*

There's been less and less time for anything outside of work and family time/care lately, but that's usually been good. Mom's been a lot more stable lately. Not calling me awful things in various languages. --I knew it was just the tumors anyway. It was like Anna said. But it was still a relief knowing the tumors wouldn't make her do that every time. It'll still pop out every so often, but when it's that rare it feels like some uncontrollable tic, and she's shocked when she realizes what she said. She called me up after our holiday dinner in tears, apologizing so profusely for how she was, that she didn't know what came over her, that she didn't feel like herself and still didn't feel "right", and we talked for a couple hours, calming her down, reassuring her I knew it wasn't her fault. She's still upset after it happens, of course, but thankfully not as upset as that. I always worry with how stressed she can be... it's understandable to be stressed in her position, but I'm afraid it just makes it worse. But what can you do?

Shann asked me, after one of those visits, if Mom knew about me (being gay, that is). I wasn't sure how to answer. Technically, she doesn't know. As in: I've never told her. I never want to tell her. I certainly won't, now. She has enough to be stressed about. "Looks like she knows anyway." But that's different. That's echoing things she heard Granddad call me thousands of times. --I said that and I was flooded with a sudden guilt from knowing I made Granddad worse. Which made everyone worse. Which made my father leave. And I could never figure out how to make him less-worse. I couldn't change the parts of me that made him worse. And Mom obviously couldn't stand to be around him, and she was single for years before she met Marv, and she'd try to find a good boyfriend, sometimes leave me with Granddad for the weekend even knowing how he was, but she wanted it to be worth it, but G-d all those boyfriends were so damn awful, it's like she was so desperate to get out she didn't care who took her there, except then she didn't actually LEAVE-- Things were spilling out of me, then, things I haven't told most anyone, but I couldn't stop myself once I started (maybe another reason I rarely start...).

"I couldn't figure out how to make my mom happy.", Shann said at one point. "She always wanted to dress me up in things that never fit me right, and I never liked them, they were never things I would pick for myself anyway, but she made me feel awful for not fitting in them right. I'd go to bed without dinner, and things like that." She tried to live with it for as long as she could; tried to make her happy "enough", but there was always something wrong or something missing, and her mother would never get less dramatically (sometimes near-violently) upset about it. "I felt like such a monster when I left her. Who leaves their MOTHER behind like that? Who stops talking to their family?? But she was the only family I had, and she was so..." She was about to cry, then. It feels awkward for the both of us to touch each other like we know each other, because we don't really know each other all that well, it turns out (among other reasons). But she fell against my chest and I held her and we stayed that way awhile, 'til she could talk again without crying, and it didn't feel awkward. I wasn't bracing myself for something she might be expecting (because she wouldn't be expecting anything anymore). It was like cuddling with a girl-friend (as opposed to a girlfriend). If things could level out to that, that would be nice. I can do that. I can handle that. And it's clear she doesn't really have anybody... she resents having to hold my hand for cameras and such, but I can't say I blame her for that. I hope things can be okay even with that.

Anyway. It is nice to have another person who knows more about me. I trust her more and more to know those sorts of things, especially because she has her own sorts of things. It's easier that way. Someone like Jeff, it's a one-way street (he's never the patient, only the psychoanalyst!). That never feels good. Hell, even someone like Nate. Anything where I feel like someone has one over me I can't match. I think Shann and I might always be in a stalemate, for worse and for better.

PS: Kyle and I were nominated for some music award I never heard of, but it was so exciting, potentially so vindicating, but then we lost anyhow. To some idiot trying and failing to sound like me, to add insult to injury. UGH!! WHATEVER! Nate's little thing didn't really take off either, at least, even though he made a whole music video for it. Speaking of which, apparently we're going to have to do that... ugh.

*

Walt's thought up his little album title again-- ~Frontiers~, cute-- and of course he had to jack himself off about how genius it is and how well it'll market itself and the album and the tour and blah blah blah, and of course we all had to jack him off a little bit too so he'd actually be happy. Was over Jeff's house later to write, and for the first while he was hunched over his writing desk, scrawling things furiously in a notebook, scratching his head and frowning. "We were writing all these songs about our relationships and now he wants stuff about frontiers...", he said. And he went on about synonyms for "frontier", and ~boundaries~, and ~thresholds~, and yadda yadda, and all I could think of all of a sudden were all the stupid interview questions about how "corporate" we are, and then all I could think of was being two flunkies sitting around an office wringing our hands trying to change some sales pitch at the last minute to make our boss happy, and I felt sick to my stomach.

So I said "fuck 'im". We're already halfway through writing material. Sure, we can fill the back end with various things that are ~on theme~, I guess, but why the hell bother if that's not what we want to do? Why the hell make music if it's not the music we want to make? --I've brought this up to some of the others before, but it didn't really go over well. "...Because... it's our job?", Sam had said. He's always had something of a detached attitude about it all. I've never been able to detach. I mean-- it's my VOICE. People don't hear a song of ours when they see Sam, no offense to him. They can't help but see me and associate me and our music together, and not just our music but also our ~image~, how we're talked about in the press, and it's getting more and more strange having people treat me like some teeny-bopper when I'm nearly thirty-four years old and would very much like to make music for adults as well, now, please (and not just adult contemporary!).

Jeff gets that, thankfully. And he also gets wanting to write the music he wants to write, since he's largely the one who writes it these days. The way I explained it to him is-- things should be from the heart, at least somewhere. There's gotta be that in there, at the core. Even if it's pop. There's no heart, we won't be able to play it right, and we have to play this shit for hundreds of nights a year.

Anyway. I actually brought some of this up to Lou, of all people-- then again, he's always been wary of Walt; he never wants me to give him more than is absolutely necessary (very easily agreed!), and even then, to double-check with him when I can. So I brought up the album name crap, and just generally, frustrations over the way he feels he can lord over us in the most stupid ways. "You have an album name of your own you want instead?" No, but I'd rather it be a band choice than something dictated from on high. "I might be able to figure something out for you." Well, then! That WOULD be interesting... G-d, Nate would hate me, though. Well, it's not like he likes me right now as it is. But would this bomb it completely? I'd have to talk it over with Jeff first. If he's on the same page, we can get Nate there at least decently.

*

G-d, every time I visit La Rosa now I get news of someone else that’s sick. Not any of my close friends besides Dave for now, but LR is a small club, so it's still often people I've heard of, whose names I still know and faces I'd recognize. Even if it wasn't people I've heard of, it's still people who come here. All I can think of is that first time I ever imagined seeing LR half-empty at peak and feel sick and dreadful inside. --Well, I also think about the idea of Cryssie being sick and dying at the same time Mom is. If that's actually what's happening, I really don't know how I could have any sort of faith anymore. I've said it before but it's just all the more true.

I've been thinking about things like that more and more these days, anyway, about faith and G-d and the state of His world. Also thinking about my father every so often, wrapped up in it all. He's just as absent as G-d is. It's like they both decided to make something, then couldn't handle it once the thing they made turned out differently than how they expected. Should you create anything if you can't handle the unexpected in it? If you can't handle your creations making you feel anything other than pure joy, or if the process of creation itself is harder work than you thought it'd be? The consolation of Judaism compared to Christianity is that questions like that aren't discouraged, at least. But I still haven't been inside a Jewish temple in years, for services or anything else (I suppose in thirteen years I'll be at Eli's Bar Mitzvah, but I'll have quite some time to think about that!)... I guess I haven't had or felt real faith in awhile. It's one thing I haven't been strong or foolish enough for.

Jeff's always surprised by how cynical I am when I'm not "on", so to speak. He says I sing like "the boy next door who never gets the girl" (well, I don't get the girl, but I'm also not trying for her that way...), so I guess anything less than good little churchboy is jarring for him. He was a good little churchboy, of course. He's also not really religious anymore. "I dunno if I could ever lose my faith, tho'. Like, in Gahd." Well, lucky him! I'd love to have had a life as easy as that.

Anyway. I've still appreciated being able to visit La Rosa lately. I can get away with it again for awhile, so I'm taking as much advantage of it as I can, even if the atmosphere's been off ever since the sickness has touched it. We still flirt, we still dance, we still feel each other up in the back, but there's a hesitance around anything further. As much as I fear La Rosa being decimated, I know I'm not the only one.

*

Pammie actually called me recently. I've admittedly been avoiding talking to her... I just feel as though she'd hate so much of what I'm doing. Even who I am. But it was fine. We talked about Dave. She hasn't seen Cryssie either, ugh. I talked about how odd it is, how much of a whiplash feeling it is, to go from my job to LR (and to Mom, too). It's like going from a dream to reality and back again and the difference between the two is just more and more awful, but I can't just ignore it and I don't want to, but I don't know what the hell to do about it, either. Things are increasingly just fucked up.

She told me about a German poet from World War II times-- Bertolt Brecht (had to ask Pam for the spelling...)-- who had to flee Nazi Germany and ended up in California for awhile before having to flee America for Germany again (strange irony!) for being accused of being a communist and things like that. Was he a communist? "Well... a Marxist, anyway." That's not the same thing? "He wasn't in any official Communist Party. And if I sat with you on the phone and explained the difference between every little leftist group we'd be here forever". Fair enough! But anyway, she brought him up because of a poem of his, which very simply goes: "In the dark times, will there also be singing?/Yes, there will be singing./About the dark times.".

I told Pammie that the problem with me is that I can't actually sing about the dark times. There will be singing in the dark times, yes. There has to be. Because I need a house, and Shann needs a home, and Mom needs her treatments, and maybe Dave'll need some kind of treatment himself. But it can't be about the dark times, for those very same reasons. And what the hell do you do with that? Would I even be able to sing about the dark times if I had the chance? That might be the worse thing. Sometimes I feel like I'm giving people some kind of beauty, even if it's a simple beauty. Other times, more and more these days, I worry I'm not even giving people that. And I'm not sure what else I can give. "You have SO MUCH, Julie. When the time's right for you to do something with it, you'll know." If you say so...

*