i'm back earlier than i thought because i pulled out the big guns on the "muse" thing: i'm pulling out both brad wyman and my original muse,  mark lammers, and even to some degree, kris kovick.

kris wasn't really a "muse" as much as a woman who was like me, and the other far, far away woman, and dorothy and some others. women who pretend they don't see between the atoms and see the same plastic world you do.

i'm scared and i feel like i'm finally burning any remaining ships i have to the larger world but i have to not care because what have i to fucking LOSE? i never had anything to lose. that was the illusion.

last time i wrote, i was just writing, not thinking before i just let go, and i even winced at what i wrote.

there was the residual shame, the "maybe i really am nothing more than a fucking cheap painted harlot who spins on coffee tables in her own mind to resist the ugliness. maybe the world is ugly and we are meat bags on a spinning planet..."

and then i laugh and think that's ridiculous. i caught that evil little troll "ego" thing before it had a chance to sit on my lap and suckle. i'm getting better.

i went to the only christmas party i'll go to--adrienne's. i know she knows how i am and so i feel at home. i make all sorts of faux pas in front of her when i really don't want to, and she smiles sweetly and sees me as i really am.

even my mom saw me for who i really am sometimes and that's when she'd try and show me she knew by buying me something fragile and gold.

i never wear gold because it is so fragile. i wear silver. i'd wear stainless steel if they made jewelry out of it because i figure once you put pretty things on, you should never have to take them off for certain things. if you want to weld in gauze skirts and go up in flames, then that is a cartoon death i'm worth of.

anyhow, the energy thing.

fuck. it's EVERYTHING.

anyhow, so i'm crying a whole lot. for who i was, for who i thought i was, and how badly and harshly i treated myself when others had taken a break. and i finally see why sometimes i got fragile gold jewelry from my mom.

i've never stopped and looked back. no time. and i'm finally unable to charm myself out of another disaster and am forced to see myself and who i really was.

i wince only when i see myself as others see me. when i am just erika, as i was born, curious about all i'm curious about, then i am okay. i am where i'm supposed to be and i feel okay.

i was thinking about what career i'll take up to make money after we shut everything down, and i was in the car looking at a man's beautiful UPS legs in his open truck and thought, "i get to finally see if i've got what it takes to be a UPS delivery guy!"

when people used to say you've gotta have something to fall back on (they meant "teaching" others art so they can grow up to also teach it), i used to want to be a mailman. not the kind standing and sorting, but the kind with a bag and i'd walk around and wave to everyone and know the neighbors and get fresh air.

but i was told by someone in art school that it takes like 2 years of hard work to get a delivery route, and that seemed like too much more work than trying to be a famous artist who succeeded where basquiat didn't. he thought being an insider would keep him from getting fucked by the bourgeoisie because he was one of them.

psych.

when rich white people get drunk, all that life-is-complicated fancy liberal arts schooling goes out the window and the darkest or the youngest girl or boy in the room ends up wearing nothing more imaginative than the fucking maid's costume or yelling jungle chants while the patriarchy's on the floor naked, whimpering, and jerking off into his wife's shoe.

i'm scared because i remember when i saw a clip of james baldwin saying something about being able to speak and that scaring the shit out of white people.

and i think i'm gonna die.

and so i've got nothing to lose.

and so i want my remaining years here on this planet to be adventures and i don't want to beg for a slavery position and will look at the dirty jobs show for ideas of things that no one wants to do. but if i have to pick up road kill, that would put me in existential crises every day.

so i feel like i have to step up to my fears faster and faster so i can move on.

i feel like i've been living life in some kind of improvisational way, where i'm along for the ride. i used to feel like it's intuition, or cute holly hobby crap, but sometimes i "wake up" to where i really am and i get freaked out and can't move.

i'd call it panic attacks but that's too holly hobby. take paxil or whatever for your shit. i'm trying to face what's really here or not here.

and so back to queen stuff.

i have to talk about what i think is here, what i see. i have to honor it.

and while i can also cry for being a 12 year old girl giving nude massages to a 27 or 28 year old man, i was scared, but i LOVED it. it was fucking hot. i've got a love of the male smell that is now so primitive, i savor the smell of an unwashed morning man the way you all would ooh and ah over a fucking wine or impossibly dark chocolate.

and as skanky as i may seem, i'm so fucking precious about my own pussy, save for one time with james, i haven't been able to actually fuck anyone because i'm hung up on the snake fucker. women are different. i haven't been able to actually fuck women because i don't know why.

i feel like i'm protecting my energy.

maybe that's why.

back to energy.

i'll tell a story and i have to not care that it'll make me sound evil, because i come from and live in another world. i see things differently.

i come from you all. i can't repeat that enough. everything you have hidden, i am it come to life. all your racism, misogyny, feminism, all the rights you thought you were fighting for. i'm not borne out of a vacuum. and it's okay that james winces. he LIVES with me. what i love about james is his absolute innocence and purity.

james reminded me how to live like a princess and brought me back as a queen.

james taught me how to love.

that's what i'm telling you all.

we're denying ourselves when we don't see the magic around us. the intensity. get your inspiration anywhere, in the sleaze, in what scares, horrifies. you will find yourself, and realize the monster yelling "boo!" was just a test of your ability to twist it back into beauty.

that is our job as lovers, if you were born one: your job is to love fiercely, intensely, and enable people to always be strong enough to step up to their higher selves.

this world is very related to sex work and therapy and therapists are closer to hookers than you'd ever imagine and trophy wives and blah blah blah. it's all class. it's reality.

the middle class seem to the be the ones who have a more openly romantic ideal on marrying purely for love. wealthier and the poor are more pragmatic about using all your assets to keep what you've got or get more.

the middle class believed in monogamy, nuclear families, and pensions.

everyone else said, "sounds good. if you figure out how to make it happen, let us know."

because i actually encompass both very strong female as well as male sides, i speak of gender as an "energy." not genitals. i can move smoothly between my male and female sides, and am trying to know more of my female side now. men are showing me that side beautifully. almost cosmically.

the reality is that in the days before investors made a different kind of wealth, there were scrappier men. the mind readers. the ones who figured out the world by first grade. they were magical because their charisma went beyond flattery or seduction--they could move an entire group of people toward a bigger reality.

it's the rock star concept of power that every politician or comedian dreams of. but it's a very real energy because people want to fuck you for being unapologetically big, alive, god like. it's natural and beautiful to adore others.

but everything gets co-opted and bastardized if you're not careful.

anyhow, so before power and wealth became acquired by fucking EVERYONE over, business was more like a game among somewhat equal players (someone eventually emerging as the victor in which mode of electricity was used or who stole the patent, etc).

and for me, a sign of such a visionary and artist, is a temporary bout of insanity.

because when you swagger through life with audacity, you constantly come up against others' illusions/ideas and you have to try and read EVERYONE'S perspective and know them.

that's the mind fuck in daily use.

but when you live in the moment, while being aware of it, you can kind of "split" and go a little mad sometimes because you want to yell, "it's so OBVIOUS! why can't you all see how insane this fucking game is?"

and you can't. you have to pretend there aren't monsters with dripping carcasses hanging from the ceiling. you have to pretend that their actual low voice is all that you hear. even when their EYES say something else entirely.

that shit makes me crazy.

happened at the christmas party last weekend.

fuck. i seem all over.

but how do you even WRITE about this shit? where to start?

do you assume everyone knows?

knows what?

i have to think of mark lammers. man, i miss him so much. 3 houses down and we're done forever all because i can't get over the push.

i just can't.

anyhow, i know i've left some things open ended. but that's how it'll have to be. i jerk off with my own snot and you've gotta find your own cashmere.

so i'll start with what i know now and work our way back:

so i realized that in order to see my pops as he's meant to be seen, i'd need to stay back east as long as i can. my father is best in 90-second doses, like the time you get from the car to the front door.

these are men from another time, so if you're under 40, you're used to boneless guys who know what cellulite is and talk entirely too much and share their feelings.

i'm talking about the kind of men who are babbling if they say 10 words that all relate to their emotions.

like brad wyman, he's not old, but when i say we never got along and fought a lot, what i'm actually saying is that i'm the one who's ranting and writing 39 emails threatening to make his life a living hell while he just ignores me.

james walks away from me if i even RAISE my voice to him on the street in public. he will give me the keys and walk away and take a fucking bus home, leaving me to look like a raging fish wife.

anyhow, so my father, i decide to make every visit back east revolve around those 90 seconds with  my father. he's got all my free time so he can be himself and come around when he wants.

it takes a lot of energy to be us, so i actually don't mind anymore. i used to think he had to "be" there whenever he had free time. he needs to work on his old mercedes and he's fine.

and besides, i've come to just love his current lady friend, and so i advise her on him. just a little. enough to also teach my father lessons he's been slacking on.

so my father is free. no one has any call on his time. no one knows where he gets his money from, although he's retired. he's always been that way. he'll go for months without putting brakes on a car because he's trying some convoluted way of using this out-of-work alcoholic bus driver as the mechanic because he wants him to feel valuable.

you almost forget who you're talking about and begin think it's a money thing, until you hear two guys with a restaurant borrowed money from my father to stay open.

this is why my mother thinks he was actually a CIA agent because he got involved in intelligence.

and you believe it, because my father is way beyond anything i think i can figure out. i don't even try anymore. even his eyes are closed to me.

so my father, he comes and go when he wants. he'll be 6 hours late and it drives his women crazy of course. he can take a woman from singing and cooking in the afternoon, to having mascara tears and a cold, un-cut pot roast by nighttime.

he makes up with them and they soon forget and feel ripped apart and put back together again.

but it goes nowhere, and eventually they tire and move on. and my father is actually relieved because he gets a break from blowing their minds with all the other stuff they expected.

when i tried to tell his lady friend this, she almost nurses her despair like a baby monkey. she looked like she was listening to a sad song that always makes her cry, but she loves. i realized she is in this on purpose. there are few victims for me in most things. children and the weak or sick. that's about it.

and my father is also locked in because his magic is now shtick and limited. it is old and no longer magical when he has the power to make women fly with his love and attention.

so my father was set to pick me up and take me to the ny-bound bus a few days later.

within the few days he wandered off onto some other project and forgot about me when i'd left a message confirming the day before.

he got back to me about not being "sure" of making it in time to take me and tried to get me on the phone and left messages and when i got him, he was helping homeless veterans on the bus, and said that he needed to be here to pick me up at X time.

then so that i could get ready without distraction, i turned off my phone and continued to pack and get my makeup on.

i was angry and knew i could get a cab but he NEEDED to put down what he was doing and yeah, if it took 1-1/2 hours to come get me to take me 15 minutes away, then that's what this would be about.

it's not about getting to the bus so i could keep my word in nyc.
i'd re-written my time and my life so that i could be there for 6 weeks to catch him at 90 seconds at a time.

if he said he was going to take me to a bus at X time, then that's what needs to happen or this is a different deal where we catch each other on the fly in the future like everyone else's quickie bullshit.

and my father knew that and just when i thought he'd not make it, and i'd have to call a cab, he arrived in the mercedes he was tearing apart, driving in on squeaky fucked up brakes that were down to the drums.

and that's all that matters.

there is no safe sex when you live like this.

and my father was enraged with me for 2 weeks. our 90 second walks to and from the car were silent, even in the silence.

and i told him to stop telling himself stories and that i loved him.
i told him that i will honor what makes him himself, and that he must do the same with me.
i hate to be late. don't make me late.

i told his lady friend to stop waiting on him too much.
men like him, they need a little pain of doing it themselves.
they love to open the doors, carry the luggage even as their arms are falling out of their sockets.

you have to ignore their real weaknesses in front of them and encourage the strengths.
we need to correct them when they forget we are queens.
because when they treat us like queens, we treat them as kings.
it's so simple.

when i dress as a lady, my father walks straighter, his hip hurts less when he wants to get the gate for me first. i tried to tone down my summertime girly fun because i knew he was in more pain than usual.

but men like that are like dogs who jump on broken legs in front of you to show you how perfect they are.

you can only indulge the cute adorable weaknesses. like cuddling and spontaneous blow jobs.

(smile)

anyhow, i saw how my father's lady friend looked at me as if i had an evil cruel streak when i'd give her tips on my father. i said, "no, he NEEDS that from you. he doesn't want you to be his 'call in case of emergency' lady. he's famished for a mythical goddess beat down and correction."

she's strong. very strong. she was able to sit through me melting to the floor in a big sobbing pile, and i begged her to stay with me to tell me if i was going insane. i said "please witness anything insane!" and i ended up witnessing HER GRACE.

she's this born again bourgois elegant woman who's given up a cushy life for the modest life of a school teacher who told her wealthy husband he could keep just about everything when he bypassed the lawyers and asked her to cut him slack. he was in too much debt. she said "okay." she didn't care about the stuff.

i see her tattered bath towels and i know where she came from and i know that even my mother, the former hippy, will throw away an entire set of towels for one hole (well, she'd send it to me and figure my joy would know no bounds, as i prefer second hand things. the stress of ownership is easier that way. but i also am bourgeois enough to think towels and any underwear should be tossed at the sign of a hole. i'm fine with tatters on the outside, though. i care mostly about what's underneath. that's the truth.).

anyhow, so i know my father has met his equal, and when she comes around to see what i was saying in another way, my father's lady friend sees that i am not insane after all.

i just don't know how to SAY things. the words. what i know has no words for it sometimes.

anyhow, so she is getting stronger and i will tag-team my father with her and try to break him open, too.

he never wanted a woman to get in and ruin his life like my mom had, ever again.

he only lets his daughters in.

it's not close enough for my sister, but she's more like my mother and needs the last minute drugstore cards and flowers for the apology.

but when you stop asking men to dance how we dance, and let them do their thing, it's supernatural.


this seems messy, convoluted.

even to me.

but here's how i see things:

it used to take a certain type of entrepreneur or adventurous innovative crazy person to envision something and go through the fight inner/outer to bring it into being.

you can't play around in the inner and outer world with any kind of integrity or powerful effect without having partners or a partner.

and over the last 30 years, we (artists/writers/producers/agents/politicians/society, etc.) have created a powerful man business hero who is a complete detached asshole based on some capitalistic superhero.

it is inorganic, chemical, sexless, automated, digital, technical.

it has consumed sex, friendships, courtship, and our relationship to our bodies and nature---or lack of any integrated relationship.

i have said it before and i'll say it again:

we women (and gay men and trannsexuals and intersexed--those who flow in and out of these inner/outer states of communicating), but still, mostly we powerful women are not only making such men, but we're using our powers in small, uninspired, dangerous, fatal ways.

we're pointing guns at ourselves and our children all because we thought it was about the annual designer handbags.

feminism forgot about our mystical and how the mystical is essential for connecting with the other side's mystical.

we fucked men royally.

and if the viewer of art is the CO-CREATOR, i'm going to use my supernatural ability to love to imagine charlie sheen into a beautiful superhero for the new age.

you all want to love what is already rubber stamped as beautiful and acceptable.

but you have to see true love in the shadows, the sleazy.

for exemplo:

charlie sheen. only one to probably ever call those two girls GODDESSES.
who's the real fucking asshole, y'all?

and any woman who knows that by him calling them goddesses that he strives to TREAT them as such,
while the american media snickers at him and them? who's the asshole?

anyhow, i've gotta get to the gym and i've got a lot to do.

and i've made less sense here than i meant to.

but this is complicated stuff.

there is a track for the "pretty girl." i was considered pretty enough when i was young that when i was in art school (i was slipping in middle class status in my head and you've gotta be careful when you fall too low. it's very dark and has a brutal undertow)

anyhow, when i was in art school but still had a foot in another life, this old sugar daddy contractor guy i knew used to tell me to get a sugar daddy. he tried to set me up with his son, all very out in the open because i was a higher level because i was light skinned, educated, and charming with strangers (for entertaining later).

but i wanted to BE such men.

i tried to re-visit the possibility when i was back east but saw that the new generation of wealthy is fucking retarded and as exciting as dried playdough.

there's nothing to "make."

and so i don't know whether i really did stand up to my belief that i'm not about money, but i didn't tell james i was going back. i didn't tell anyone except a couple people because you've gotta be nice to a girl who's turning herself inside out to see if it's worth anything falling in love with.

you give a lot up on that kind of play because you'll lose your soul if it's not for real in some way.

but i couldn't even see the sliver of grey area i used to see.

i don't know where i am right now.

i only know that my pussy's never been more precious to me than it is right now and for that i'm grateful.

and i've never been so into BEING myself. i get so aroused by just BEING me. i love how i feel. i love how i surprise myself. i love how i'm not evil even when i'm not understanding why or what i'm doing at the time.

i'm glad that even when i'm lost, that living this way is like driving stick. you don't have to think about it.

so i guess in a way i have given up to life and let it tie me up and fuck me mercilessly with a ball gag in my mouth.

now to find true love to make that a reality.

yes. i can live even in my own head so much before i figure out what i really want to eat for dinner.
sometimes it takes me a moment to see what i'm craving.

it's fascinating putting everything together. it's like eating cornchips in the middle of your sandwich.

i'm so glad that i failed and was forced to give EVERYTHING up.

even i know that when you burn the ships, that's when things REALLY start to get interesting.

i have no idea who i am but i trust myself.
i am so lucky.
i have been given so much.

so please, don't ever, ever feel sorry for me for what you imagine you know.

there are a zillion ways to look at one story at any given moment.

i love my parents, i love everyone who's had the fucking guts to play with me, to love me, to sandbag me.

x