being fully alive and truly yourself is hard work.

i over-worry about the words i leave behind like a strong scent.

i'm going through a lot of changes and loss of illusions upon which i built my entire existence. thankfully, i've never veered from my true core, so i don't beat myself too hard. but i don't want to pass on bad examples as if they're in stone.

nothing's ever in stone. i'm wrong. assume i'm full of shit because i probably am. i'm talking out of my own ass most of the time and am more shocked at anyone at some of the things that emanate from my own mouth. i'm not kidding.

i feel like i've not only hovered between class, race, geography, but have hovered between different levels of realities that i have to ignore or dismiss so that i may focus. some things are second nature and i've hid so much because depending on where i land, people can only handle a few personal truths before their well-polished stereotypes start to crumble and threaten their entire view of the world.

i am powerful and don't feel like anyone's true victim. on the contrary; i feel like i'm truly one of the richest and most free people i've ever known. anyone i've ever envied, i end up being relieved i'm myself.

this is why i avoid movie stars i admire. rita moreno's husband invited me out for drinks after her cabaret show and i didn't know how to decline AT ALL, so i just "let it go," as i have with other similar (although not as heady) invitations.

and this is the other consequence of being a romantic. of wanting my goddesses to remain goddesses that i can admire. that was the original pact, and i want to keep it. i don't want to know the secrets. i never want to know what people don't tell me with their own eyes.

this is why being a romantic makes you a bloody fighter.

but i'm here to be lover. i've wanted to get my cherry popped since age 10, when i found out my heroine did it at 11. i think it was with her sex teacher. that'd be too perfect, and as fantastical and magic as life can be in real life (the most amazing romantic stories always happen off-stage in front of your own eyes and so many don't SEE them), even i think it couldn't possibly have been that perfect.

first time with a loving sex teacher?

and if you wince, why's it okay to give a boy his first hooker?

although it isn't, anymore. to your own peril!

anyhow, i digress because it's not even me, the shmata salesman, talking. that's the asshole side of me that i end up paying fines for, and reimbursing others for damage on.

but the guage i have for my SANITY is whether others avoid me or feel inspired and good around me.

so far, as much as an asshole as i strive to be, i keep hearing that people feel pretty good around me.

when i got back from london that time, and changed flights in the states, the little old cha cha girl in the big bird coat next to me talked all about having sex with the steward guy and said that we're here to make others feel good about themselves. i smiled because i knew who and what she was. her love was supernatural.

my point is that even as i recall with nausea, that snarky CLEVER fucking "alt" crowd to gawk at eddie izzard talking about working too much.

so many clever, cute questions.

what i wanna know is: fuck, what's it like to be so smart and beautiful and have the power to make men in drag crazy mad hot and where is  your sex? you're so hot but you forgot to fall madly in love. you specialized. you worked to be seen too much. now we see you but it's you and there's no sex. the running. why are you running so much? where to go? feel connected in your bare feet, but what about another's fucking TORSO?

i don't feel the heat.

it's too cold and british.

broken hearted.

you can always always always smell the scent of someone who got what they wanted and are like "this is it?" because then life gets to be like a fucking bucket list.

and so i don't want anyone to hate themselves, even or especially if you're white and feel empowered by listening to third world tragedies on NPR.

but i'm a cartoonist. i'm many people. i'm many ideas. i'm riffing.

and it's going to get worse.

that's my only new terror as the next layers of illusions go away.

i see that no one REALLY KNOWS SHIT.

and all the swaggers i've seen for the past 30+ years have been fake.
high fructose corn syrup.

and i'm from this world. i'm so half white i understand why the germans saved jewish hair before they gassed them so they could fill vw bug seats. i blow my fucking nose on toilet paper before i wipe myself to pee. i'm fanatical about being on time.

i understand. one bad day, an inability to crack into my higher self, and i'm standing next to the charred corpse of a nigger like any other hillbilly cracker man.

i'm responsible for what i say. i say see what i do and vote for obama again if you need the words words words and all the bullshit.

he never was a black guy as i knew black men. no true black man in america would sell out his preacher for a higher paying gig. unheard of when you know how it always goes down in the end.

i'm speaking in tongue, i'm living in tongue, and i'm terrified of being myself even as i'm thrilled by it.

i save up for bouts of energy.

i have to.

but i'm afraid because i have less to fear and i'm enraged now.

every new suicide of an amazing woman we fucking NEED pisses me the fuck off and reminds me i can't afford to be excused from the goddamn table anymore.

sometimes the hardest thing to do is snap. you all think it's easy. that it looks easy. most people who use it, it's a last resort because we know we'll always just be dismissed as unable to "take it."

that shit pisses me off because no one takes it more than those who care.

and so yeah, i DO care about art, books, and movies.

so i lied before. i must leave Truth in my wake as much as possible, and i speak in superlatives as i LIVE in superlatives.

the belief out there is that you pay for your joy with equal pain.

nah. i'm actually pretty peaceful most of the time. my anguish only comes from my constant inability to fit in in any kind of polite, affordable way.

i pay for my mouth and these others who 'speak' for me when they feel it's right. i agree to take the hits when i think it's worth it, which is often. but you can't turn it into the fetish of being a "bad ass." that's childish hollywood rebellion that doesn't even truly inhale or swallow.

i inhale, swallow, experience, and so sometimes it takes me awhile to formulate the words even to myself.

i don't know where i am right now. i am so often full of bullshit, but i think that's to keep me guessing and feeling like a crazy lady with a sod wig pushing around a shopping cart. that's okay. i could do with a little extra humility.

i think i'm entering a new time for me.

i have to face the despair and terror and try to untighten my grasp on how i THINK things should be. and i have to relax and let go like when i was a child with my love pointed north, and i was always okay. i always found my way, as long as i never was in anything for the money.

money's okay. the past 30+ years has made me think anyone into money was evil and any identification i had with any monied classes made me feel like i had worms, but i've gotta stop hating and separating and being such a fucking CARTOONIST.

i have to slam my perceptions to the floor like eggs and let 'em shatter and laugh as easily as if they were spilled milk.

i have to trust that as long as i'm true to myself, regardless of the consequences, i will will will have prevailed like the marquis de sade and anyone who was able to maintain an erection and jerk off in the face of obliteration.

that is the orgasm BEHIND the orgasm that i had a glimpse of a few years ago.

as black as my despair can get about the silliness and fluffiness of humanity in the face of such knee-capping holiness, it also turns on itself and becomes freedom.

freedom to stop trying to be polite, nice, answer my emails for phone calls. i'm not chit chatting.

i'm fighting my own act of suicide as well as committing it by living fully as myself.

that trips me out.

it's because i won't take my own life as a promise to james, that i am GIVEN my life. as my friend, he backs me and how i am and how i want to BE.

he never tells me to iron down my hair or behave a certain way.

and when it is too much, he can take care of himself with his boundaries.

and i can be me still.

but it all trips me out because i feel sad for mourning a set of beliefs i had for so long, and about how the world was supposed to work. but in realizing they were lies, i realize newer truths that also make it easier to just BE myself.

i don't have to worry there's any "right" way because no one knows shit.

and if i'm a whore one day and a chaste queen another, it is all one in the same to me now.

as long as we love others and strive to make others feel good about themselves and put good into the world, i think it's all okay.

but i do care and i love, but i don't care about the art/movie/book publishing SYSTEMS or INDUSTRIES.

i feel lonely, and so does james. there aren't many people on this path we're on. not about maintaining the status quo, but surviving inside of it as outsiders, for as long as we can. for the next chiefs who need reminding about tossing the sinks out the window.

we need to hide the warnings and lessons in our stories.

i used to see the 70s as hollywood's heyday. now i see the making of "harold and maude," "the conversation," and "one flew over the cukoo's nest", "easy rider," and "bonnie and clyde", et al, as odes to the INDIVIDUAL. but they all die like "ode to billy joe" at the end.

in the context of what was to follow in the 80s and take over for these 30+ years, i now see those 70s flicks as WARNINGS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO TRUE INDIVIDUALS.

so i've gotta figure out how i'm gonna live out this being "erika" thang, and i've gotta feeling this is gonna be a doozy just like the old days. economic sanctions are good reasons for taking it up the ass if you don't have any better ideas about what to do than watch gilligan's island re-runs.

thing is, i've got a LOT better ideas about shit i'd like to do and it's hard just to BE anymore. all this time-saving technology has got everyone working for pussy they'll never get to enjoy.

the girls, too. fuck. ESPECIALLY the girls.

so pardon me while i try to find my own way.

even if i die like all the other puerto rican starlets with rotting feet in a tenement in the bronx, know that i went out my way. i'll not be broken. i get off on the punches for freedom too much.

that's when i'm no longer scared. when i want to dance and fuck and slink around the world winking at everyone. when i'm truly myself i know it's gonna be an amazing time.

i love my movie stars to be perfect superheroes and therefore far away.

gives me something to live up to even when they can't.

most can't in real life. but it's hotter to actually be your own superhero.

i'm not kidding. i love being alone. i fascinate me. i'm not alone in here. i'm telling you.
even the shmata salesman is easy because i can watch matlock and he reads the paper.

e