Tag Archives: life experiences

Read it… said it… heard it

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Image – Darkness Drops

The things I’ve read, said and heard this week…

ABOUT LIKING ATTENTION
JAKE NEVINS: How does it feel to be thirsted over by left-leaning gay men?
HARRY SISSON: Hahahaha well I’m personally straight so it’s not something that interests me, but I don’t hate! Thirst if you wanna thirst, I won’t stop you.

CHARLIE SHEEN ON HAVING SEX WITH MEN
“And in whatever chunks of time that I was off the pipe, trying to navigate that, trying to come to terms with it — ‘Where did that come from?… Why did that happen?’ — and then just finally being like, ‘So what?’ So what? Some of it was weird. A lot of it was fucking fun. And life goes on.”

TALKING WITH ETHAN
“How are you getting on with Leon? Do you like him?” Ethan asked. “Good, but not really my type.” He seemed exasperated. “You don’t recognise him?” “Nope,” was my honest answer. “Are you pissing with me?” I shook my head and made a face. “I’ve never seen the guy before.” “Does that mean that you talk like normal people?” “It does,” I replied. 

LISTENING TO ARTIE
“The picture’s painted, I’ve been denied, the artist couldn’t fit me in, there wasn’t room for me inside. What else can I do when someone doesn’t want you?” – Art Garfunkel singing When Someone Doesn’t Want You… brilliant!

ON LYING ABOUT AGE
“How old are you? Social media is so frickin’ secretive.” I was careful with my answer. “ I am the age that you imagine me to be.”

Seven cool things that I heard this week

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“ I heard Earth, Wind and Fire singing ‘Ba-dee-ya’ on the radio, and I thought, oh no, this is another step towards autumn.” – a woman on the bus referring to the song September.

“There in the shade, like a cool drink waiting, he sat with slow fire in his eyes, just waiting.”  – Johnny Hartman singing A Slow Hot Wind. 

“He comes from an old Dorset family that made grandfather clocks and had a swan’s head as their emblem.” – a posh woman boasting about the man who her daughter is marrying.

“Hey, is there anywhere to play pickleball around here?” – a student in Starbucks.

“I can hear monks chanting.” – Charlie laid in bed in the middle of the night.

“The drawback is that you always get corn dust up your bum.” – a farmer on the radio.

“Come and look at this rock, it’s shaped like your willy!” – a young girl shouting to her older brother.

Both sides untouched. Not for listening. Display only

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Betty Blue – 37°2 le matin – Gabriel Yared (1986)

A second-hand record store. Old French chansons played over the speakers. “Très bien,” Charlie beamed, because it made him feel at home. But this wasn’t France, it was an English suburb on a quiet Saturday afternoon. I Shazamed a song on my phone. It was Jeanne Moreau singing Les Voyages. 

Charlie rummaged through a cardboard box of old cassette tapes and I pointed out that had he found something interesting, then he wouldn’t be able to listen to it, because we didn’t have anything to play it on. 

And besides, I told him, I was surprised that he even knew what they were because they were obsolete before he’d been born. “That is not the point,” said the Millennium Child. “I have a good reason for looking.”

At last, he found something that pleased him. “This is what I want,” and he held up the soundtrack album to Betty Blue, or 37°2 le matin, if we want to give it the proper title. (I later discovered that it was released in 1986).

“But how are you going to play it?”

“I am not going to listen to it. If I wanted to do that I would listen to the music on Spotify. I have something else in mind.” With that, he borrowed a pound coin with which to buy it. 

The apartment. The office (which used to be Levi’s bedroom). The cassette tape is stood upright on a shelf alongside vintage postcards, pebbles and shells collected from beaches, and a wooden model of the Arc de Triomphe. “It is simply for show,” said Charlie.

Jour de Charlie. A reincarnation of Jacques Tati

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Jacques Tati

A few weeks ago, Charlie introduced me to the works of Jacques Tati. We started with Jour de fête (1949) and over a week watched his Monsieur Hulot, featured in Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967) and Trafic (1971). I’m late to Tati’s work, but it wasn’t hard to catch up, because he made so few films, and the ones that he did were genius. 

Charlie knew I would like Tati’s humour but confessed to knowing little about him. Intrigued to find out more, I bought one of the many biographies and spent warm evenings on the terrace absorbed in the life of this French legend.

Tati had a gentle spirit, and a quiet dignity, but behind the camera he could be elusive, stubborn and emotionally distant. This was easily confused with arrogance and I was left with the impression that he wasn’t a nice person. It troubled me because I discovered too many similarities with the person I lived with. I thought, ‘Fuck me! Is Charlie a reincarnation of Jacques Tati?’

Charlie, who tries hard to be good at everything, but doesn’t really know what it is he is best at. Painting? Photography? Modelling? He’s a complex person, committed to artistic vision – sometimes to the point of obsession – and to an outsider he can seem a bit of a shit.

He’s quite the opposite really, but his devotion to art can seem almost monastic. He pushes for the purity of his vision, as though wanting to leave behind something beautiful, and that pursuit can sometimes be baffling. 

I explained this to Charlie, and as the English like to say, he got ‘the face on’. “You do not understand my ache of misunderstood devotion,” he replied. “But I appreciate your concern, because it is mine also, and I need to decide what it is that I am going to be brilliant at.”

Boys, Brass and Billie

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He was once a boy who listened to punk rock. Sex Pistols. The Clash. The Damned. That was almost fifty years ago. Back then, if he’d rolled back half a century from the seventies, then he would have landed in the 1930s with a big war to come. Benny Goodman. Glenn Miller. Duke Ellington. The music was as far removed as he could ever have imagined. It brings us to now. The kids of 2025. Billie Eilish. Drake. Taylor Swift. His punk rock is as strange to them as the 1930s were to him.

One more time for old time’s sake

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Image: The Field / PHG / 2025

This is where I used to play football in Adidas shorts, with sexy legs and a six-pack. I was fourteen and showed off to the girls. I wasn’t great but that didn’t matter because they thought I was the best footballer in the world. When it was dark, we came here to smoke cigarettes and drink beer because this was our secret place. 

A few years later I ended up in London and played for an amateur team which thought that I had a brilliant attitude and a bit of skill. And the girls still thought that I was a catch. But my attention had wandered. When I met an Italian boy called Nico, he persuaded me to move to Perugia with him. 

I played for a small local team with black curly-haired boys who wore Kappa shorts, and they were the ones who had tanned legs and six-packs. I was a carthorse, and they were young stallions who flirted mischievously and called me ‘ragazzo gay’ –  ‘gay boy’. 

Now I have come back to see where the adventure began. 

There are no younger versions of me anymore, no adoring girls, only long grass and trees. I sit alone on a bench, and a young guy walks by before heading into the undergrowth. He looks back and I know he wants me to follow so I decide that I will.

That Moment / The Student Pickup

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All things considered, there is something perverse about this Sunday afternoon. But the sun shines and makes you do things that are out of the ordinary. And on this day you follow a stranger into the Oxfam shop and watch as he browses a secondhand copy of The Divine Beauty of Mathematics. You kid yourself that this isn’t wrong. Strange maybe, but when he bends over to put it back on the bottom shelf, and purposely shows you the crack of his arse, then everything about this is okay.

That moment / It’s not really what I want, so my attempts to get it will fail

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Joe was once off his head on something, and stuck his head through a plate glass window. I then spent the next hour saving his life. I remember being covered in blood and being incredibly angry. He had major surgery, but escaped with a huge gash on the bridge of his nose that was a bit too close to his eyes. In all fairness, he thanked me afterwards, and offered me his arse with a discount of twenty quid which I politely refused. Last night, I wasted another hour of my life staring at Joe’s crotch.