[cw: disordered eating mention, sexual assault mention, also being in the vicinity of it/aftermath of it. here's where the 70s/80s rock shit comes in. the second entry gets preeeetty heavy, but again, not needlessly graphic]

*

We have SO many more stadium and festival-setting venues than we ever have before and I know it's because of how successful we've become. I should be completely happy about it, over the moon, and I AM happy about what it represents. It's just also all a little much. The acoustics of outdoors venues are often terrible, I need to sing louder, which means more strain on my voice, and stadiums, being surrounded on all sides by people who can barely see you-- there's just something removed about it. Far less intimate, far less personal, completely different atmosphere (haven't even been able to hang with the other bands much!). If I had my way I'd keep these sorts of gigs to a minimum but I know it's unrealistic. Yet another downside to success, but there's been enough upsides lately that I can take this one, too. At least, for now.

The others have noticed how much better I feel. Rory n' Sam are surprised at it, a little taken aback I think, but not in a bad way. I learned from this that Rory's been a bit of a bad boy and broke one of Walt's rules-- that is, he's been snorting cocaine "here and there". He assumed I was too, which made me laugh (i've always been more a Pepsi guy myself...). Sweetheart, this is all natural! I asked him if he'd ever been so depressed that the clearing up of it feels near-ecstatic. The poor thing never has! Well, I told him that it's a better high than cocaine or speed (he asked me if I was preaching the gospel of depression at him...).

Nate on the other hand LOVES how I've been and hasn't asked stupid questions about it; we've found some silly trouble to get into at every stop so far and of course we've never gotten caught. I'm too damn good at things to get caught and I've taught him well. I've been so thankful having him as a partner in crime that I've been extra flirty with him on stage, getting off on his playing the way he gets off on it, and he's been enjoying that, too. Interesting...! But unfortunately for him he's not my type. Too short! (He DID finally shave that silly thing off his face, though-- he's too boyish to pull off a mustache, at least for now-- and has been taking far better care of his hair... like, why have curls like that if you're not going to maintain them anyway?? Maybe he's finally starting to grow up some... HA, fat chance!)

*

It's strange. You can hear little off-hand jokes, you can see hints of things around you, you can make the off-hand jokes yourself, you can be witness or passive participant when given enough alcohol, and it's all normal now, all background noise, until it isn't again. Until something cuts a little too close.

Sometimes you want to escape the whore by making sure someone else is the whore instead or playing along when everyone else marks her as the whore, or just completely checking out otherwise. You can't take it, you can't choose a better choice, so you displace it. But then you're hurting someone else. But otherwise you're hurting too much to bear and you're ALWAYS hurting you're fucking tired of hurting and you can't ESCAPE it you're IN it and what the fuck can you do. You can't help but think "someone else can hurt for once", and then as soon as you think it you know it's evil, you know you're weak, that you're a coward, but sometimes the weight of trying to be "brave" crushes you underneath it; you don't do anything to hurt anyone but you don't do anything to help or save them either, and that means in the end you still end up hurting someone. There's no fucking winning in moments like that.

--Memories of high school parties after track meets (other memories too, later memories, but worse). Most not so bad. One in particular horrifying in retrospect, things going on in the next room I could hear and I was still paralyzed on the damn couch in Jimmy's living room not knowing what the hell to do, I was just one step up from the bottom of the food chain in a room full of meatheads that could easily turn on me and do exactly what was going on elsewhere to me as well, and it was something constantly threatened of me anyway, a threat I knew would be made good on, a violence I was already too used to, and I was already so tired of the idea of it, so I just sat there, legs feeling leaden, head swimming, praying it'd stop or someone else would stop it or that I'd just be struck dead, terrified and despairing and so angry at myself--

Greg (who'd already drank quite a bit himself) passed me a glass everyone had been adding their own alcohol to, sometimes their spit, he added spit with a laugh and I wanted to smash the glass in his face but I couldn't obviously. I could've put it down I could've told him he was being a fucked up freak but that would make me a hypocrite, like, I was right there with everybody else. Is hypocrisy worse than cowardice? I guess it's a form of cowardice. Passivity is another type. I chose passivity. I passed the glass. Gave a little laugh when everyone else did. Looked away, walked away, when I had to. I didn't fully feel what I'd done and didn't do till I saw the girl who had to drink it all (and who knows what else...) later in the night-- with only a tablecloth wrapped around her, hyperventilating, face a mess with tears and tear-streaked makeup-- and she slapped me full force across the face. She screamed "FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING FRIENDS" at me. Pulled me to her by the collar and demanded I get her her stuff back "YOU ASSHOLE", then shoved me away. I wordlessly nodded, ran back, found her things after demanding someone point me to them, and she slapped me again once they were in her arms, spat on me when I tried to apologize, and I was too rattled to really even respond. I have no fucking idea what specifically happened to her or who made it happen. And that was on purpose and I hate that it was. But if I knew, I'd still have to work with whoever did what every single day, and see it every time I saw his face, and I couldn't do that. I'd fucking kill him. Even this was too much, even this made me make myself puke for the first time in... ugh, I don't even want to think about it.

I said I chose passivity instead of hypocrisy but in a way I'm still a hypocrite. Or maybe a quisling is a better word. Guys have fucked me over bad, even if I'd like to forget that fact, drown it in all the times I've been sent to ecstasy by them. I should know what it's like. I do know what it's like. And I still passed the glass (even if I added nothing to it, I still passed it). I still turned and walked the other way. And I've done that sort of thing more and more as time's gone on. I haven't had the power to do otherwise, and people with a lot more power than me have been fucked over and blackballed for trying. And I have so much shit Walt or others could unearth and humiliate me with or worse... I was able to do something about Al, but Al's only one person. It's not just him. It's so much more than just him, so much I can barely think of it (I mean, how many other guys has Don-the-record-exec been a creep to? Girls? And worse than me, maybe?).

If I was a smarter person I'd probably try and break down the ethics of participating in the music business-- is it possible to be a good man and still remain successful, if you can't be completely good how good CAN you be, etc-- but I'm not enough of a sociologist or philosopher for it like Pam is, and I think that's part of why I haven't talked to her in awhile-- I know she'd hate this, hate me, and I couldn't even argue with her about it. I know she'd be right. Just like I know that I feel a rot at the center of me that will likely only expand.

Remembering now what Cryssie said about being in a "walled garden"-- if this really is a garden, it's fertilized with some real filth.

*

I fucking hate how close to crazy I've gotten again just from that damn party. I was feeling fucking amazing and just one thing threw me completely off track. My mind's smothered with urges to puke or hurt myself in various ways unless I smoke or drink those thoughts away. Feel disgusted by even the idea of sex. Don’t want anyone to touch me. Nightmares every night, the kind where I can't see anything, where everything is black, but I can still feel things, can still feel hands, weight, body-against-body and I can't move or do anything to stop any of it til it feels like I'm suffocating. I wake up every morning feeling impossibly dirty and hung over even if I had barely anything to drink the night before. Urges to scrub my skin harder and harder when I shower. The past few days have been such a blur that I can't even remember how shows went. Walking thru days like a ghost. No one notices, at least, so I must be doing well or well enough. Thankful for the single hotel rooms again-- the last thing I want is a night terror on a fucking tour bus.

Moments like this are always, by far, the loneliest for me. No one would understand even if I wanted to tell them about it, which I don't. I mean, I don't even understand them, really. Just a single damn thing can set me off, can make me feel like I'm drowning or like I’m back in his fucking house– I wish, so much, that I was stronger than I am, or even that I didn't care so much, but I have no idea how to be anything other than what I am. I feel trapped by it.

At least I didn't fully abandon that girl in the end. I'm still not sure why she made a beeline for me, singled me out specifically. Maybe I was just the first one she saw. Maybe she could just smell the cowardice on me.

*

Feeling better in a general sort of way, but it's been such a whiplash having my mood and feelings about Greg change so suddenly the way they have because of that party. I look at him and my heart still skips a beat but then I feel a renewed disgust for him. He'd never understand it, either, I know. None of them would. They didn't have to see her the way I did. I let him fuck me tonight but I wasn't all the way there for it, I kept myself at an emotional distance the way I used to back when I was working. Business. If he noticed, he didn't say so. I guess I have quite a bit of practice with keeping that distance in a way that doesn't make me seem totally checked out, but it still made that disgust I feel towards him grow even larger. I put so much of myself out there for him but it might not even matter; I might always just be a warm available familiar safe hole for him to stick himself into when no other blackout drunk girls present themselves. Holes aren't complicated. They don't have feelings. He does of course, and he feels entitled to those feelings of course, so of course I can never fuck his hole again. That would make him just like me-- feminine, degenerate, a filthy void aching to be filled-- and he can't be like me. UGH.

Anyway, things weren't all bad, even if I'm making it sound as though they were. Before going w/Greg I ran into Ben again-- Sam's gorgeous tech, just as breathtaking as he was the first time we met-- for the first time in awhile. I mean, I've seen him around, but I haven't really let myself see him. That classic kind of seeing-without-seeing. I couldn't believe how shy I felt around him, but I still was able to flirt with him a little, gave him an I'm-available-if-you-want-me kinda look, and he returned it with one of his own-- but he was as busy as he always is. But he DID return it. He DOES swing my way. I have plenty of professional reasons to want Greg to stick around even if the emotional ones are quickly dying in my heart, but I should have time for a less frought kind of fling. I need someone I can feel in me without detaching myself so badly, and Ben might fit the bill. Sam or Juan would know his schedule better than I ever could-- maybe I could ask him to arrange something.

*

I owe Juan big-time!! What a wonderful friend he is. I let him know I was interested in Benny and he kept it in his mind just like he said he would; we're performing for a couple days at a bigger festival-type concert in Austin, so things are a bit less rushed, and crew guys have various things they have to do outside of their typical day-to-day jobs. He let me know that Ben's lunch break was coming up and where to find him, so of course I made a beeline right over to the trailer he was leaning against! Flirted far more obviously/openly/physically with him and he was gruff at first, but it became clear that that gruffness was a front more than anything. He grabbed my ass and I was raring to go, excited in a way I haven't felt in quite awhile, but before I knew it he'd stuffed some tent stakes in my back pocket and sent me off to work! "Help the boys pitch some tents 'n then you can work on the one I'm settin' up for you.", he said. Also that I "owed him" for calling him Benny instead of Ben. Ooh, I was a bad boy...

Did I do exactly what he asked, though? YES! Worked so fast I kept having close calls with my fingers and Eoin teased me for it. "Yeh got so rusty after just a couple years off, eh?" He also asked me why I was working with them again to begin with, so I explained that Ben wanted time for another cigarette or two. Remembered that Brits call cigarettes "fags" so it was a bit of a double entendre, but Eoin's Irish not British (he made SURE I knew the difference the first time 'round!) so maybe that's why the innuendo stayed an inside joke with myself.

The second I was done it was so difficult to walk at even a semi-normal pace back to where Ben was, I wanted to just SPRINT, but he was still there, thankfully. I put on a little show for him, too; made sure to wipe the sweat from my forehead in a way that lifted up my shirt past my belly button n' showed off one of my pits (did I practice it a couple times in the reflection of a window to make sure it'd work? Maybe...). Next thing I knew he was leading me thru a mish-mash maze of storage containers-- by the wrist once he knew we were far away enough from anyone else. We had half an hour, he said-- so we spent it wisely. We made out for awhile (and he's SUCH a good kisser) and then I blew him; I got to feel and kiss the perfect tight curls of hair on his chest n' belly, undid that big ol' belt buckle of his, got on my knees and licked him from balls-to-head once before he gripped my hair and used my mouth the way that pleased him best. I'd mostly only heard his voice as a shout before this-- he has to be heard over quite a bit of noise-- so hearing it here, in a tone just above a whisper, small "oh fuck"s or soft moans, quiet ragged breaths when he was close... it was a side of him none of the rest of them would ever know. It was mine, I brought it out of him (and SO easily...), and I'd only known him for all of an hour. There was an odd kind of rush that came along with that knowing, right there in the moment. It made everything all that much better. He eventually loosened his grip on my hair too, and trusted me to do what I wanted to finish him. Fuck, I was so hard I swear if things went on for just a bit longer I could've came without even touching myself. As it was, we jacked each other off and came in the same spot in the dirt, which he kicked extra dirt over with his boot. I'm not the kind of guy that's into licking boots, but if he wanted it, G-d I would've done it right then... hell, I would've done *anything*, he truly had me in the palm of his hand. Such a darling.

I'm writing out the bare bones of it all but there's so much I can say it'd be difficult to put it all into words... like just how beautiful it was to hear his voice at a normal/quiet volume, how the rasp and grumble of it is so warm, how I swear I could feel the bassy resonance of it throughout my body and how much extra that turned me on, how good it felt to go from "sissy-boy" to "baby" in his eyes in such a short amount of time, how fun it was to tease him calling him Benny at first and how he ended up calling himself that by the end, how he started out so dominant and macho but got so much more passionate and vulnerable the more he trusted that I knew what I was doing.... it all just felt so natural, everything just *clicked*. And to think, I wouldn't have given him the time of day if I didn't go to that dreadful party!! Making lemonade with life's lemons and all that! At the end of everything, I told him how much I'd love to see him in my room sometime soon, and how until then, I'd drive myself crazy with the memory of what we'd already done. Writing this all down is already doing that, too... ugh, what a man he is. And he's just been THERE, on stage, behind Sam, all this time. Life's funny that way, I guess.