The last time I was here, I had a three-month visa and left after five days. That was twelve years ago. This time I had two things I wanted to do: one, a monastery stay, and second, check the place out as somewhere I could work on some writing and get back into visual arts. The reason writing is difficult in Australia is that even a book about my time as a street boy in London in the early seventies is not something I can publish without first getting it checked by a lawyer. I approached Arts Law Australia, telling them what the work was about, the rent boys of Piccadilly Circus, and days later received a phone call from Arts Law, not explicitly refusing, but let’s say reluctant to the point of implicitly refusing. The woman on the phone suggested another legal service and told me it would cost $10,000 per book. Homosexual men have long denied any involvement in the sexual slavery of the Piccadilly Circus boys, and Arts Law is a government-funded legal service that asks for your preferred pronouns. God forbid anyone thinks they can debunk the official BS that the Stonewall Inn was run by the Mafia, “because no one else would run a gay bar.” Maybe more on that one day, the truth is a very different story.
After nearly two weeks in Thailand, I don’t feel it is a good place either, so no monastery, and no point in checking out flat prices or the requirements to stay for an extended period. Now, I have to find things to fill in the next two weeks. There are a few more contemporary art sites, and kickboxing at a shopping centre down the road. Whatever.