*

Cryssie's sick. Of fucking course she is. God can't be merciful even once. Not only was she sick, she was sick on the fucking STREET, on the dead opposite side of the city. And nobody knew. She had to move originally because her landlord kicked her out; the entire building was getting knocked down and rebuilt and everyone living there had no recourse about it. For awhile she lived with family, but family didn't see her right, made her try to be a "him" for their sake, and she couldn't take it. She was out on the streets once they all knew she was sick anyway (it's not contagious that way but they don't care). She said she felt too ashamed to tell anyone beyond the people whose couches she was crashing on. I don't know whether I'm more angry at myself, at everyone else in LR (that anger's complicated-- I love them too, how quickly they jumped to action once they knew), or at god. --I said before that I couldn't put respect on god's name if both Mom and Cryssie were dying and I keep to my word.

The very first thing I did after bringing her to my house and helping her get herself relatively together was ensure she had a place to stay at least for awhile-- Pat is an angel, I can't thank him enough for helping me with this on such short notice (I wish she could stay with me, but that's too complicated with Shann, not to mention everything else). The second thing I need to do is, if she'd accept it, give her as nice an apartment as I can find so she can live out however long she has in peace, wanting for nothing. The third thing, closely related to the second, is get her 'round the clock care from as many people as needed. It'll be a bit more of a squeeze taking care of two ailing mothers, but I couldn't imagine doing anything less. I'll figure it out somehow.

Thankfully most of the figuring out of what I'll be doing this year career-wise has been done already-- it's more in the execution, now. I hope Walter accepts this. I know there's a high chance he won't the first time, so I hope it won't take too much to get him to understand. Otherwise I think I'll truly have to leave, and whatever other legal time, energy, and money will have to be spent on that first before I do anything else. --But CAN I leave (and I know this is the question Walter's counting on)? I have the money now to take care of myself, Ben, Mom, Cryssie, Dave-- but that's NOW. Would I just be blackballed for it? Does Walter have enough connections to pull that off? So much is uncertain, which makes pressing Walt for this even more important. Ugh, Lou's been so good to me. And the more I interact with him, the more he seems generally like a good man. He's been doing so much work lately for people who've been discriminated against because of all the awful panic around AIDS, and he doesn't do it loud, he doesn't put his face and name everywhere, he just does it (Ha, Walt would probably hate him because of that, too, on top of everything else).

I'm so damn close to so many things, and it's even more unbearable now because achieving those things isn't just for me, it's so much more for everyone else I love, and being able to pay back what so many had already given me when I was struggling. And Walter would never get that or care.

*

It's done. Wasn't as painful as I'd been dreading, but still not easy, because Walter is never going to make anything easy for me and it's better to just accept that. It's always a fight, and when the guys are around that fight always looks worse for me, somehow. But they're not around now! So that part's easier. Less people to potentially let down or frustrate or anything else. If they think it's selfish, oh well. I'm not around to know, and they don't know what the hell I have to deal with anyway.

I did have to make one concession: he's managing the album. I still have the vast majority of creative control, but he's getting a cut of the dough and I'm not going to be getting a break from him. Of course, on the flip side, this also means that he's not going to get a break from me. HA, I'm not sure if he's gonna hate my hair or my ears more-- got both done right after I walked off his boat. A little celebration (or the first half of that little celebration)! The top/left side of my hair has grown out a happily comfortable amount by now. The right side is a buzz. Need a bit of hairspray to keep the long parts neat/out of my face (and ~voluminous~), but nothing too annoying. There's a nice sort of soft humming, throbbing pain still from the piercings (nothing too crazy, just one in the left lobe, two near the top of my right ear). Shann was pretty shocked to see me walk in the door after all that, and wanted to do her panic-at-me-being-too-much-of-a-fag routine, but I told her she probably wouldn't have to deal with me for much longer anyway. "Celebrating early?" UGH.

Didn't let her get me down too much (and thankfully, though I was worried in the back of my mind, she wasn't upset enough to go on a bender or anything). I was out the door again soon enough. There was really only one group of people I was concerned with looking good for (Ben's on another gig, of course, but not a long one, and I'm not surprised I stressed him enough for it, ugh), and I had to test the waters there. Long story short... I don't think I have anything to worry about on that front! Really, the biggest worry I had for them was being too old to pull it off and looking tryhard. But no! The less you care, the better, and so I got quite a bit of my preferred kind of attention and barely even felt bad about it when I walked through my front door again smelling like various colognes and sweat and booze and whatever else.

There was something in me that was so cowered and curled up tight last year. Walt got me that way, Shann got me that way, even Ben did, even though I don't think he meant to. Everything was making me shrink and shrink and shrink to fit into a smaller and smaller box. Now I feel like kicking through that fucking box til it's shreds of cardboard.

PS: Cryssie has her apartment! I'd say thank god but really it's thank Pat and thank Casey. Haven't gotten to visit yet, but things are still being set up for her anyway. We have so much to talk about, but she doesn't want me seeing things 'til they're perfect. ...ugh, sometimes she's a little too much like me.

*

As soon as I decided that this record was going to be for Cryssie and LR first and foremost, things have been so damn easy creatively. I've been able to blend the sounds I've liked most from current pop and club sounds with more fancy synthwork and the soul base I start everything from, and more broadly, to blend organic sounds with intentionally mechnical-sounding synthesized ones in a way that's far more tailored to my liking. No full songs are complete yet or anything, ha, it's all just sketches, but they've been WONDERFUL sketches. There hasn't been a single fucking guitar so far, and I might not add one whatsoever. Well, there's been samples of guitar-- just played backwards or chopped up or both, sometimes rendered so abstract that its guitar-ness is barely recognizable. But nothing live, and absolutely no solos. The anti-Nate! HA (not sure if this or using another guitarist would annoy him more... well, he's done plenty to me, and I'm sure he's working on something of his own-- he's already said to me he can't handle downtime-- so he can manage regardless).

Doing lots of work with a DJ out of Chicago that thankfully decided to humor me (a couple others laughed at the offer, pretty much, and I can't exactly blame them)-- something inspired by my time in clubs last year, of course. Trying not to simply take ideas and use them just because I'm inspired by them, but to work with the people those ideas came from to begin with, clearly credit them, and-- most importantly-- pay them well. In all respects, as much as I try not to let critics get to me too much, and as much as I'm doing this for far more important reasons, I very much also hope that what I'm doing won't be considered fucking "fitting for the Reagan presidency" or whatever. UGH that still gets to me[57]. It's not just about that, though. I don't want to stagnate creatively. I don't want to be around a bunch of other increasingly fuddy-duddy white guys high off the late 60s-early 70s glory days and I don't EVER want to take a record executive's word for what people are actually listening to and interested in. So this work has been very clarifying and enlightening, too!

Speaking of record execs, they've been worried about my age-- the most mainstream pop is done by people in their teens or twenties, but that's not what this is about for me. I'm not trying to follow every single trend and make something intentionally "1984", or even intentionally within one genre or subgenre of pop. I don't think I have to go full "adult contemporary" in order to make more mature pop. God what an awful category that is! Like sure, a lot of it's slow for fucking-during-it reasons, but plenty of it is simply boring, without even an interesting groove, and if all your sex is that slow and grooveless, well... (well you're probably straight, that's what). I'm trying to do something fun, something interesting, more actively sexy, but still with some layered musical complexity.

Relatedly, having to think more about "image" sorts of things has been interesting... a little nerve-wracking, too, in a couple different ways. The last two tours had me so spooked that I was just in jeans and a few rotating interesting-enough shirts n’ jackets, nothing like the kimono tops and eyeshadow I could get away with in the early days. Now I have a bit more freedom to move around in again, and I don't know what to do with it! I don't want to try too hard to look younger than I am, as I've said, but I don't want to look frumpy either, of course. Well, I was inspired by Japanese fashion in the past-- maybe a quick trip back there is in order. Imagine having enough saved up that you can just take a shopping trip to Japan! I definitely don't take it for granted. I also know I'm not typically attractive in a pop star sort of way-- again, I don't want to be a pop star anyway, I already have too much attention on me, I just want to make a type of pop music-- but I know labels worry about that sort of thing anyway. I can't control that nearly as much as my clothes or my hair, though, so... oh well, I guess! I still have a little voice in the back of my head calling me a selfish little prince or a peacock or various other things, but I'm trying to ignore it.

There's still the awful dissonance that was present last year, too: things going good for me in one (or a few) way(s) while the rest of the world is going to hell, and how dare I have things going well for me and how dare I be happy. That's harder to ignore than the other little voices in the back of my head. But at the same time, just like last year, there's not much I can do about it. And this time, so much of my work, even the most fun parts, is about helping some of that hell maybe become less of one for other people, not just me.

*

Ugh what a horrible day. I don't know whether I'm angrier at myself or Marvin. It was the first time Mom saw me with my hair the way it is, and she was very upset by it. Started crying; when I asked her what was wrong she stood up straight from her wheelchair, an unfortunately-familiar fiery look in her eyes, grasped my shoulders, shook them. "WHY DO YOU INSIST ON RUINING YOURSELF??" --At that point I still had no idea what she was talking about, and I was terrified to ask but was able to squeeze the question out of my throat somehow anyway. She looked into my eyes-- her whole weight on me at this point; she can't really walk well or even stand well anymore-- tears making her mascara and eyeliner run (equal urges to fix it and stay frozen, thankfully wasn't stupid enough to do the former), grabbed the longer side of my hair, let out a mid-volume wail. Marv was able to calm her down enough to sit her back down in her chair and I thought we'd be able to start to move on; Mom sadly has episodes like this regardless of the reason-- it's the tumor doing it, really-- but Marv stayed almost as fixated on my hair as she was, and it didn't help things at all.

I still have no idea why the fuck she married him. Or-- well, I guess I do. He IS good at calming her down. He IS good at weathering whatever emotional storms she goes through, and he's equally good at heading them off at the pass. He's never laid a hand on her, rarely on me. But he's still nearly as conservative and "traditional" as Granddad. Some of it is more Jewish tradition, and that can be more forgiving in some ways than Catholic tradition, but there's still quite some overlap-- it's only the reasoning that changes, sometimes. Most of it, though, is that kind of "patriarch" tradition. He's the head of the household, he's in charge of keeping things in order, and I seem to insist on being out of order. The "order", though, can be so damn arbitrary. Really, sometimes it's just whatever makes Mom upset. This worked better in the past; I did quite a bit of awful things to make her upset before. Now, though, she can get upset at anything and everything. It's completely unpredictable, and it was never perfectly predictable to begin with. Not to say I don't understand that-- it's the tumor in a physical sense but also in an emotional one, knowing that you're fucking dying and you're not able to do a thing about it but (literally) buy time. I know more and more people facing that than I ever thought I would at this age.

I understand all that, but I also know that threatening to cut me off from my family again until I shave the rest of my head is completely fucking ridiculous. At the time I was so rattled by it that I did end up leaving, calling Anna. She had an EARFUL for him, but even if she directs it at him, she's a ~woman~ and she's not his child regardless (not that I am either, but Mom always wished so), so her opinion would likely be discarded. It kindled a bit more of a confidence in me that Marvin's being unreasonable, at least.

I couldn't help but ask Benny, later-- and thank GOODNESS he's home again-- if I really had ruined myself. He had no idea what I was talking about. And anyway, as I told both my mother and her husband, hair grows back. Would I grow it back out just for him? UGH I really hope I don't need to. Keeping Mom from me now, for such a petty reason... like, kicking me out because I pawned a pair of Mom's earrings for drugs when I was an idiot kid made sense. I can't be angry at him for doing that. I was desperate but desperation had made me someone who'd break my own mother's trust to avoid withdrawal. Now, all I want to do is take care of the woman who raised me despite my flaws and oddities, despite thinking I can't help but ruin myself; I want to do as much good for her as I can while she's fucking dying, and my HAIR is the fucking issue. UGH it makes me want to scream.

*

[57]I mean, I hope that's IT for the Reagan presidency, but I very much doubt it from what I've seen-- the Democrats only want to run the most boring suits possible out of all the boring suits in the world, and people generally are still whipped up by all the bigoted nonsense his first election inspired. Might still protest vote for Jesse Jackson or something if I'm around to do so, but if not, whatever.