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The first non-felon, non-war criminal thing I ever gave myself permission to hate was Abba. I was driving along the road to a therapy session in fact, when they came on the radio and I had that familiar feeling of distate and suppressed contempt. And I realised: I hate them! I HATE ABBA! I FUCKING HATE ABBA! And turned the radio off and started laughing and just feeling this great joy of actually feeling an emotion, a real emotion of my own, and not giving a fuck what anyone else thought of me for it. I told the therapist when she asked how I was, "I just discovered I really fucking HATE Abba!" she laughed and said it was huge progress. I said it was the most liberating thing I'd ever felt, to actually hate them and say it unapologetically. She told me to hold onto that hate, to help me remember how to feel something other than the lifelong numbness and detachment that was all I'd ever known previously. THIS was a real emotion. This is what real feelings feel like. This is how I can know whether what I think I'm feeling is real, or just what I'm faking cos it's expected and I need to appear human. Hatred of Abba was the beginning of becoming a real, three-dimensional person for me. My entire humanity is founded on hatred of Abba. I don't even mind if you play their songs, cos I'll just revel in how much I hate it, and the still as yet unfamiliar, heady feeling of "being real".

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I need a square neck t-shirt now.

Roger Taylor and Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran photographed by Mike Malone on August 7, 1981. 

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Thank fuck, if he was a Capricorn I’d be gutted.

7 days till Michael’s 57th birthday on January 22nd.

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Sharper than a papercut with lemon juice poured into it

Michael Hutchence & Johnny Depp, The Viper Room, LA, 1995

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Yes! Another style icon for me :)

Slide over here and give me a moment… Photo credit: Chris Cuffaro.

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You make me more. You raise my gaze. You lift my chin to an imperial angle. You send me back to the wardrobe to try harder. You clench my teeth to make me stubborn where I ought to be, and harden my heart so that I can demand respect, and pause it for the shrewdness that I need to deserve it. You point the way forward to power and fit me to go after it. Only with you is “we” more than “me”. You glance at the details I neglect and wait while I attend to them. You trouble my mind to teach me their importance.

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I knew he’d be there, the solid and calm knowledge: he had sent me out and he waited there for my return. It had been tough -- he knew it would be, as did I, and I looked forward to doing it, to enduing and overcoming, and the strength of his quiet confidence that I wouldn’t fail him had underpinned my heart throughout.

I knew he wouldn’t ask me how it went, because he knew how it would go. I would struggle, and there would be pain, but I would overcome and return. What else needed to be said?

I entered the house, knowing where he would be -- in the music room, as was his custom at this time of day. I went first to our bedroom and, shedding clothes onto the floor as I went, through to the bathroom. The dust of the day fell from me with the clothes, and I let the hot water rinse off what was left, so that I emerged from that shower myself alone.

From the chest I pulled a long tunic of undyed, but fine and crisp linen. Our sandalwood oil caught my senses as I pulled it over my head and belted myself with a black silken sash, the pearls on its tassles rattling casually as I knotted it over my left hip. I picked up a soft brush from the shelf and ran it through my long hair, catching my reflection in the corner of my eye. I turned to the mirror to see the pale winter sun lighting on the side of my head, so that my butter blonde seemed almost as fair as his platinum. It made me smile.

I put the brush down and, barefoot, padded through the house until I heard the piano, and followed the sound to where he sat, delicately pitter-pattering a gentle air, weaving a blanket of sprinkled melody that seemed to hover, open, into the air for me to walk into. I let it wrap around me as I perched beside him on the stool and leaned my head against his left shoulder.

While his right hand peppered the air with a sequence of improvised arpeggios, his left curled up to pull my head to him, and I felt him kiss my head. I smiled, eyes closed, hands clasped in my lap, and sighed in the relief of return.

I let his playing lull me into daydreams. I let my left hand caress his arm, squeezing gently to enjoy the play of his muscles, until the music finished with a rolling flourish and he took my hand in his, brought it to his lips and pressed a kiss into my palm. Our fingers interlaced and I pulled them to my lips. A kiss on his knuckles, his palm, the back of his hand, his wrist, then I took his index finger in my mouth and sucked it, looking up at him, sighing as the blue of his eyes shot through my heart and I had to touch his face.

I felt him take hold of me as I raked my fingers through his long, pale hair and our lips met and held for full three long, deep breaths, and he whispered ‘my love’, before I opened my mouth to him and he kissed all words from me before any could form in my mind.

I climbed onto him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, holding him to my body, arching to his breath on my neck, his right hand pulling me in to him while his left moved, splay-fingered, up my chest. My angel, my beautiful fallen angel, burning my blood within me to answer the call of his.

I knew what he had been doing while we were apart, and that later, there would be a debrief of sorts as we planned and assigned our next tasks. Now though, time to simply revel in our reunion, here by the piano. I was aware of a servant entering, stammering, and awkwardly leaving; he laughed and bit my lip, and took me all the harder until we draped, panting, around each other, kissing laughing, talking of the hailstorm I’d journeyed through, of pork and apples, of leaking shoes and a hundred other ways we know to say “I love you” and “you’re beautiful”, without mouthing those words, so easily cheapened by overuse.

Then the clock struck eight, and he said he would carry me to dinner just as we were, but we only got a few steps outside the door before he dropped me to push me to the wall with savage kisses that made me go limp with helpless lust, before he stopped abruptly and, still pinning me, he said he must eat or his belly would turn inside out, but after dinner he would fuck my brains out. Then, pulling me along by the hand, he strode off and I followed, breathless and almost insensible with perfect joy.

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‘Oh no,’ he says, eyeing me up and down. ‘That won’t do at all.’ I shrug back at him, appealing for help. He steps forward, and, grabbing a pale, grey, silk scarf from the back of a chair, picks at my lapel before pushing the jacket off me. I stand limp, allowing him to undress me like a mannequin.

‘This is alright,’ he nods, after a brief, tactile consideration of my shirt. Nonetheless, he adjusts the fastenings and moves the seams to that it drapes  more flatteringly.

‘Put that on,’ he says, indicating a dark grey jacket hanging on a closet handle: I obey, and he pulls out his wand, taps my arm and watches as the jacket shrinks in width and lengthens at the front, eliciting a curt nod of his pale gold head. He drapes the scarf around my neck and then pulls me to him by it.

‘There,’ he smiles, ‘much better.’ A brief but sweet kiss brushes my lips, before his eyes, turned downward to arrange the scarf, take in my shoes. A flick of his wand turns them from dark brown to polished black. He puts his wand away, then takes my hands in his.

‘Come, then, we shall bring the.... je ne sais quoi... that’ll make this silly event at least look half as good as they think it is.’

And, grinning still from the thrill of being dressed by him, clothed in elegance that declares me a Malfoy, I step out proudly with him, arm in arm.

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I had been looking at him and just thinking how he looked like an angel with his long, pale hair in disarray, highlighted by the sunlight shining through the window, and his fair skin and such eyes, blue as can be, gently moving over the page in front of him. The white linen draping his shoulders, the lines of his neck, his décolletage, the long, elegant fingers resting idly on his chest. He seemed at once finely made, delicate and exquisite and yet strong and solid.

I could imagine no greater beauty on this earth, and his name seemed to suit so well, for what is there more beautiful than light? What is there that can grace, beautify and transform anything, better than natural light? Either pale and cold in a winter twilight; mellow and golden in an autumn sunset; bright and joyous in the warmth of summer; streaming through the windows of cathedrals, derelict factories; whatever it lights upon is transfigured by it.

He was well-named, as he seemed to shine on me and make me more than I ever dreamed I could be, by simply radiating into me. And I held these thoughts within me, not wanting to trouble or embarrass him with the strength of my admiration for him. And I knew it was only a dream, and that when I awoke there would be only the empty firelight of my tiny drawing room, and that nowhere in the waking world was there a man such as him and that, if there were, I should never find him and that if I did, he should never see in me a thing to join with -- even so, I should rather take all the moments I can to be with him in dreams, than bear to live in a world where anything other touches me.

And as I leaned against my angel, my voice breathed those words and I felt the soft, deep whisper of his amusement and he said, “Only you would call me that.” He eyes glanced sideways and met my upturned face, a wry smile tugging at his lips, that deep blue like the light of a cinema projector playing back to me all his evil deeds, the darkness in him and how he gave himself over to it until it almost consumed and destroyed him completely.

I saw it -- always saw it, and never denied it. It was always part of him, this openness to evil -- to any means that might obtain or achieve whatever he set his sights on. And I knew he felt no remorse -- not really. Not true contrition. Regret, perhaps, that his chosen methods had not only failed to achieve his objectives, but brought so many unanticipated side effects that he had not desired. The loss of loved ones, of his influence, his power -- all the loss. He regretted that. 

But I knew he felt no guilt, nor moral anguish over any of it. Shame -- but only at his cowardice, that he had not been bolder, better -- that he had not only chosen the wrong man to serve, but failed in the ends intended in any case. Shame for those failures and misjudgements, but not for any of the methods he had employed in pursuit of them.

I knew it -- I had always known it; why did people always say I ignored it? Perhaps their hearts are unable to fathom how I can look upon all of that and yet love him still. None, not even his enemies, could deny his beauty -- even faded (as they said) -- and they assume it’s that. Purely that. I’m simply blinded by lust, they say, and I gloss over all he is, all he’s done. It’s incredible that they should rather believe that of me -- of me! If anyone has better credentials in the area of disinsterest in, or ability to detach from, the desires of the flesh, then I should like to know who!

The truth is this: I look at him and I see all that he is, and none of it changes anything. I simply don’t care. I don’t “pardon” or “justify” his evil deeds, his evil parts. I don’t set my scholastic intellect to convoluted apologetics for him. I simply look at him, and love. There’s no choice in it -- I could no more feel the slightest dilution of this love, nor temper my devotion on account of any of his past or present, than I could separate my soul from my body.

He could probably do that -- he never shied from dark magic -- but I’d rather he use it to bind me to him. Then i’d be safe from my greatest fear -- self-destructive patterns of walking away from what’s good for me in pursuit of, or proof of, my supposed autonomy. Or where I’ve shied away from the intimacy and vulnerability that is ongoing, long-lasting love.

The love between us -- his presence in my life and invitation into his -- all that he is, bonded to all that I am -- this has proven the most true and good thing, the holiest, purest, strongest, most transformative thing, and I’d gladly have him bind me by any means to him, to stop me walking out on that, should the madness seize me. Perhaps he would, if I asked him.

All of this communicated to me in the amused flash of his eyes when I named him “angel”, and he held my gaze for the seconds it took, and all that he showed me behind that blue, to question the title I’d given him, filled me with such an impulse. I took his face in my hands and kissed him, felt the scratch of his unshaven skin against my face, the clasp of his hand on my wrist as he returned the kiss and then, our foreheads touching, I closed my eyes against the unbearable surge of emotion in my chest and felt him smile. I smiled back and sighed, “Fallen angel,” and he laughed and kissed me again. And when I breathed his name, it came filled with all the meaning of him, whom it names, and the light that he is, and I marvelled that a man of darkness should be the bringer of light to my being.

I see nothing to pardon, only what others condemn and judge, but not me. Neither do I condone. I merely perceive, accept, embrace, and love. My fallen angel. My Lucius.

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Think before you write, you idiot, then you won’t have to keep tearing pages out.

Unattainables -- why?

People usually say of when someone focuses their desire on one they cannot have, that it’s from a fear of intimacy and commitment -- so they are safe from the hard work of it while indulging in the chemical haze of infatuation. I am not blind or oblivious to the possibility this could be me.

....

And yet look at these men: only three men have held my desire in dreams for the past 30 years and more. Two of them share -- no, all of them share certain traits. Tyranny, violence, cruelty, hunger for power (and abuse of it), corruption...

Well, already I’ve written and even said before that noble blood and a few hundred acres of land would pardon any number of less attractive traits for me.

Their brilliance, competency, resources and commands, liberate me from slavery to the unchosen master of capitalism. They take me out of this world i can’t really cope with, but which they thrive in. They shield me from it, cope with it for me, so that I can just be me, and be free to do the things I can do: the things I’m good at, which this world gives me no space to be or do, offering instead only a life of inadequacy at what I’m not meant for. And it seems I’d forgive, and even enjoy, just about anything, if you can give me that.

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[First part torn out]

...manners, imperturbable and commanding presence; refined speech, self control; his style of dress always perfectly assembled and presented. He beautifies any place he stands and seems to radiate light, yet with a malevolent undercurrent that gives him a powerful charisma. Strong presence that needs only speak in barely more than whispers. And he makes me beautiful too, to match him I think carefully when I dress, to do him justice. Even at rest, there is an elegance that’s effortless, because its main component is one’s own belief in it.

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Most people are just other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions; their lives identikit, a mimicry plotted out from the day they were born into an identity they passively accepted. Their passions a quotation. The reactions are what they’ve been taught they “should” have, to the things they’re exposed to. Few seek exposure to the unknown -- rather, they avoid it.

“What are you expecting?” said the plodding priest. “What do you plan to get out of it?” Quetions so foreign and irrelevant, does he not see that asking them alone defeats the very purpose of adventure? They say: “with an open mind” with undernotes of apology; a euphemism for some kind of failure to plan, to decide what to conclude before the evidence has been seen. Heaven forfend we go into the unknown without a plan of how we’ll cope with it.

By all that’s deep and wide and far-flung, why the shitting fuck should I envy, much less emulate them? Why should it be self-deprecation to say “I’m not normal” and “I’m not like you”? Why must this, which I give as information for their reference, be met with pleas not to put myself down? I wasn’t!!

Stupid little platitudes about how there’s “no such thing as normal” -- a most ridiculous conceit and refuge for those so normal, whose whole self is so contained and invested in normality, that the only way they can assuage the fear that they might not be, is by pretending there’s no such thing. If we deny the existence of the standard, then it can’t hurt us to say we fail it, thereby confirming its existence and their own, true, high regard of it.

Then the first thing they seek is others like them -- knowing firstly that they exist, and the safety in numbers -- we are all “unique individuals together”, and thus, normal.

The true loneliness, the insolvable isolation of those truly outside that word; it’s never of our own volition we find ourselves there, but by the collective decision of those inside to cast us out. And that experience means we will never truly be in, however the magnanimous, “enlightened” ones like to fashionably “accept” us. They will say “acceptance”, but they need us to stay outside, so they can feel holy and redeemed for their supposed kindness of inviting us, temporarily, in.

The reality of my life is the stuff of their nightmares; so defined and shaped by the dreaded “unfairness” that they can’t even tolerate in the smallest part. The tiny pain of a small betrayal, an insensitive comment, a wheelie bin misplaced, a streetlight faulty, dog shit on the pavement. Even such as this has them crying to social media “something must be done!” What could they possibly know of the strength it takes -- of the person one must become -- to tolerate, live and even thrive in my skin?

What would they know of the discipline it takes, the paradigm shifts one must make minute by minute, to survive? Their most basic assumptions and entitlements are the very things I must forego (barring a miracle). I must spend my entire life “thinking from their point of view” and accounting for the narrowness of their horizons and the psychic damage they casually, accidentally do to me every day. Translating myself. Like a culture studied only in translation, never to be known or seen on its own terms.

So how can I feel any kinship with them? How can I care about their tiny struggles?

How could one of them ever imagine they had anything to offer me that I wouldn’t gladly go without, to avoid welding myself to their smallness? To a life of loneliness in my own invaded space? I’m more lonely and alone in their company than when I’m alone -- their presence is what makes me feel alone, locking me into their tiny world. And then, I’m blamed for seeking solitude and remonstrated for enjoying it.

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Molly Weasley: Muggles don’t notice anything.

so what did muggles think was happening during the voldemort wars? i mean surely they had to have seen some of it, they can’t just write it off as

you know what i just remembered that we had killer clown sightings all over last year and our reaction was ‘huh that’s weird/creepy anyway let’s not wonder about that any more’

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The zombie thing I can take or leave, but those trousers are awesome.

Zombie Boy for Mugler Menswear Fall ‘11

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SLYTHERIN: “It’s a lot easier to get your way if you have more than one way.” –Jennifer James (Windows)