the jail. AA/SAA had taught me a few simple tricks:
1. Wherever I am… I am in the right place.
2. It's all part of God's plan.
3. Acceptance. Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.
So many of the lessons I learned sitting with Sean MacFarlane, Jeremy Zimmer, Bryan Freedman and you Chris in the rooms of SAA and AA… listening to the 12 Steps kicked in and saved my ass.
And so… I sat in the jail. For 86 days I sat in the jail. I've already written about that, Chris. I'm sure you've read it.
Almost immediately, the plan began to gently fray. The first part of the plan depended on my finding the situation in jail… terrifying and intolerable.
You thought I was like you and Bryan and Jeremy and so many entitled, affluent white dudes? You were certain I'd agree to anything to get out… including your terms. You thought I'd crumble. You thought I'd lay down and die. But the only thing crumbling… was your plan.
Chris, as you subsequently learned, I'm a stubborn son of a bitch and I wasn't agreeing to anything. So, for a few weeks I went back and forth to court. The first two judges were ghastly and totally on your side. They refused to listen to evidence, they were rude and surly to my attorney.
Do you remember? I sat in front of you at the pre-trial. I was shackled. You sneered at me Chris. This is where I learned how much you hated me after our date. This is where it became apparent to me the rich can do anything they want in an American court. They can buy the court just like they buy everything else. Protected by your tame prosecutor, Chris… you looked so very smug.
After keeping me illegally in the jail for 86 days without a whiff of surrender, without capitulating, without giving an inch…. the ACLU started sniffing around my case and someone got scared. Someone was likely going to be held responsible if something happened to me. If I died in the jail of cancer… or a gall stone blockage… or fell victim to the violent deputy culture in the jail, which might very well have happened.
I realized two months into my incarceration: Wow, this situation is illegal and someone… someone is going to have to pay for this! I'm going to get paid for this. I relaxed, thinking to myself: another tough day at the office. I played cards, I ate pork rinds, I had visitors, I kept myself out of trouble and I waited.
I told my friends on the phone I suspected my incarceration was illegal… knowing I was being listened to. Then, one evening with a little warning from the Mexican nuns working in the jail for the Esperanza Project, I was called from my dorm, sat in a holding cell for a few hours, handed my clothes and ushered out of a small, unassuming door at the back of the jail.
The puckered asshole of the jail. Shat out onto the balmy LA streets.
At the final reckoning I was paid for every day I was illegally held as a pre-trial detainee without recourse to bail.
Fuck Chris, the day they released me from the jail you were on the phone for hours to your lawyers and the prosecutor and the prosecutor to your lawyers. My release terrified you and a simple order of protection wouldn't mollify you. As I was getting out of the jail and headed home to Malibu and my dog… you were hiring 24 hour body guards. You were frightened I would come after you. And why wouldn't you be scared? After all, you and your friends had kept me locked up illegally for three months.
I must admit, when I first read this flurry of activity in your restitution claim (you expected me to pay your lawyers fees) and the hiring of body guards as documented in your restitution claim I laughed out loud. I have no other weapon than this blog. The only weapon I have is so American: freedom of speech.
Once out of the jail my lawyers and I relaxed into a long wait for you and your lawyers to alter your expectations. You hadn't really worked out what would happen if I didn't capitulate. You hadn't worked on finding a corrupt trial judge. You thought I'd be long gone.
BRIAN TURNAUER
Were you assured by 'Super Attorney' Bryan Freedman and his unfortunately large featured lackey Brian Turnauer they would find you a sympathetic trial judge?
The catastrophic and totally unexpected final blow to your plan came soon after my release: Ms Wise seemed poleaxed by the judge assigned to our case: enter the unassailable Judge Jessic. The Judge who couldn't be bought. The judge most likely to have integrity. You should have seen Anne-Marie's face Chris, when she realized our Judge wasn't going to play the game. My favorite line of Judge Jessic's to Ms Wise?
"I must admit I'm finding it difficult wrapping my head around this charge. What's the difference between threatening to blog and threatening to write a Yelp review?"
The prosecutor hung her head and said quietly… 'nothing'. You should have been there Chris is was GREAT. Just like the time… and I'm repeating myself but it's worth repeating… when Judge Jessic wondered out loud why I was sitting in the dock and not you. We all know the reason for that Chris? Because justice in the USA is reserved for the few who can afford it.
How quickly a felony dissolves into a convoluted misdemeanor when you can't buy the judge. At the suggestion of the ACLU I refused to plead guilty to anything and opted for the Californian 'No Contest' plea. The huge restitution claim was whittled to almost nothing. No fines or costs to pay. All you were likely to get out of your 'plan' was a gag order. A three-year gag order.
I had to sit quietly on probation for 18 months. A grimy realtor from AA, the appalling self-promoting/self-obsessed/self-publishing Robert Radcliffe (Sotheby's Palisades), called the police and told them I had been rude about you Chris Cortazzo. I read the police interview, Rob. The lies you told! The police jumped all over the claim spending hours of their time filing reports. Jessic threw it out. He knew what was happening.
Tell me Chris, even though it's election year and this may be dangerous conjecture.. I'm guessing Hillary Clinton did your federal bidding… just a guess? To hold me indefinitely in jail… breaking the rules. Did your billionaire mentor Barry Diller do the leg work? Did Barry call the Mayor or the state department? I can't imagine Hillary would take your call, Chris.
I returned to the Palisades AA stag meeting. The discomfort on the faces of Jeremy Zimmer, Bryan Freedman, John Artz (Malibu based DUI attorney with plenty personal experience of DUI) and the Dutch creep who burglarized my house whilst I was in jail. I wasn't disappointed. They were outraged! Jeremy complained bitterly I had broken AA laws by blogging about him. Fuck you Jeremy Zimmer. Fuck you. There are no AA laws. There are no leaders.
Chris, this is the blog I must have written a thousand times since I left the jail, I wrote it… then deleted it. I wrote it… then deleted it. I must have torn up a million words. Sometimes, I would frame the blog as an apology, sometimes a roiling river of resentment. I had months to write it, months to rewrite it. Waiting for the gag to be removed.
And now? How did you affect the rest of my life? As I outlined in my damages claim, I have PTSD. I deal with it. The experience inspired a general disgust for affluent, white gay men and specifically a loathing for realtors, lawyers and Hollywood agents.
The extortion law was originally written to protect people who had committed crimes or had secrets from being violently blackmailed. Of course it's hard luck when, in life, one gets fucked over. In America the potential for being fucked over is a daily hazard, most often than not those who manage to successfully do the fucking over are hailed as the winners. Just look at the Wall Street 'winners' rewarded for fucking over the entire nation.
Unlike most people who get fucked over, who cannot fight back…I have this modest blog. It has proved to be one of the most effective fog horns in the world.
Try as he might, Chris Cortazzo couldn't keep out of trouble. Chris faces more legal challenges. As well as the lawsuit with Hiroki the Chinese Billionaire another grubby lawsuit has emerged… from a desperate Persian family whose property Cortazzo represented. They are claiming Chris cruelly ripped them off. The truths Chris feared most have revealed themselves. A theme emerges: those of us who have publicly aired our grievances with Chris Cortazzo share a common bond. We are all foreigners in the USA.
As for the legion of Million Dollar Listing fans who couldn't believe Chris was anything other than a saint? I ignored the lies written about me all over the internet; I don't have to prove myself to anyone. There's no shame in my game. With the help of the ACLU I sued LA County and a substantial financial settlement arrived from the City of Los Angeles a year later. I sold my beautiful Malibu house. I moved to New York and set about reinventing my life.
Bryan Freedman. (I'm slowly shaking my head.) There was a time I held you in such high regard I asked you to become my AA sponsor It's hard to forgive you Bryan. You, Sean MacFarlane, John Artz and Jeremy Zimmer are the worst kind of 'sober' people. Daily celebrating the AA message of humility, espousing the 12 Steps, quoting The Big Book… declaring forgiveness and ownership of ones defects of character. Your 'sobriety' is a sham. You may as well be drinking/drugging /cheating on your wives. You remain the same Trump like arrogant hypocrites, behaving contrary to the AA message, as you always were. The very same men who arrived in our rooms broken and defeated (I remember your stories) begging for help with their alcoholism and sex addiction. You have learned nothing… whilst affording me the greatest gift: LA County Jail.
The Brentwood celebrity Sex Addict meeting moved locations. An undercover journalist sat amongst the sex addict group from a sleazy British newspaper. He called me, wanted me to help him out. The SAA attendees scattered. Members of the meeting asked why there was little financial accounting within the group. Every week the 100 or so the very rich men in that school room would drop five or ten dollars in the '7th Tradition' basket. No one could account for it. Where had the money gone? Sean was removed by democratic vote as the group leader. His wife left him. The meeting disintegrated.
The cult of snake oil salesman Sean MacFarlane is not new to the anonymous programs. AA/NA is particularly prone to charismatic leaders guiding the incomprehensibly demoralized addict and alcoholic out of the shadows and into the light. Rehabs, sober living accommodation, half way houses and addiction counsellors… facilities mostly run by addicts and alcoholics, the lunatics are indeed running the asylum. No doubt there will be many other Sean MacFarlanes 'helping' other desperate addicts achieve sobriety… of course, for huge sums of money and little consequence.
Tags Anne-Marie Wise, Barry Diller, Brian Turnauer, Bryan Freedman, Cher, Chris Cortazzo, Christopher Cortazzo, Coldwell Banker, Corey Nelson, Donald Trump, Elton John, Extortion, Ferguson MA, Hillary Clinton, Hiroshi Horiike, ICE, Jeremy Zimmer, John Adler, Kelly Mormon, Los Angeles, Malibu, Mark Ciavarella, Men's County Jail, Mike Tyson, Robert Radcliffe, Sean McFarlane, Super Lawyer, Tom Pollock, United States
Categories Alcoholics Anonymous, Film, Gay, Hollywood, Immigration, Los Angeles, Malibu, Money, Queer, Rehab
Trevor Project Trevor Live 2015
Last week a very young gay friend attended the Trevor Project's Trevor Live 2015 event. My friend is a proud member of their youth advisory council. The Trevor Project remains one of the most ambitious and honorable LGBT organizations currently available to at risk LGBT young people, providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth.
The Trevor Project was founded in 1998 in West Hollywood, California, by James Lecesne, Peggy Rajski, and Randy Stone. Creators of the 1994 Academy Award-winning short film Trevor, a dramedy about Trevor, a gay thirteen-year-old boy who, when rejected by friends because of his sexuality, makes an attempt to take his life.
Before this brave film aired on HBO the filmmakers, realizing that some of the program's young viewers might face the same kind of crisis as Trevor, searched for a support line to be broadcast during the airing. They discovered that no such helpline existed and decided to dedicate themselves to forming an organization to promote acceptance of LGBTQ youth.
My young friend flew from the east coast to attend the event and by all accounts had a very enjoyable time… until he was sexually assaulted by an older gay man in front of his friends who thought it appropriate to cat call and high five each other when they saw my young friend being inappropriately groped.
It was not the only time that night he was sexually harassed/assaulted.
"I don't understand why people think it's ok to grab my ass and say crude, sexually charged comments." He said.
When I urged him to write to the Trevor Project and let them know what happened he was worried that they wouldn't take the complaint seriously because the rich white men who had assaulted him were big donors to the Trevor Project.
I could write endlessly about gay white men, their pink privilege, their resistance to the notion of sexual consent and a widely held gay belief that men can't assault, harass or rape other men.
My friend has (as of today) not written to The Trevor Project to report these incidents at their Trevor Live event. It's very hard for a young man, recently out, to articulate his disgust for this kind of behavior.
The assault did not take place in a bar or club where these assaults occur all the time… more often than not overlooked by victim and perpetrator. It happened at a fund raising event for at risk youth.
Tags Trevor Live, Trevor Project, United States
Categories Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Queer
It's Black and White
While few of us would think to ridicule Jews for still harboring less than warm feelings for Germans some 70 years after the liberation of the concentration camps—we would understand the lack of trust, the wariness, even the anger—we apparently find it hard to understand the same historically embedded logic of black trepidation and contempt for law enforcement in the USA.
Revealed, these past weeks, for the world to see: America's racist underbelly. News stories narrated by dumb white folk, binging unashamedly on their justified racism. The condescending white news anchor asks a black man to explain his fear of the police… then scoffs at his reply. Others crudely condemn the dead black men "He was no angel." "His parents were known to the police." "He was resisting arrest." The same 'news' shows use the millions of crowd sourced dollars raised for the white murderer as proof, as if any were needed, that Darren Wilson and men like him are: "Innocent until proven guilty." "The grand jury proved there was no case to answer." "Let him get on with his life."
The KKK leave cruel and hateful messages wherever they can all over social media, proudly letting the world know: 'a good nigger is a dead nigger'. Black men doubly assassinated, in life and death… white supremacists proudly spew vitriol over the bodies of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner.
They demand, "This isn't about race." "Why do you bring race into this?"
White folk have no incentive to let go of their white power, their white privilege, their sense of superiority… their entitlement. White people remind you with their slippery smiles that slavery was abolished in 1865. "It's up to the blacks to help themselves." "If we weren't killing them, they'd be killing each other." "They have the same opportunities as everyone else."
Every Mexican, working illegally in California, is a slave. White people loathe manual labor. White people love slaves. Everybody needs a slave in SoCal. The fruit growers would have nobody to harvest fruit without Mexican slaves. Slaves stand outside Home Depot offering themselves for hard labor. Mexican slaves mow my lawn, scrub my hot tub. Slaves clear brush in the Santa Monica Mountains under the midday sun.
Serried ranks of plump Mexican women smelling of disinfectant and carbolic soap clean house, serve slim, white wives their afternoon mint tea. There are thousands of them! Thousands of enslaved, undocumented maids.
Have you ever seen a white person use a mop, hand wash dishes or polish a crystal glass? Have you ever watched a white person try removing a stain from a carpet? Have you noticed how inept white people are? They don't know how to look after their own stuff.
"Do you know how to remove a stain from a carpet? When your dog pees on your rug?"
He shrugs, "Mexican people know how to do that. I don't need to know."
Those Mexican slave women used to be black slave women.
Last week President Obama liberated 5 million slaves by giving them the opportunity to 'come out of the shadows'. Watch the white elected officials in Congress and the Senate balk. Their fat, pink cheeks huffing and puffing indignantly at the partial liberation of more slaves.
Without slaves the USA ceases to function. The USA is addicted to slavery. The USA was built on hard work… the hard work of unpaid black slaves. Conveniently written out of white history. California's false economy is carried on the backs of Mexican slaves.
When the black slaves were freed the white folk wanted them to go back to Africa. "The slaves are free… free to go home."
Those black folk who thought they were equal to white folk were outlawed, harassed. If they had entrepreneurial ambitions they were made to think again. When they opened stores on main street, their stores were looted by white folk whilst the police watched… and did nothing.
There was no opportunity given to black people which could not be taken away.
A black face reminds America's of its not so distant violent racist past (black neighborhoods were being bombed and burned in Boston and Chicago by white police as recently as 1970). To liberal white people a black face remains a shameful embarrassment: liberals never did enough for black people. Liberals turned from the thorny problem of race to an easy fix: marriage equality.
White people who claim to hate racism are privately racist. Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin at Sony Pictures are revealed to be private racists… when this is discovered from hacked emails they call Jesses Jackson so assuage their guilt. They publicly call prominent black people to apologize for being private racists… but they merely confirm what we already know: white liberals say one thing then do another when they think they can't be seen or heard.
For the dogged racists a black face reminds them of an unfinished problem… a problem they tackle every 18 hours when another black man is murdered by the police. Shortly after the shots are fired, the body transported to the morgue… the excuses begin, the character of the dead black man maligned, the Grand Jury is called and the murder justified… forgotten.
Did it seem this time… after Eric Garner's Grand Jury refused to indict… fewer people agreed with the decision… or made excuses for the police? Was it my imagination that after the whole world watched the video of Eric Garner's murder a million times on TV and the internet that people who might have before… did not want to forget. In fact they cared a great deal for murdered Eric, his dignified widow and their forgiving daughters.
When the people watch the unnecessary take down and murder of Eric Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes on the streets on New York they are forced to acknowledge 350 years of racism: state sanctioned torture, murder, rape, abuse, theft…
The people (all ethnicities) began to drag themselves out of apathy and onto the same streets. The people saw a black man bullied to death and none of the usual excuses from the police or the mayor or the kkk were very convincing. The people saw Eric Garner bullied and murdered by the police in a country where the police are meant to protect the people from bullies and murderers!
Fear underpins the systematic oppression of America's black minority.
This week people understood that the criminal justice system isn't broken, that police brutality, secret and corrupt grand juries, the deliberate disenfranchising of black men and the unreported/undocumented incidence of murder by police force… is not evidence of a broken system but the system functioning exactly the way it was designed.
Did you know that once convicted, in many states (11 southern states) a felon is never allowed to vote again… ever. Why don't you know that? Most people don't. When a black man is convicted of a felony in 11 southern states he is never allowed to vote again. He is excluded from the democratic process. How many black felons did you tell me presently reside in jail and prison? How many of them are working for free (cotton picking, uniform stitching) in American jails and prisons?
America's untreated racist wound stinks like Michael Brown's uncovered, bloated corpse on a humid Ferguson street… and no amount of Fox News deodorant will take away the stench.
Did you know, that until modest changes were made to the selection process, people of color were excluded from the Grand Jury? Those modest and unenforceable protocol changes were made within the last few years.
They say, the secretive Grand Jury was originally conceived to weed out malicious prosecutions. That's just a big fat lie. The Grand Jury is now as it always was… a secret court used by the police and police friendly prosecutors to help crooked cops out of difficult situations so they can continue waging war against the black minority.
The cop's unwritten law of the street: all black faces are fair game.
The Grand Jury is unknown anywhere else in the world. It works so effectively because there's no one in the room defending the victim. In the case of Darren Wilson he was presented as the victim by the prosecutor rather than Michael Brown and this wholly spurious narrative persists.
Criticize racists and the police at your peril.
The police say they have been 'thrown under a bus' by Bill de Blasio, Mayor of NYC because Mayor de Blasio told the world he advised his black son Dante: should he ever have occasion to be stopped by the police, Dante should be very polite, not reach for his cell phone or make any other sudden movement. Dante should assume, like all black young men stopped by the police, that at any moment the police may kill him.
The following day white, bull necked cops feign indignation. They know they've been rumbled, their credibility smashed to pieces. They'll have to do what bullies hate having to do: next time they'll have to think twice.
Bill de Blasio has been warned by the police union not to attend Police funerals killed in the line of duty. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association posted a link on its website telling members not to let de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito "insult their sacrifice" should they be killed. The union posted a "Don't Insult My Sacrifice" waiver officers can sign requesting the two politicians not attend their funerals due to their "consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve."
Good cop? Bad cop?
Are there any good cops? There's no incentive to be a good cop. The good guys are weeded out. It's a tough time to be a good cop. Crime figures diminishing, the police have to justify their huge organization, their overtime. They say policing is a dangerous job. How dangerous? Policemen are not all killed by criminals, 30% are killed in road traffic accidents… the police are too arrogant to wear seat belts.
Whilst men like Eric are being harassed and murdered on the streets of New York for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes by police thugs, a couple of miles away in another part of the same city the most audacious crimes this century go unpunished. Wall Street steals a world of wealth and gets away with it. They say white-collar crime is too sophisticated for most regular cops to grasp.
The cops protect the rich, protect the 1%… as it turns out they're protecting them from us… from you and me.
Cops are used to raise revenue for local government, make politically motivated arrests, used by the rich to silence and poleax their enemies. Cops illegally hold undocumented workers without opportunity to post bail then deport them after lengthy stays in private jails. I've met undocumented workers who were introduced to their mule (a mule illegally smuggles an undocumented worker back into the USA) by the same border patrol guy who originally arrested and deported them.
The cops take their cut, trafficking slaves.
The conspiracy theorists I scoffed at 10 years ago… well, they got it right.
The jails are kept artificially full to justify more cops. The artificial wars on drugs and terror are in fact… a war on us.
There is a profound connection between criminality abroad and criminality at home. The so-called "war on terror" and military aggression abroad are linked to repression within the United States. The drive by the American ruling class to build up the infrastructure of a police state is in preparation for the inevitable confrontation with the working class. This is what lies behind the unprecedented levels of domestic spying, the assault on basic democratic rights, the CIA's trampling on legality and the Constitution, the militarization of law enforcement and the ongoing police rampage against working class youth.
The Hollywood street performer shot in the head by the police, the Down's syndrome kid choked to death by the police, the homeless woman repeatedly punched in the head by the police, the deaf guy trying to sign tasered by the police, the countless murders committed by the police remain uncounted.
A pattern emerges, you better be a healthy, able-bodied white male to survive the streets of now USA. You better not be black or disabled or deaf or performing or homeless. You better blend in, become invisible, forget any aspirations you might have to be extraordinary.
White Americans may protest that our racial problems are not like South Africa's. No, but the United States incarcerated a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did. In America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid.
America: it is still a nation of slaves and slave owners. The system that perpetuates this must be deconstructed and if you are white that deconstruction starts with you… asking yourself this question: am I willing to give up my slaves? My white power? My white privilege? My unfair advantages? Am I willing to acknowledge that implicitly and explicitly I colluded with the historical suppression, bullying, false imprisonment and murder of a minority?
My gay friends believe that winning human rights for black people will be as polite as winning human rights for gay people. They think it's THE SAME.
There must have been a moment in 1945 after the American's liberated the concentration camps, when the German people were forced by the allied forces to watch news reels of what was found there… there must have been a moment when the German people collectively owned up. A moment when they realized what they had done. I'm waiting for white people in the USA to own their part, their collusion with a system that murders, brutalized and demeans a minority… then blames them when they complain.
It never really occurred to me until yesterday that the mass murder and incarceration of black men in the USA is deliberate, systemic, entrenched and unlikely to change until white men learn to share their power.
I bought my first house when I was 20 years old. Remember that cottage? 13 Island Wall, Whitstable. 15 years later I sold it and bought Peter Cushing's house and the house beside it. 2 and 3 Seaway Cottages, Wavecrest. That was a pretty address. I sold them both and moved to California. 2828 Hume Road, Malibu. Now, it's time to head east. It's Time.
I sold my house. Goodbye Malibu. I hope the new owners are happy here. It has been quite a ride up (and down) this mountain… literally and figuratively. This is where I buried my dog and this is where I will leave her. This is where the twins lived, this is the location of many spectacular parties, lovers and probably the worst decision I made in my life… to reply to Jake. But there you go, it's sold now. The furniture has been packed, the art wrapped and stowed in boxes. I am relieved.
I am only a few months away from having the gagging order lifted so I get to tell my side of the story… how another rich man used the police and the prosecutor to hide the truth.
Tags Amy Pascal, Auschwitz concentration camp, Bill de Blasio, black slaves, California, Don't Insult my sacrifice, Eric Garner, Ferguson, Grand Jury, Home Depot, Mexican Maids, Michael Brown, NYPD, police brutality, racism, Santa Monica Mountains, Scott Rudin, Tamir Rice
Categories Boston, Brooklyn, Christmas, Hollywood, Immigration, Los Angeles, Malibu, Photography, politics, prison, Queer
September California
September 12, 2014 //
Tags Ben Medansky, Beverly Hills, California, Colin Egglesfield, Craig Thornton, Fried Chicken, Malibu, Mercedes, Venice
Categories Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Malibu, Queer, Venice
The Deserving Gay
September 6, 2014 //
What used to be a trickle of exceptionalism that marred a tiny portion of the white gay male community has recently become a lethal torrent. Perceived 'equality' has revealed the true nature of many, many gay white men. No longer humbled by their treatment at the hands of an unfair, homophobic society they have sprung ahead of the pack, claiming that a 'seat at the table' is not good enough… instead we must build, decorate and chair the table… governing any meeting it may entertain. Moreover, we don't really want to share the table with anyone other than really, really good-looking gay white men who all agree and never get angry.
Being gay is like joining a cult.
At gay AA… the greeters don't greet you unless you are 'hot' or 'famous'.
A Provincetown celebrity (aren't they all) posted a picture of his smiling mug along side two other grinning, bearded gay men. All three based in Provincetown, on perpetual vacation, they look for all the world as if they are happy. As if they are care free… as if trouble seldom blights their gay paradise. Great pic! They may very well use the pic and pics like them to lure boys on a well-known gay hook up app. In gay paradise everything is perfect. That's what they insist you believe. Of course… scratch a little beneath the surface of any gay man and one releases the foul odor of resentment, addiction, crippling narcissism and judgement.
I mentioned to Jim Lande who posted the pic that everyone seems so happy all the time in Provincetown? He replied, "Only for the deserving." Of course, we know what that means. Jim means there is no room in a perfect gay society for an opposing view, an ugly mug, for poverty, for people of color, for mental illness… the deserving are hand-picked from the glut of meat delivered weekly to Provincetown, Fire Island and resorts like them.
Jim describes himself as a Boulevardier, a bohemian… he compliments a video I posted of Sebastian Horsley my great friend… I remind him that Sebastian was a bohemian, Jim is just a gay man wearing a velvet jacket… there's a difference. He retracts the word bohemian from his description. He attempts to shame me for going to a boarding school that helps kids who have been abused. It's the gay go to punishment: SHAME. Did you read that? This exceptional, best little boy who worked in government all his life spying on the good people of the United States is doing what the rancid gay does best… he is trying to shame me for something I could not help. I had no say.
Jim Lande is trapped in Provincetown, posting pics of his amazing life, his amazing friends… he posts endless reviews of the film he helped fund, Love is Strange by Ira Sachs. He describes Ira as a 'Hollywood Darling.' Blighted by gay exceptionalism… he reminds me how much money he is going to make, the awards they will win… the plaudits they receive.
Dan spends his summer hop-scotching across the world from gay resort to gay cruise to gay sightseeing. He travels in a pack of identical men. The same age, the same color, the same body weight, hair distribution, the same dietary obsessions… the same unresolved traumas. He is the 'deserving'.
I met a young man on-line the other day. We had the briefest moment of intimacy. He is 'desperate' to be in the film industry. He is 'discreet' which is short hand for: I'm careful who I tell I'm gay and what I'm into because it might ruin my career chances. He's not scared that straight people will find out, little Austin is scared the gays will judge him, the gays will shame him. He doesn't want gay men to know anything. He is secretive, sneaky and as a result… thoroughly unattractive. He has built himself a hybrid closet (like a panic room) protecting himself from the gays.
(The actor I dated this summer was secretive, sneaky and lied about everything. The gays live in a shadowy world of fantasy, make-believe and lies.)
The society photographer boasts that the boy who loves him is 'disposable', he boasts that he fisted him… when I ask the boy what happened… he tells me that the hardest thing about the photographer were his fingers. We seldom talk about erectile dysfunction. Anything other than a hard cock renders a gay man utterly useless. You know, the gays hate me writing my blog. They write snarky notes insisting that I correct tiny details… ("I'm not a director I'm a producer") as if any one cared!
On Facebook I am pretending to be an old Whitstable codger, enjoying a thread on Julie Burchill's Facebook page. Julie hates all Muslims, her page is rife with anti islamic rhetoric. If you disagree with her POV you are immediately branded a 'jew hater'. She says, "I think I may have mentioned a FEW times that I am a Gentile Socialist Zionist? Why would people come here just to get cross? If you don't like the tiny democratic state of Israel, surrounded by fascist fiefdoms, fuck off to one of the thousands of Jew-hating Facebook pages? Cheers!"
Her fans scream with joy! Her fans ecstatically revile Islam. Her fans start out by reminding us firmly that they are not racist (they don't support the British National Party) then, without irony, they go on to say how much they hate all Muslims and want to kill them. I suggested meeting one of these crazy women to discuss exacting revenge on the Muslim population of Chatham…. amazingly she private messaged me in the hope of exacting revenge on Muslims!!!
Then it got pretty scary… these people are fucking INSANE. Julie has no idea what her crazed followers are capable of. She really needs to take that seriously. Whipping those guys up the way she does may lead her to some unsightly trouble… exactly the same trouble other radical preachers have, facing the same criminal charges. You need only one crazy person to do something dumb and cite Julie B as their inspiration…. well, you know the rest.
BTW what exactly is a 'gentile socialist zionist'?
The only person to spout that kind of anti Muslim shit to me here in the USA was a white gay Producer who told me he believed (as a patriot) that all Muslims should convert or be eradicated from the earth because they didn't like gays. I said, my deceased father was a Muslim and several of my 12 brothers and sisters too. He didn't care. He still thought they should be murdered. Whilst I can sort of understand Julie's naive zeal as a pre op convert to Judaism I found this Christian hatred and rabid insistence to kill millions of people based on their beliefs… utterly stunning. Mind you, this guy has always been a person to be suspicious of, he tells everyone who will listen that he will help anyone he can… any way he can… but when the time comes… he is nowhere to be found.
Tags brothers and sisters, Bryan Singer, community, exacting revenge, Facebook, Fire Island, Gay, gay male community, Jim Lande, Julie Burchill, Provincetown, Provincetown Massachusetts, Sebastian Horsley, United States
Categories Los Angeles, Queer, Rant, Whitstable
The Mountains or The Sea?
Categories Hollywood, Los Angeles, Malibu, Venice
August Recap
I've been fretting. Fretting about Gaza, Israel, Ferguson, bad white cops, arming black people, traveling, Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been fretting about one beautiful man.
The Alcoholics Anonymous shit is the usual shit. The same characters, the same stories, the same mental illness. I sit in those rooms wondering why I'm there, if I belong to a cult? Yet, I never think about drinking. I mean, I'm not looking for an excuse to drink. That's the very last thing I want to do.
You see, it was one of those weeks when I heard that someone in AA killed themselves. Someone I heard speak, someone I had spoken to. Someone I had lunch with, someone I had hope for. Then he blew his brains out. No obituary, no news report. Just another recovering alcoholic who couldn't take it any more. I thought about how we collectively accept the plaudits for keeping each other sober yet when a man kills himself it was his problem. His solution. Never our responsibility. He had a six-year-old son. He dressed very well. Now he's dead.
Since getting sober 18 years ago I have known many, many men and not so many women to kill themselves in the rooms of AA/NA. It is never easy. Yet, I have become desensitized from these terrible deaths and I hate myself for it. I'm sorry. I really am.
This week, I ate a great deal at Gjelina in Venice and these men graciously served me.
Last week I drove to San Francisco to see my friend Benoit Denizet Lewis read excerpts from his book Travels With Casey. After the reading we had dinner with Armistead Maupin and his charming boyfriend. I told Armistead that I hadn't read his famous book Tales of the City until I got to The Men's County Jail. I found a dog eared copy there. It was a first edition.
That night we stayed in an odd 50's hotel/ex-motel off of trendy Chestnut Street. The following day we drove to Napa and had lunch with Gene. After lunch we wandered the giant redwoods in Muir Woods. On the way back to San Francisco we watched people flying kites on Stinson Beach.
On my way home to Los Angeles I met up with my Whitstable friend Ben Clayton in Berkeley, we ate brunch then sauntered all over the UC Berkeley campus. We talked a great deal about home. We talked about our mothers.
Back in Malibu I picked a huge bunch of bananas from the banana trees at the end of the garden, I harvested (and continue to) an abundance of figs and lemons. I sold the bananas to my friend Nicolle the pie lady at Gjelina who bruleed them.
Yesterday, I went to the Norco Rodeo with Stuart Sandford. Norco is an hour from Los Angeles. It was the whitest event I have ever been to. White people everywhere eating nachos and swilling beer. The men wore cowboy hats. The women screamed when the obedient bulls tossed their riders into the sand.
We wondered if there were other gays there. The nearest gay on-line was 3 miles away. I took pictures of cowboys. I ate tri-tip sandwiches. I was looking for bucking bronco Cody Gaines who I met the day before on Malibu beach. Cody lives in Texas. Cody loves Jesus.
Mostly I have been amusing myself in the garden. I have been sweeping paths and mending lights and restoring order. The dogs have been lazing all over the house during the day, finding patches of sunlight to flop into. At night they spend too much time protecting me from deer and raccoons. Go to sleep!
Michael came to visit from NYC. He was sweet and charming. I met the guy with a beard… and here's a better picture of Stuart. Stuart Sandford is a very fine artist. He lives and works at the Tom of Finland House in Echo Park. My friend Martin arrived from Provincetown. He's staying for a few days.
All in all it hasn't been a bad month. It's just these past few hours. I needed to sit down and write a gratitude list… and this is it. You see, I woke up today and I'm not a hounded black teen on the streets of any city USA. I'm not a hounded Palestinian in the ever shrinking patch of land they call home. I'm not a fatherless 6 year old… and lastly, I didn't blow my brains out this week because I couldn't take it any more… and for that I must be grateful.
Latex bondage wear ready to be washed from the dungeon at The Tom of Finland House, Echo Park.
Tags Alcoholics Anonymous, Armistead Maupin, Ben, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, Cagayan de Oro, California, Casey, Cody, Cowboy, Gaza, Gjelina, Israel, Jesus, Los Angeles, Rodeo, San Francisco, Stinson Beach California, Stuart Sandford, University of California Berkeley, Venice
Categories Alcoholics Anonymous, Dogs, Gay, Los Angeles, Malibu, Travel, Venice
Provincetown Changes
June 9, 2014 //
Gay men in Los Angeles told researchers that they believed a culture that focuses on one-night stands and partying, that emphasizes perfect bodies and good looks, that prizes material possessions, that sees gay men tearing each other down as they compete for attention and that pressures gay men to fit in or conform is bound to create unhappiness, stress and unhealthy behaviors.
The word on the street in gay resort/haven Provincetown? The straights are coming, they are coming thick and fast, young affluent heterosexuals buying property, renting holiday apartments and day tripping. I was reassured by a cool, 31-year-old, straight person yesterday that this was the heterosexual 'tipping point'. Of course (if true) the reasons are obvious. The older more affluent crowd of gay men and lesbians who bought affordable homes here twenty years ago are simply not that interesting to a less ghettoized younger gay crowd who go to Fire Island or Mykonos where a good gay thumping time is assured, where they can find an affordable share for the summer… anyway, the drag is so much better the closer you get to NYC.
Young straight men and women who used to actively avoid hanging in gay ghettos… or felt uncomfortable no longer have any reservation. This, my dears is one of the more unexpected changes that comes with 'integration'. Our gay communities, gay clubs and gay bars will dilute as we become more heteronormative.
How do the gays feel about straight people buying into the gay and lesbian ghetto dream? I hear grumblings from some, but what can they say? We can't restrict straight people from joining the party? Before the great shift, the Obama 'evolution', the Blair/Mandleson equality bill I would regularly challenge straight people who came to our clubs and bars, wondering why they were there… if they understood why gays and lesbians created safe spaces for themselves… now apparently we all live in a safe space… together.
If the war is won do we abandon the notion of a safe space, a gay bar, an LGBTQ community? Is that what we were fighting for? As it turns out, gay men are still living shameful and secretive lives… safely hidden from prying eyes. No longer behind the blacked out windows of the gay bar but on the internet where we can fully reinvent ourselves as muscle-bound avatars, 10 years younger than we really are.
The gay bar, meanwhile… becomes a themed experience for enlightened neo-liberal heterosexuals. After all, gay men don't need to meet one another in real life when we can meet on-line, reducing our interaction before a sexual encounter to the barest possible exchange of relevant facts. Hung? Looking? Party?
The same heterosexual land grab is happening in the Fire Island Pines gay community. Straight people are buying and renting homes at a faster rate than gay people. Of course… the truth is, we never really owned the lions share of Fire Island Pines… it was always owned by straight people. Three heterosexual families who control The Pines real estate market.
In San Francisco's iconic gay area The Castro we are facing extinction in our natural habitat, bought out/selling out to silicone valley billions. What are we left with? Our sad LGBT 'pride' parade: a blinded corporate-sponsored dinosaur serving only the breweries and distilleries, no longer a political defiance… no longer worth a pilgrimage by those newly out yearning to see gays en masse… the gay parade and all it seeks to celebrate merely adds to our woes, confirming the worst about who we have become.
How long will it take for Provincetown to lose its unique identity and become just another Cape Cod town? The Pines, just another beach community on Fire Island? How long will it take for our history to be lost, forgotten or ignored by apathetic gay white men who have no interest in those who came before? The heroes who fought decades of violent oppression, the 'gay plague', who demanded equality… how long will it be until their names are erased?
Do you know who they are? Harvey Milk… and…
The politics of invisibility.
As the quality of our lives collectively 'improves', as we 'integrate' due to the passing of progressive equality laws why are we still facing a crisis? Why do gay men continue to struggle with life-threatening health problems at alarmingly high rates compared to straight men — alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, suicide, and sexually transmitted diseases.
Gay and bisexual men are still most impacted by HIV/AIDS and syphilis, they suffer higher rates of substance abuse, they are more likely to drink heavily later into life, and they are more likely to commit suicide and suffer major depression and anxiety and bipolar disorders.
Gay men with mental health problems are more likely to use illegal drugs and commit suicide. Or regularly using drugs and alcohol can lead to risky sexual behavior, which increases the likelihood of getting infected by an STD.
Our health problems, in other words, are feeding into each other, we're literally killing ourselves through suicide, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS at higher rates than straight men. Let's say that again: We are killing ourselves at higher rates than straight men through suicide, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS.
Some gays are quick to point to the stresses of living as a gay man in an overwhelmingly straight world — one that passes anti-gay laws and constantly spews homophobic rhetoric — as a reason for mental health and substance abuse problems. With that argument, they are coming very close to saying that we are powerless victims who have little control over our own lives and choices, that homophobes have more power over us.
That's a ridiculous notion — lethal and self-defeating.
Since homophobia still exists and is not going away any time soon, the victim theory, if embraced, dooms us to a life of external, homophobic stressors that forces us to drink too much, commit suicide too frequently and get depressed too often.
The quote is from the LA Weekly. You can read it HERE.
Tags Fire Island, Fire Island Pines New York, Gay, Gay bar, Gay Lesbian and Bisexual, Gay Men, Heterosexuality, LA Weekly, LGBT, Los Angeles, Massachusetts Provincetown, Mykonos, Provincetown, San Francisco, Sexually transmitted disease, straight men
Categories Gay, Los Angeles, NYC, Queer, Travel
Michael Alig and Malik Bendjelloul
I wonder if Michael Alig hated the movie Party Monster as much as I did?
I wonder if someone at Fenton Baily's World of Wonder who filmed Alig's 'reactions' whilst he watched the docudrama about himself… paid him? I can't imagine that he won't be on Fenton's payroll before the year is out, just like his friend and the gay douche James St. James… who I was once bored to meet in LA with Ian Drew.
Meanwhile, the soggy Michael Musto pretends Alig is a very bad man yet seems secretly in awe, unable to stop writing about him. There are articles about Alig everywhere in the gay press. Of course, The Gay Voices section in The Huffington Post want his 'opinion' about EVERYTHING.
The gay frenzy around Alig's release from prison is beyond macabre. What does Michael Alig think about the progression of gay rights? What does Alig think about the overturn of DOMA? Does he have an opinion about the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell?
Am I crazy? This murderer gets out of jail. A murderer who dismembers another gay man and we ask his opinion about DOMA?
For those of you who don't know Michael Alig… and there are many… Michael Alig (born South Bend, Indiana, April 29, 1966) is the co-founding member of the Club Kids, a group of young club goers led by Alig and his long-time best friend James St. James in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1996, Alig pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Andre "Angel" Melendez in a confrontation over a drug debt.
If Michael were a straight, white guy getting out of jail for killing and dismembering another man… would other straight people be fascinated by what he had to say about… the Affordable Care Act? Mind you, if he was a black man… we wouldn't ever hear his opinion about anything… because he would still be in jail, convicted of first degree murder rather than the white man's sop… manslaughter.
It's so exciting to have him home in New York City! Let's read more about Michael Alig in Vanity Fair! Imagine what it must be like to be free after 17 years! Everything's so incredibly different! Here… play with this. It's called a smart phone. These are 'apps'.
Michael Alig tweet his fans. Michael looks at Manhattan as he crosses an unnamed bridge into the city and has a moment of trepidation . Did he remember dumping Angel's body into the East River? Alig drinks Starbucks and eats Arctic Char. He scarcely seems like a man who would murder and dismember another gay man as he eloquently discusses fish seasoning.
Later, Michael forgets to take a shower because no one is telling him to wash. It's 'amusing' to see Michael use Grindr for the first time and wonder if and when he hooks up… will he tell his on-line fancy… the truth? Will he conceal his true identity? The truth about his murdering and dismembering past… huh? Are you kidding? Nobody tells the truth on Grindr. A world of wonder… indeed.
"Michael you're my hero." The young gays squeal on social media. 'We still love you!' 'You helped me become the man I am today.' The elder ones tweet: 'You made me true to myself.'
Michael Alig has become our best, brightest and newest gay celebrity. Hankering for a second chance in a country that loathes giving second chances to anyone. He will become a living legend, his gay apotheosis assured by Fenton Baily and Michael Musto who may make fortunes from Alig's gruesome celebrity. Nor must we forget Ramon Fernandez, director of the upcoming documentary Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig, he too expects to win big riding on Alig's murder and mayhem.
No doubt Alig will be invited to GLAAD events, his crimes diminished by celebrity and pithy comments about hetero normative gay life… he will champion individuality, he will sit at The World of Wonder table with Ru Paul. He will work tirelessly for the HRC.
Michael Alig will be loathed and loved in equal measure when in fact… he should be totally ignored.
Meanwhile, a truly talented filmmaker kills himself. Malik Bendjelloul, director of Oscar winning film Searching for Sugar Man. When I heard it, your personal story moved me. It's tough to be a star. I know what you went through. I was there for a moment too. Same age. It's very disconcerting, all that attention after years of solitude. Making art in a vacuum… then Hollywood comes calling with their lies and false promises.
Two different tales, different intentions. Two very different filmmakers.
Fenton Baily and Ramon Fernandez add a miserable, self indulgent post script to a stark and soulless documentary making themselves more money from the death and dismemberment of a brown man… no doubt delighting other soulless white people… whist you dear Malik made an inspiring documentary that touched the hearts of many and was so deserving of the international acclaim it received.
Sometimes it seems like a shit, shit world. A world where people like a gay drug addict and murderer Michael Alig get all the attention on exactly the same day a brilliant man like Malik Bendjelloul ends his own life.
Tags Alig, Andre Melendez, Club Kid, Club Kids, Fenton Baily, Michael, Michael Alig, Michael Musto, monster, New York City, St. James, World of Wonder
Categories art, Film, Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, NYC, Queer
May 8, 2014 //
Tags Charles James, Dustin Yellin, Gagosian, Kohei Oda, Shio Kusaka, Wendell Castle, Whitney Museum
Categories art, Brooklyn, Dogs, Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Malibu, NYC, Queer, Venice
April 17, 2014 //
Most of you know there is little love lost between me and gay Hollywood… the gay establishment, our unelected leaders, our taste makers and moral guides… or lack of them. From Chad Griffin (who now claims to be the Rosa Parks of marriage equality) at the HRC to the bullying tactics of gay mafia org Glaad I have made my voice heard and paid the price.
During the last year I have had death threats and put up with the gay rumor mill distorting facts about me. So, today, old acquaintance Bryan Singer finds himself in my world… the shadowy world of innuendo, accusations, smears, allegations and (unlike me) the hard to remove stains of rape and pedophilia.
The gays are springing to his defense. The boy was 17. Old enough to know better. Old enough to say no. Well, as we all know, whether it is Jerry Sandusky or Bryan Singer power and prestige can be very alluring to a damaged soul and let's face it… many young gays are very damaged. It's difficult to say no if you think saying yes will change… everything.
Dorian Gray was a damaged soul. Just a boy. Would he give in to love… or power and prestige? We all know the answer.
I first met Bryan on Fire Island 20 years ago. He stayed at our house with Brandon Boyce and some eager young twink. Latterly I stayed with him in Hollywood, and we have kept friendly but distant ever since. When I was arrested he (and his friends) delighted in my jail time* and made snide comments about me getting into trouble. Their arrogance, like most sexually unmanageable people, was legion.
Bryan and I have discussed his boy obsessions and sex tourism. We have discussed his prescription drug addiction. We have discussed his drinking problem. We have discussed his point that it is useless to know anyone socially unless there is a sexual point.
Today Bryan finds himself at the center of a roiling sex scandal. It is of his own making. Everyone one knew… but no one said a word. Young boys on his arm, on his set, at dinner with equally vile boy obsessed Hollywood grandees… the lamentable Adam Press, the teen dating Dustin Lance Black.
If you want to get on in Hollywood straight or gay… you better learn how to please the directors and producers you meet at drug fueled, drink sodden gay parties.
Of course, when someone cries foul, the gays think it is the victims 'fault'. They have played victim for so long.
Somebody suggested to me this morning that it was 'homophobic' of those accusing Bryan of rape. No, it's not homophobic to accuse someone of rape, it's homophobic to forcibly sodomise someone.
Bryan's close friends include Guy Shalem (Jane Lynch's red carpet plus one), Transformers Producer Tom DeSanto and Teen Wolf director Toby Wilkins. Finding themselves on private jets, at Elton John's Oscar party and vast Hollywood mansions overlooking Los Angeles. They are surrounded by a stable of beautiful young boys. They are delighted to be included. It's always so much fun. Bryan can make anything happen. He has so many cool toys.
Bryan films a group of eastern european 'barely legal' porn performers ejaculating over him… then shows the video to who ever wants to see. Many do. Bryan audaciously dresses as a catholic priest for Halloween, amusing his friends with his 'ironic' choice of costume. Bryan loses his Ferrari in The Beverly Center parking lot and has a panic attack. He drives with the parking attendant in a golf buggy until he locates the car.
Amy Berg, the Oscar nominated documentary maker has been researching predators like Bryan for the past two years. Her explosive documentary about sexual misconduct in Hollywood will blow the lid off those who perpetrate these heinous sex crimes and those in power (sex therapists, law enforcement, prosecutors and the judiciary) who collude with wealthy pedophiles and rapists to keep their sex crimes secret.
This story is no longer just one lone victim brave enough to tell the truth about Bryan Singer.
I like Bryan Singer and rather than sneer at him (as he did me) I am hopeful that someone is keeping a seat warm for him at a Sex Addict meeting where he will find solace and understanding from many other 'important' Hollywood men who have fallen from grace whilst arrogantly thinking they could get away with what ever they pleased, when ever they wanted, regardless of price or consequences.
As we shall see. There are always consequences. Even for Bryan Singer… and his ilk.
From an earlier blog:
"So, this beautiful teenager arrives at a party I'm at last week in the Hollywood Hills. Fresh off the boat. He's beautiful. He has a fresh, open face…his pale skin is flawless.
He hadn't been in Hollywood for longer than a month but already he's on the arm (unwittingly) of a so called LA 'producer' who, it seems, has immediately pimped the boy out to the head of programming for a popular music network. The no name, no hope LA producer pimping the boy out… so that he might curry favor with the TV grandee. Just to be clear… the same LA producer hires young boys to 'read scripts' so he has access to their young boy world.
The whores and the pimps and the fairies…
The network head ain't no beauty. He looks like Dobby from Harry Potter.
So the good looking kid arrives and he tells me that he's working in NYC with an equally scummy NYC 'producer' who always has some starstruck kid on his arm. The NYC producer looks like he has downs syndrome, he looks like his teeth are too big for his fat, useless head. He looks like he's wearing a wig but the fringe ain't deep enough to cover the alcohol bloat, the never was visage. He was a bullied kid at the expensive school his mother sent him to… signed him up the moment she heard the sperm had hit the egg.
Both of these producers have one thing in common: they have loads of inherited money and never produced anything.
They might have their names attached to invisible projects, they might have inveigled their way into the production meeting of some meaningless movie, thrown a little cash behind an artless indi. But, they ain't never winning no awards, they ain't never been invited to no Sundance, Berlin or Cannes. They'll go anyway, keeping their mouths shut to those who matter and lying to those who don't.
Should I tell you who they are?
So I'm keeping my head down. I'm not saying a word. I'm instagramming the bar man, I'm already elsewhere…waiting for something real to happen. Dobby (the music TV network head) shows the man I'm standing with his very smart, smart phone. He's so excited. There are hi def pictures and video of the same wide eyed teenager at Dobby's huge house wearing just…a towel. Yes. The kid is wearing a towel around his waist, his perfectly sculpted body on full view and standing beside him is another, equally cut young teen.
Two young boys.
The inference? You don't need me to explain this to you do you?
So I take this kid to one side and I ask him if he's gay? He's not. I ask him what he thinks of the network head showing everybody his new naked body to anyone the network head needs to impress.
'They are good guys.' he reassures me.
No, I say…they are anything but good guys.
You know, all he wants (this kid) is a job, a chance, an opportunity, the dream of celebrity…freedom. He can almost taste it. He knows that these men make all the difference.
His desire for a better life is palpable. He'll drink the drinks. Undress, get into the hot tub.
You know, I love beauty. I love it. Look, I'm surrounded with beauty. My ex-friend might say, oh your just jealous. You're just jaded because you want what they've got, Believe me, I do just fine. But on terms that do not compromise my integrity.
Would I show random strangers the body of some boy who stands feet from me? Knowing that those artless, semi pornographic images suggest that we are more than just…innocent friends? The network head winks, smiling…dribbling over the screen on the smart phone. Dobby's nose is dripping from undisclosed snorting.
He says, without saying anything: That teen boy…the boy with the perfect abs. He'll do anything..because he thinks I'm going to get him a role, find him an agent…make him the next teen sensation. LOL.
LAUGHING OUT LOUD!
He lets seasoned Hollywood gays believe that this boy will do just about anything to get on. Dobby wants you to believe he fucked the boy. Dobby is powerful. Dobby can get whatever he wants. Even the virgin ass of a young boy fresh off the boat. Particularly… the young ass of the boy standing feet away from us, oblivious that he is now the victim of rank objectification and intrigue.
Proud to be gay? Not today.
So I wrote a short email to the NYC 'producer' guy. I told him what was going on with his protege. He wrote back immediately…he thought it was hilarious. I reminded the fat, vodka marinated, creep…that the boy…has parents."
* For those of you who want to know why I was in jail and why I am currently suing LA County: my civil rights lawsuit arises from the fact that I was unlawfully held in the Los Angeles County jail for 85 days, in violation of my constitutional right to post bail. (I was a pretrial detainee and eligible to post bail yet the jail did not allow me to post bail). I was denied the opportunity to post bail because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had issued an immigration hold (sometimes referred to as an "ICE hold"). An immigration hold is a request from ICE to hold a detainee so that ICE can look into their immigration status; it doesn't mean the person has violated immigration laws or even that ICE has probable cause to believe they've violated immigration laws. At the time of my arrest, the Los Angeles Sheriff's department routinely denied bail to pretrial detainees with immigration holds, which is illegal under California and federal constitutional standards. Since the filing of my lawsuit, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department discontinued this practice and now permits pretrial detainees with ICE holds to post bail.
Tags Bryan, Bryan Singer, Chad Griffin, Dustin Lance Black, Hollywood, Jerry Sandusky, Los Angeles, Rosa Parks, X-Men (film)
Categories Film, Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Old Blog, Queer
Tags Brooklyn, Bunny, Dogs, Easter, Elliott Hundley, Fashion, Hollywood, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Lady Rizo, Malibu, Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Riccardo Tisci, Vogue, Williamsburg Bridge
Categories Dogs, Fashion, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Malibu, Queer
Kookie Kardashian
Monday morning. Brooklyn. The end of this particularly hard winter is nowhere in sight. In LA the sun shines over the glittering sea, in London my friends post pictures of balmy evenings in St James Park. I run from our place to sit in crowded coffee shops. I'm writing under a pseudonym nowadays for publications that love paying him/her but would never pay me. Funny. Doing what writers have always done: assuming different names for different opinions, different styles, different genres. Consequently, I don't get to write my blog very often… as I traverse the continent once a month. From sea to shining sea. No one understands why I love driving 2,800 miles twice over once a month… but I do. The last trip was short and sweet. I stayed in LA a few days then drove back over the Rockies and into a 50 car wreck on the i80 a hundred miles east of Chicago on the Ohio Turnpike. Trapped on the side of the road for ten hours with two patient dogs and so many bad christian radio stations. Badly educated, right-wing bigots on the radio. Wondering out loud how they will roll back the rights of women and gays and undocumented workers, how they will keep hold of their white America. The America their ancestors battled to tame. I think about those early Americans very often as I drive over the Rockies, the hardship they suffered, the dreams they had… the cruelty they inflicted on those who lived on the land they took and the slaves they owned.
I tried sleeping in the car. Minus 6 degrees. Occasionally fellow travelers would stop by to see if we were okay. They offered cookies and consolation.
I've been with my boy for 8 months. We cook at home and watch bad make over TV. Every day our situation gets stronger as we over come our own and the prejudices of others. I realized that most of my male gay friends are single, even the ones with the best pedigrees. The ones who are good-looking and sweet and a 'good catch'. I, of course, am none of those things. I am the bullet you need to dodge. That's what they say. But the gays are eager to diss all of their friends burgeoning relationships. They are disparaging about anyone who may not be 'ideal'. This ideal that keeps them single and lonely. They look at me sadly when they find out how old L is as if I am deluding myself that my relationship could ever work. Did I think it would work? Well, not in some fairy tale way, not the way gay writers write the perfect arrangement… the ideal. We muddle through, we miss each other when we are apart, we fight occasionally but not as much as we did when we first met. All in all, I'm happy and feel love from him and let my love flow… to him. That's occasionally a very confusing and baffling thing for me. To let myself be loved.
In Des Moines, I met Kookie Kardashian… the morbidly obese (500lb), hirsute… older sister of Kim Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian. She is the least known of the KKK Klan. Drinking alone in a dump of a hotel bar, reruns of KUWTK playing on the flickering TV above the tequila selection, staring absently into a soupy pina colada. Text messages remained unanswered as she pulls at her thin mustache. I introduce myself, she says she appreciates the company. Apparently, when the cameras are in her Calabasas house Kris makes her leave with the undocumented servants. Kris pokes her with a stick. Kookie said that Ryan Seacrest called her a 'fat cunt', that if she wanted to be on the show she should 'get a fucking lap band'. Kookie, blinded by grief, drinks herself regularly into a blackout. She commandeered Kanye's jet and took it to Iowa. Her brushed denim and patent leather Fendi bag stuffed with cash. If she loses the weight… Kris promised her that she and Rob can have their own show.
She told me she misses her dad.
Has anyone been watching the OWN Lindsay Lohan 'documentary'? That girl is OUT OF HER MIND. A world without consequence will do that to you. A world where nobody has the guts to confront an addict and her worst defects. A world where she believes she is still important or relevant, a world where no one will tell her that death is imminent… like Heath, Phil, River… living in a room stuffed with clothes, jewelry… evidence of active addiction.
Despicably, this tragedy is being manipulated by entertainment industry matriarch Oprah Winfrey… the disingenuous bad mum who knew all along that her little girl would let her down. Oprah's fake outrage is utterly disgusting.
Tags Arts, ASAP Rocky, Billboard charts, Brooklyn, Calabasas California, Chicago, Fendi, friends, Harlem, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kim Kardashian, Kookie, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris, Lindsay Lohan, London, Ohio Turnpike, Oprah Winfrey, Ryan Seacrest, St James Park, United States
Categories Brooklyn, Dogs, Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Travel
Random Landscapes USA 2014
Tags Arapahoe County Colorado, Brooklyn, Chicago, Denver, Down Town Los Angeles, Holywood, Los Angeles, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Santa Monica, Utah
Categories Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Malibu, NYC, Photography, Queer, Venice
Green Fur Hat
I bought a huge green fur hat from Marc Jacobs. It's very warm, very green and attracts many, many comments.
The people who comment fall into three distinct groups.
1. The people who comment most are African-American men and women who approach me with huge smiles and open hearts and say wonderful things about the hat.
They tell me how happy it makes them. They ask where they could get one. They love the color. They hold me at the checkout at Trader Joe's and ask if they can touch it. Black school kids holler across the street.
2. White woman tentatively tell me how much they like it, how warm they imagine it is. They rarely look me in the eye and their diminished confidence allows them only the slightest… but genuine opinion.
3. Gay men. I sighed writing that. Gay men. I sighed again.
When gay white men (strangers) talk to me about my hat it is always with sneering disregard. They go out of their way to say something catty and unpleasant. They look at me witheringly, their comments infused with: who do you think you are wearing that absurd hat? They dress compliments up in such a way that confuses the listener.
If the African-Americans who complement my hat had not done so I would have nothing to compare the responses of the gays. I might think I was going crazy. But I'm not.
We all know what a heartfelt compliment sounds like and the gays seem incapable of giving one… unless (of course) they want to get laid.
Here are more pictures of our brief stay in Malibu and our trip home.
Tags African, African American, African-American men and women, Confederate States of America, Ethnicity, Fake fur, Gay, Gay Men, Jacob, Los Angeles, Marc Jacobs, New York City, Trader Joes, United States, WGHP, White people
Categories Fashion, Gay, Los Angeles, Malibu, NYC, Queer
Gay Itay Hod Fucks Straight Aaron Schock (Pictures)
First, if you're going to out someone, then out them. Itay Hod did not out Schock in his piece, he outed a "hypothetical" congressman who just happens to fit Schock's resume. He also presented thin evidence, which consisted of hearsay from an unnamed journalist friend and video footage that he claims TMZ has of Schock "trolling gay bars." Hod knows a Facebook post is the only place this cuts it; that's why it appeared there and not at any publication.
Secondly, a group of several gay journalists and activists on Twitter — including Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis and Josh Barro — have decided that mocking Schock for exhibiting stereotypically gay attributes, like caring about his clothes and body, or following Daley on Instagram is the way of dealing with him. This is the same sort of behavior that the same people have said is harmful when it happens to closeted LGBT kids in schools. And, when I look at this happening publicly, I know that those closeted kids could be seeing it too. If it's harmful for those kids to see athletes say anti-LGBT things, how isn't it harmful for them to see prominent out people teasing Schock for his pants?
Chris Geidner
Chris Geidner is the sole brave gay journalist who dared criticize the velvet mafia for their inchoate name calling and bullying… aimed at Republican Politician Aaron Schock… the reason for this gay vitriol? Hunky journalist (we only agree with the good-looking ones) Itay Hod posted some ugly, muddled references on his Facebook page to a man who might hypothetically be Aaron Schock.
I'm not a fan of Aaron, he's a typical… loathsome republican with typically unpalatable views with an unlikely sartorial edge, an atypical personal aesthetic and a body that most gay men seem to die for.
Most gay men seem to think Aaron has a 'gay body' so must be gay.
Rather than homosexual… Aaron Schock looks to me like a right-wing narcissus. Remember the art of the Third Reich? Remember Die Partei, Arno Breker's statue representing the spirit of the Nazi Party, fetishizing male perfection? Like most young contemporary gays, young nazis were encouraged to aspire to an idealized body as proof of their loyalty to the state (the state of gay) and their undying patriotism. A common right-wing obsession.
Aaron has embraced the people's fascination with his perfect abs and pecs whilst extolling the values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience. Perhaps that's exactly why the white, elite gays believe Aaron is a homosexual… because he is a full on, 100%, bone fide narcissist.
And, if you are wondering… defending him from the gay mafia does not make me a self loathing homosexual. It makes my blood boil that hate speak usually reserved for gay people is being used by gay people against a man who may or may not be gay.
Aaron! If you had only kept your abs to yourself, your (some might say) good looks under wraps… and your Instagram private… the gays wouldn't have noticed you in the first place. But all those pics of you with your bronzed pecs and tight white underwear have driven the gays wild. And, like Tom Cruise before you… all the gays really want… is… to fuck you… convincing themselves and others that if they want you that badly… there's no chance you're straight.
You've confused the average gay, blindsided him with your million watt smile.
If you had been an ugly troll saying hateful things… the gays wouldn't care less who you were fucking. Anyway, they'd have already caught you with your mouth behind a glory hole or paying for boys on rentboy.com and dismissed you with a limp wave and a meh.
But Aaron, much to their consternation, you seem to be sexually abstinent. Nobody has caught you with your pants down with anyone… male or female. Because you don't take your pants down? The gays NEVER understand celibacy or abstinence or how all men are not exactly like them. It drives them crazy that they can't catch you, shame you, kill the demon of homophobia within… then fuck you.
Itay Hod and his jacked up supporters are crude, repellent people. Old fashioned bullies… judgmental and prescriptive. If you dare disagree with their group think assessment you will be damned to hell… just like Chris Geidner…
For a bunch of guys who loathe judgement in others the gays sure got judgmental about the rest of the world. Since the Supreme Court DOMA decision the gays have woken up… emboldened, embracing their power. Like children, testing their parameters, the boundaries of what can and what can't be said or done. Sadly, after a life time of hibernation, they have taken on the attributes of their worst enemies.
Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, John Aravosis, Josh Barro.
They are, after all, just men. White gay men, looking down their noses at the rest of us.
While the affluent, white gays sink into a sanctimonious swamp the rest of the LGBTQ alliance look on at them with barely concealed embarrassment.
Their treatment of Schlock, their asinine assumption that he is gay based on pics of his bare-chested, manicured body… his trousers, his shoes… says more about them and the type of gays they are… than the kind of straight man Schock is.
Dodgy circumstantial evidence convicts Aaron Schock of homosexuality in the court of the velvet mafia. Using gossip and here say, bad shoe pics and plaid pants as indisputable proof of his gayness.
This is BULLSHIT!
I thought is was who we were fucking and loving rather than who we were aping that made us gay?
Perhaps Aaron Sch-jock is truly asexual? Maybe he's waiting for the right guy… maybe he's a pedophile practicing abstinence… or suffers erectile dysfunction and hates the gays because they are so obsessed with hard cocks?
What of it? It's all conjecture until he tells us what he is if he feels so compelled.
The guy is a republican hater who dresses like a european and loves showing off his abs… have you seen Instagram or Tumblr recently? Based on this proof… this 'criteria'… the whole world (hopefully) would be gay. All of my young straight friends are posting pics of their abs and their shoes on Instagram and Tumblr every day.
Haven't we got past this crap? That only pansies and girls do that sort of thing?
God forbid, what happens if Aaron comes out? Like Ken Mehlman before… who caused untold harm to fellow gay people. If indeed Schock is gay and comes out? There will be a parade. It will take the baying gays about ten seconds to shamelessly forget his homophobia, objectify his abs… go to his pool parties and drink his vodka whilst he condemns immigrants, destroys women's rights and turns a blind eye to racist colleagues.
But don't worry… he'll be out and proud.
Tags Aaron, Aaron Schock, Adolf Hitler, Chris Geidner, Dan Savage, Facebook, Instagram, Itay Hod, John Aravosis, Josh Barro, LGBT, Michelangelo Signorile, Nazi, Schock, third reich, Tom Daley
Categories Fantasy, Gay, Los Angeles, Love, NYC, politics, Queer, Rant
Kay Saatchi/Nigella Lawson
If a woman, an individual woman multiplied by billions, does not believe in her own discrete existence and therefore cannot credit the authenticity of her own suffering, she is erased, canceled out, and the meaning of her life, whatever it is, whatever it might have been, is lost. This loss cannot be calculated or comprehended. It is vast and awful, and nothing will ever make up for it.
― Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women
I never met Nigella Lawson, not yet. She is still relevant. She is the battered wife. The super woman who drowned her sorrows in cocaine as her former husband lay dying of cancer and her ex husband allegedly emotionally brutalized her.
I only meet women like Nigella when they become irrelevant.
In my distant social orbit, light years from the warming sun of acceptability, circle the flotsam and jetsam of international society. Isolated by ignominy, the ex wives of current politicians, media titans and corporate mega moguls float in and out of the rooms of AA, expensive treatment centers in the Arizona desert, The San Fernando Valley and Malibu.
Aping the lives they once had with limitless funds, they buy a few stems of bruised tuba rose* from the same florist who once filled their many mansions with exotic blooms. Sumptuous bouquets placed on valuable escritoire, on silvered night stands, on grand dining tables.
She stands briefly on the threshold, looking at her guilty feet, apologising for the frugal fist of sweet smelling flowers. The florist looks on piteously knowing that her younger, more glamorous successor can spend whatever she pleases.
The lonely ex-wife arranges a slim vase in her well-appointed but humble apartment in Pimlico moments from where she and her spouse once lived on Eaton Square.
These frosty, cast off ex-wives, their faces wet with angry tears, looking to half-baked sober life coaches in first-rate treatment centers to recalibrate their lives. Drinking away their sorrows, dumped by men whose power they loved and whose money they spent. Yoga, sobriety, macrobiotics, spending, using, crying… nothing seems to work because all these women want is the sweet taste of revenge.
This week, one very lucky ex-wife gets her dues. She waited patiently on the sidelines of her ex-husband's life to witness the crushing downfall of her Nemesis. Today, American born, Kay Saatchi is not only back in Charles's life but has had the delicious pleasure of helping dispense the woman who caused Kay pain beyond description: Nigella Lawson.
Kay is delightful. I've met her on numerous occasions in Los Angeles. Of course she's delightful! A man like Charles Saatchi wouldn't marry an idiot. Kay is everything a powerful man would want, she is elegant, super smart, she has exquisite taste. Kay, nowadays, is sober. Yet, when Kay was drinking, she had an unpleasant habit of blacking out and talking gibberish about Charles. She couldn't and wouldn't stop. Even her best friend wouldn't know how to stem the tirade. Her life, it seemed, could only be nothing… without Charles.
She would disintegrate into a seething mess of Charles Saatchi resentment.
The only hook Kay had in her ex as she watched in increasing horror as Nigella used Charles as a spring-board into her own rock solid career as international domestic goddess… was her/their daughter Phoebe who Kay moaned constantly was ignored by her father. When I asked Phoebe if her father ignored her over Christmas dinner a few years ago… she denied it, looked sadly at her drunk mother and told me that the only problem parent… was Kay.
Now, things are different. Kay is sober (unlike Nigella) and Kay's undying love and loyalty for her ex husband has been rewarded by his begging Kay to help oust Nigella. Kay will never be Mrs Charles Saatchi ever again but she has made herself indispensable to him during his time of need… once again firmly cementing herself back into his life.
It is hard to explain to ordinary people the intoxicating effect of unlimited cash, how women like Kay, Nigella and now Trinny Woodall would willingly get involved with brooding Charles Saatchi. A man who throttled his ex wife in public. A man so ruthless he recruits his vulnerable ex-wife to destroy his current wife.
Do yourself a favor and read Andrea Dworkin's Right Wing Women: the politics of domesticated females. Money and power are everything to some women. It defies logic and rationale. The patriarch, the provider, the batterer… do what ever you will to me and for me… I am yours forever.
Today the harsh glare of media scrutiny lights up every dark corner of Charles Saatchi's famously private life. Appearing every day at the trial of his former employees, The Grillo Sisters. It must be a painful time for secretive Charles. During the trial there was constant mention of the grown women (who were no more that indentured servants) as 'family' yet, as Deborah Orr points out in the only pro Grillo piece on offer this week…
"You cannot insist that someone is in your family, then cry fraud when they behave as if they are."
The rich are different. They like to live beyond scrutiny, they operate without care for consequence. Partially, this week, on a micro and macro level justice was done. For servants like the Grillo sisters and for ex wives who crave revenge.
* Princess Diana's favorite flower.
Tags Andrea Dworkin, Charles, Charles Saatchi, Credit card, Deborah Orr, Divorce, Eaton Square, Kay, London, Los Angeles, Nigella, Nigella Lawson, Pimlico, San Fernando Valley, Trinny Woodall
Categories Alcoholics Anonymous, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Malibu, Queer
Tuesday, a woman I know sent me a revolting picture of a skinned, live puppy attempting to escape a pot of boiling water. The following email I opened that day was a friend telling me the young Olympiad Tom Daley was dating Dustin Lance Black. The similarities between these two emails far outweigh the differences.
Black, known to his friends simply as Lance has been around my life as long as we have both been making gay films. Despite how we have been described, Lance and I are NOT friends. Never have been, never will be.
Recently, Lance's films have fallen by the wayside. His famous friends and perfect Hollywood pedigree can not augment his startling lack of talent. Despite the luxury of many recuts his film Virginia remains almost unwatchable. One of his producers told me that Lance cannot and should not direct.
He claims that he loves my British Academy Award nominated film AKA. Yet, for all his 'love' of my work… he and me have never really connected. I'm not… a) a young blonde boy, b) a Hollywood grandee, c) interested.
Like so many gay men in Hollywood he is ruthlessly ambitious.
Lance Black (born to the Mormon faith) is an affluent, white, gay man. I stress this because it defines who he is as a so-called gay activist. We see each other at gay apartheid (white only) parties in the Hollywood Hills. I am usually the plus one.
He lives in a nice house on Fairfax Avenue in West Hollywood. It is sparsely decorated. For all his riches Lance lives a frugal life. One might say the house lacks imagination which is odd for such an imaginative man. One of the bedrooms in his humble home is reserved for the two surrogate children he is planning in his not so distant future.
The only fly in the ointment? He will not have children unless married. Sadly, his seeming inability (like so many gay men in Hollywood) to keep just one man, a man to marry… the bassinets remain empty. He is drawn predominantly to much younger gay men. The subject of child rearing, when discussed, often leads to amicable separation.
It seems that Lance may have found in Tom Daley a young man he can marry who shares his desire for an immediate family. Let's wish him all the best and that child-birth comes quickly… he doesn't want to be an old dad, too old to play football with his young child.
Lance's pre occupation with a nuclear family is at odds with how I would determine an activist. But Lance is no ordinary activist. He passionately wants for all gays to perfectly ape what heterosexuals seem to have. Nothing less than full integration will do. He fights vehemently for the gays to participate in the traditionally right-wing institutions of marriage and the military.
He hangs primarily with a gang of affluent white men who share similar mores.
Gay activists like Lance Black were quick to blame California's African-American voters for the defeat of Proposition 8, the anti gay marriage amendment. People for the American Way president Kathryn Kolbert, criticized "the speed with which some white gay activists began blaming African-Americans—sometimes in appallingly racist ways."
Black is wedded to right-wing gay organization the HRC who once famously refused to support the rights of trans people then issued a groveling apology. Not learning from their white gay mistakes the HRC recently silenced the voices of trans and queer undocumented activists outside the Supreme Court during the DOMA Supreme Court decision, again… apologizing after the fact.
The gays at the HRC, it seems, have a very narrow view of sexuality. The LGBTQ coalition leaves many affluent, white gay men feeling uneasy and confused. Unsurprisingly, like so many gay men, Lance questions the legitimacy of bisexuality. A nettle the gays prefer not to grasp…
Read more about the dark practices of the HRC here.
"In recent years, HRC has been working to contradict its former reputation as an organization overly focused on issues of concern to affluent white gay men, combating long-simmering charges of transphobia within the organization."
When Lance first started calling himself an activist and regularly going to Washington to meet President Obama I bumped into him at Cafe Solar de Cahuenga on Cahuenga Blvd in Hollywood. Solar is a tatty south American coffee shop/restaurant popular amongst young actors and writers within sight and sound of the busy 101 Freeway.
I praised him for his film Milk which he valiantly produced and won an Oscar for writing. I didn't ask him about the controversy whirling around the gay gossip vortex in which we are both hapless victims. Amongst the back stabbing gays his success and authenticity were being questioned.
Hadn't he stolen the Milk project from another gay producer? Did he even write the script that won him the Oscar for best film? Some people said Ron Nyswaner had in fact written the final script that Gus shot? The gays told me that he took his Oscar everywhere. That he couldn't put it down. They scoffed that he used his power and prestige within the gay community to snare impressionable young boys. They said he should have been wearing a condom when he was fucking his 'boyfriend' in the infamous shots of Lance with a cock in his ass… if he was at all interested in being an 'activist' he should have been wearing a condom. They said that he should practice what he preached. They said that the original documentary about Harvey Milk was far better than the film.
Harvey Milk made Lance Black famous. What Milk would have made of Black personally… I wonder. What Black would have thought of Milk if he had met him contemporaneously… I wonder. Milk was a charismatic, bombastic, driven, older jewish man. Lance channels Milk's political inclusivity when he claims that all he wants to do is 'give people hope', this wholesale appropriation of Milk's legacy… sticks somewhat in the caw.
Lance hangs with Milk's contemporary and true activist Cleve Jones. Lance riding Cleve's activist coat tails? Cleve seduced by Hollywood glamour?
What kind of political activist is Dustin Lance Black?
Whilst whistle-blower and trans hero Pvt. Chelsea Manning rots in jail, 'activist' Lance Black lead the 'human rights' charge on The Castro for San Francisco Pride. SF Pride chose to controversially exclude Manning from the official Pride demonstration in fear of upsetting Pride's corporate donors.
Back in Hollywood, Lance sits writing on his own in the middle of the coffee shop sipping green tea. Everyone could see him there. We talked about British equality legislation fashioned by Waheed Ali. I told Lance about British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell. He seemed enthralled by Peter's unique brand of direct action so I organized an introduction. When the time came for him to meet with Peter… Lance bailed.
I sent a dismissive note.
We didn't speak again until he started dating a dear friend of mine who was at that time living at my home. My friend is perhaps one of the sweetest man I know. Kind, considerate, thoughtful, intelligent, curious and recently out of the closet. In fact, history repeating itself, my friend came out for Lance. My friend made the first move.
Knowing that my friend was falling for Lance I tried to stay as impartial as I possibly could. It didn't last long. I was supportive and kind for as long as I could be. I asked Lance over to the house for his new boyfriend's birthday lunch. Lance bailed.
During the next few months of their relationship I watched my friend fall apart. My friend started therapy. He was torn and confused and miserable. At one particular gay pool party Lance rudely left without telling my dear sweet friend that he was leaving. Lance ended up at another Hollywood party, at Roland Emerich's surrounded by more young boys.
My friend was distraught.
Thankfully, when Lance took my friend to The White House he didn't bail. They ran around with Don Lemons stealing Christmas cookies. They had access all areas. They hung in the Oval office. My friend was delighted to see history being made… for affluent white gay people.
I maintained my impartiality.
I have no opinion about Lance and Tom. Sadly, others do.
Tom Daley is being scolded in the bully chat rooms by the petit bourgeois gays for 'making the first move' as if his teenage innocence and delight can be construed as a devious attempt at star fucking.
The British public love Tom Daley and they will not let him get hurt or tangled in anything other than a relationship they deem appropriate. For the time being they will give Lance Black the benefit of the doubt. I am sure the British press will keep tabs on Lance. If he thinks for one gay moment that he can get away with any duplicitous behavior around Tom Daley… he had better think again.
The problem is: no one expects gay men to have morals, or stick to the rules. Gay white affluent man have written their own rules and nobody dares question them. They have become a super elite, their access to the world stage unparalleled. But with wider acceptability comes broader scrutiny.
Elton John once said in front of me, "10 gay men run the world… and I know all of them."
Tom Daley is a beloved young British boy. We may begin to see this corrupt, elite gay world through his teenage eyes. It is a shadowy world of sexual un-manageability, pedophilia and other unsavory obsessions.
It is not what the elite gays want you to know, whilst they paint a public picture of themselves that makes them seem… just like you.
Tags Academy Award, Cleve Jones, Dustin Lance Black, Hollywood, Kathryn Kolbert, Lance, milk, Mormon, Peter Tatchell, Ron Nyswaner, Tom Daley, United States, Washington, White House
Categories Film, Gay, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Love, Queer, Rant
Film Review: Concussion/Kill Your Darlings
Gay and Lesbian cinema is enjoying a well deserved revival and two very special films are garnering a great deal of post Sundance attention.
Concussion written and directed by Stacie Passon and Kill Your Darlings written by Austin Bunn and John Krokidas, directed by John Krokidas.
By way of full disclosure, I was once very friendly with John Krokidas who stayed in both my ex boyfriend's house on Fire Island and our house in London.
The similarities between Concussion and Kill Your Darlings, both opening in NYC this weekend, are legion.
Both are first features by writer/directors in their 40's, both incredibly accomplished, both fatally flawed during the middle of the third act and both produced by lesbians. Concussion, produced by the venerable Rose Troche. Kill Your Darlings, by equally lauded Christine Vachon.
Thankfully, both have found their way into the mainstream at a time when the mainstream have developed an appetite for gay and lesbian culture.
After their opening night screening Troche, when asked what had changed for gay and lesbian film since she showed Go Fish at the Angelica twenty years earlier, said, "Social Media."
We, as gay and lesbian film makers, are no longer so isolated, so dependent on traditional media to get our message to what was once a niche market but has become, due to the marriage equality debate, a broader church.
Kill Your Darlings is a 'bigger' film than Concussion. There is a great deal of Oscar talk around Darlings and film industry infra structure to support that claim. A period film, a grander stage, a huge cast. My gay friend who saw it before me called it one of the 'best films they had ever seen'.
There are flaws in both of these low-budget movies that maybe, with a little extra cash, could have been resolved.
Yet Darlings suffers most for its low budget.
When all is said and done, Darlings is a cold film, lacking substance. It seems scared of embracing man/man man/boy emotion. The characters lack depth and focus. It is a cruel film. Not least because it deals with a murder. Yet, the murder only really becomes apparent toward the end.
'A murder in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.'
Described thus on IMDB… the film does nothing of the sort.
Before the murder is picked at like an unsightly, syphilitic scab in the middle of the third act Krokidas sets up a youth orientated world where older men are vilified, where young boys (Daniel Radcliff and Dane DeHann) run from party to party, taking drugs, reciting poetry and jacking off .
Young, attractive, sexually ambiguous, entitled, partying college students vaguely remind one of Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisted but sadly… without the wit, subtext or the huge budget.
The two main performances are, on the whole, lackluster. Yet, every single performance beyond the unrequited lovers are… brilliant. Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Jason Leigh etc. etc. Brilliant!
Poor Michael C. Hall playing David Kammerer, the soon to be murdered older man, turns up periodically looking forlorn and pathetic in his period coat and beard like a homeless person had wandered onto the set by accident. Both he and the equally talented Jack Houston are horribly underused and sidelined while the less talented 'youth' continue to take drugs and quote Yates.
If Kill Your Darlings had really focused on the murder, the resulting trial and aftermath this film might have succeeded. Yet, the backdrop becomes the foreground, the story held hostage by pretentious fluff and circumstance.
Unaware of this compelling murder story before I saw Kill Your Darlings. I Googled Kammerer, Ginsberg and Carr.
I remembered William Burroughs coming to my 21st Birthday party. I began to see how the story had been massaged by Bunn and Krokidas to suit their own 21st Century gay agenda.
How do gay men want to present themselves and our history?
The murderer in Darlings is a bad gay not because he murdered a so called predator (his defense) but because he subsequently got married and had kids and didn't 'come out'.
The 'older man' is dispensable… worthless… the murder almost… forgivable.
Even though the victim Kammerer was seven years younger than forty-year old Krokidas is now, the writer and director show this character little compassion. Krokidas directs the audience to incorrectly believe that Kammerer was somehow a much older pedophile rather than a love struck gay man… that he deserved to die.
One final note.
The spectacle of Daniel Radcliffe being fucked in the ass, his hairy legs forced over his shoulders is perhaps the most daring yet superfluous, unnecessary and redundant scene in the entire movie. Sadly, it is for what this film will be remembered, which is not what the writers intended.
Both Concussion and Darlings are very white films. There are no black people at all in Concussion which I found utterly baffling.
Kill Your Darlings has perhaps one of the most racially offensive scenes where Radcliffe and DeHann are the only white faces in a black speak easy imagining what trouble they could cause by manipulating the clientele if they were negro puppets frozen in time.
As a metaphor it was sickeningly on point: this is how white gay Americans treats black gay Americans.
How could this appalling white casting have happened? Whilst Darlings can use the 'period' excuse… Concussion cannot.
The colorless casting issue aside, Concussion, because it seems to comfortably inhabit the parameters of a low budget film is a more accomplished and polished tale.
'After a blow to the head, Abby decides she can't do it anymore. Her life just can't be only about the house, the kids and the wife. She needs more: she needs to be Eleanor.'
Concussion as described on IMDB only scrapes at the surface of what this ingenious film unpacks.
Concussion's provenance is by way of the IFP script lab and Sundance Post Production fund.
The delicate performances, elegant settings, this thoughtful and spare film (compassionately told) delighting from beginning to end… well, until mid-way through the third act.
Concussion is Robin Weigert's film. Her performance is sublime.
Weaving interconnecting tales of Suburban and urban lesbian life, an ordinary sexually unsatisfied house wife strays into a world of sexual diversion. Selling her sexual self to other woman. It's as simple as that yet the adventure she chooses becomes our teachable moment. Those who crave sex over emotion, or emotion over sex.
The questions posited pester long after the film ends.
Films about double lives are always intriguing. How those two lives collide. Picking up the children from school juxtaposed with violent images of remembered s and m sex.
Abbey is an interior decorator who is renovating a small apartment in lower Manhattan. She uses the apartment to meet women who hire her as a sex worker. After the loft is sold and her secret life revealed a choice has to be made.
Will Abby stay with her wife or move on?
I'm not going to spoil it for you other than to say that the answer gets lost somehow in a melee of loose ends.
Both Concussion and Kill Your Darlings are welcome at a time when almost every Hollywood studio is contemplating larger budget gay themed movies. Gay film makers must continue to tell stories that use the language and locations of our own lives. Although I had problems with Darlings it is imperative that these films go on being made.
White, gay male youth orientated stories have become bankable. White female middle-aged lesbian movies… not so much. Powerful white gay men in Hollywood make sure that some gay stories get applauded whilst others (Liberace) are ignored.
The Weekend by Andrew Haigh (Creator of Looking for HBO) although breaching the straight/gay divide was not given the 'A Gay' benediction Krokidus is currently enjoying. The gay men in The Weekend were too old, poor and took public transport… some of the criticisms I heard from the velvet mafia. The film was consequently marginalized by Hollywood gays.
John Krokidas waited ten years to enjoy the dream of making his movie come true, within that ten years the face of film making, gay film making, distribution and post production have undergone a revolution. The culture, the matrix from which these films are conceived and born has changed beyond recognition.
Krokidas could not have made this film ten years ago. Nobody was interested in making films like this.
The recently democratized means of production and distribution allow any young (or not so young) gay film maker the freedom to tell our tales without masking their truth.
For too long gay film makers were advised to turn their back on their own stories for fear of marginalizing their careers.
For those of us who waited, remained tenacious it is maybe too late to find a place at the table. Yet, I am thrilled for those… like John and Stacie who do.
Tags Allen Ginsberg, Andrew Haigh, Christine Vachon, Concussion, Daniel Radcliff, Daniel Radcliffe, David Kammerer, film makers, Gay Film, Jack Kerouac, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Krokidas, Kill Your Darlings, Michael C Hall, Robin Weigert, Rose Troche, Stacie Passon, The Weekend, Velvet Mafia
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Liberace: Behind The Candelabra
I was asked to direct this movie, or a movie like it, ten years ago.
It was a script based on the autobiography of Liberace's lover Scott Thorson. I read the script, I met the producers, I met Michael Keaton who was, at that time, attached to the project. Now, I don't remember the script, I don't remember the producers. I remember meeting Michael Keaton in an obscure room in Santa Monica. Michael was very quiet, not at all enthused.
I remember asking myself why he would want to make this movie. I remember sharing ideas about performance and parameters. He didn't want to do an 'impersonation'.
Another script about Liberace arrived, a more dynamic, dramatic and excessive script. It piqued my interest. It began with Liberace's final moments in the back of a limousine. Liberace is often damned for claiming he wasn't gay, for never admitting to his HIV status. That those around him at the end of his life went to extraordinary lengths to hide that he died of AIDS.
Of course, there are still people, (living people) who never admit they are HIV positive. Such is the shame around HIV and AIDS. But equally there were many people at the time of Liberace's death who went to extraordinary lengths to reveal that he died of AIDS. They exhumed his already buried body to prove their point.
There were too many people eager to shame him. For that's what they wanted to do. Shame the gay man.
Liberace never said publicly that he was gay. He denied it. Again and again. I sympathise with his denial. It was his choice, a choice we now condemn. In these prescriptive times if you are not willing to say you are gay… someone else will.
Liberace was a brand. Like Posh and Becks. When David Beckham was caught cheating… they went to extraordinary lengths to protect their brand. It's understandable that Liberace lied on oath. He had everything to lose. In those miserable homo-ignorant times there were plenty who would have delighted and profited from his downfall.
Lonely?
Reading the reviews for this film a theme emerges: Loneliness.
Mary McNamara LA Times: 'A darkly moving look at two lonely men who briefly found something like love.'
Michael Thornton The Telegraph: The Lonely Liberace I knew.
There are countless other references to this 'lonely' man Liberace. His 'lonely' mother, his 'lonely' boy friend Scott. Scott was 'damaged', Scott was a 'gold digger', Scott was a 'lonely soul'. Scott was 'played too sympathetically because he's in jail for burglary'. It seems like the prophecy of fearful mothers comes to pass in this movie, that their gay sons with end up alone, abandoned, unhappy.
The relationship between Scott and Liberace may seem familiar to any powerful, older man who lets a younger man into his life: "They establish a bond that is a blend of romantic love, father-son affection, brotherly playfulness, and prostitution."
Liberace, like Brokeback Mountain before it brings into hard focus the lives and loves of queer men. There is the obligatory delight and revulsion (in equal measure) of the kissing. Two men kissing. Two men kissing seems to remind many straight men that a tender intimacy can exist between men and that may very well interfere what they imagine we do. The gay butt fucking they imagine… immediately… after meeting one another.
Men kissing, like men getting married, seems to inflame the homophobe.
I'm wondering why Steven Soderbergh wanted to make this movie, why a gay director wasn't chosen? Did he do it because it seemed like a cool thing to do? A straight man, so comfortable in his own skin that he can work with queer subject matter? It still feels to me like straight boys (actors and director) getting together to prove a point.
With so many talented and extraordinary gay directors in the world how did this end up being made by a bunch of straight guys? Was Liberace too difficult and distasteful and potentially divisive for a gay director? When ever I have stood before a queer audience with my queer films (confirmed by other queer, male directors) the audience who have the most problems are those who want to say: I didn't see me.
Gay man are desperate to see themselves and their lives as they live them in TV and film. It is perfectly reasonable for them to expect this. Rather than the gay freak, the gay priest, the comedy gay… they, understandably, want to see themselves fairly represented. They want to see gay detectives, gay wedding crashers, gay teachers, plumbers, gay undocumented workers.
Many reviewers of Liberace: Behind The Candelabra smirk at the foolishness and naivety of the straight women who swooned at this obviously gay man. I once researched a documentary about fag hags. All the women I spoke to who identified as fag hags felt adored and listened to, appreciated, respected by a man. Even if that man was gay. Those women provide the clue to Liberace's denial and downfall. Liberace wasn't lonely. He was a performing artist who found solace and validation, like many do, on the stage.
Every night he performed he bathed in the glory of his screaming fans. The unconditional love of his audience. An adoring audience of many thousands will never be any match for the love of just one man. I remember saying that to Michael Keaton as I sat there in that small room realizing who Liberace was.
Tags AIDS, Behind the Candelabra, Behind the Candelabra (My Life With Liberace), Brokeback Mountain, Gay, LIBERACE, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Michael Keaton, Scott, Scott Thorson, Steven Soderbergh
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