WAAAAAHHHHH!

Just sent the girls off in the van. I think I've made some real friends with the bunch. Worth the wait all these years to get such a hearty dose all at once. Now, to find some in the same state...

We surprised Lynda with a spontaneous song, one she taught as during the course, and she sobbed, we sobbed, and love was smeared around the place.

I gotta tell ya, I have 19 minutes left on this machine, but I have to piss and also want to catch the early shuttle. Hoping to then get the earlier train to Albany and spend the layover time in Albany at Hogan's little dive bar in her honor. Kathleen gave me two quarters for the Dolly Parton pinball machine.

Here's to a blown $5. (This place is teeming with moths.) (I should know better than to use a word like 'teeming' after a week at writing school.)

Weepy

Going home tomorrow. Neko says the tour will lose momentum without me; I want to become a fulltime groupie. There's a great appeal to that, but it's a lie, I've discovered. I want the spotlight. It's true. But I love these others who command it with their talent and persons.

I miss my dog, but try not to think about her until I see her. I can get too freaked out worrying about not being with her, so I block it. Ever since she was a puppy and I kenneled her for a week. It was the worst week of my life. I know she's with Harry, and they have a true love thing going on.

It will be good to see Harry. And my cat. And house. And The Senate and a $1.25 Pabst Blue Ribbon. As much as I miss this life, I have another one that I call home. Integrating the two, that's the deal.

The massage wasn't a massage, but a guy pushing lightly on various parts of me. I didn't care if I fit in.

One of the Pack

Wow, people sure do want to belong to the pack. I do. No denying it, no intellectualizing otherwise, it is a fact. I feel gloomy whenever I feel, irrationally or not, that I've fallen out of the pack or was never one of their number to begin with. Thing is, I suspect that for the most part, the pack is largely a projection of any given person at any given time. In other words, what fucking pack? Depends on the moment, the perspective, the definer, the mood. But boy oh boy, can I feel out of it. Alone. A stray mutant sheep that not even wolves find interesting.

Mostly, I know this is not the case. More like a handicapping seizure that washes over me from time to time. Feelings that belong somewhere else, sometime else, splooging up from days gone by. But live or Memorex, the feelings are the same. Just gotta live with them.

I am going for a massage now. Accupressure; I am geeked. I wonder if my stiff neck slash shoulder will actually be relieved. I wonder if I will fit in with the getting-massages pack... ha ha.

On Tour

I should provide links to each of the girls' music, but for now you can search the likes of Neko Cxxx , Kelly Hxxxx, and Carolyn Mxxx. No joshing, they're blow-you-away-beautiful voices and talent. It's really something.

They are hoping I'll join them touring when we leave Omega. Man, I would love to. So tempted. But Harry has shows this weekend, and I have a little dog waiting for me, and a day job to adjust to come Monday. Next time. One day. All that.

I know that one day I'll be on my own tour. I feel it. In some ways, I've always known it. Like I've been waiting for it to happen. For writing? Performance? Something altogether different that I can't yet imagine? Who knows. But it feels like what I've been cut out for all along, waiting.

Less sweaty today. Still, I long for the crisp climes of my ancestors.

Back from Rhinbeck

Four of us drove into the tiny and charming town of Rhinbeck, New York this afternoon: me, Hogan, Neko, and the great Julie Wilson. I sat in a perfectly darkened tavern and drank draft beer and wrote some. It was great. Julie & Neko joined me near the end of our time, and Julie smoked Marlboro lights on the last day possible, maybe ever, inside a New York establishment. Historic smokes, and I was there to see it. Also, there was a spider that lived between two glass panes that blew my mind; huge and nursing a full sac.

Lynda wins Eisner Award

I had the weighty pleasure of letting Lynda know that she won an Eisner Award for for her latest book, "100 Demons." I learned of it via e-mail, and she hadn't even been aware she was nominated. Wow. I hope it didn't bum her out getting it from me, instead of her husband or some other more intimate party. Crazy. I don't know how to act sometimes.

Live from Omega

It's about to storm here in Rhinbeck, New York. THANK GOD, I say, because the humidity is breaking me. That, and the writing, have brought in a funk. I tried today to pretend myself out of it, but it's strong, and resistance is futile. Bring on da funk.

Writing funks me. Because I am sick, sick, sick of writing about my stepdad. It sucked, I know that, we all know that, I've written about it, can't I please, pretty please, move on now and write about any other fucking thing from my life? It seems not. I will try to give the topic an extra wallop this week to perhaps drain its power some. The resulting funk will just have to be endured.

My weight increases in ten-pound increments during a funk. My face alone has ballooneed since this morning. I become not only enormous, but hideous, as well, in a very unlikeable way. The kind of person you want to avoid because they ooze pathetic-ness all over you. Darn it all.

Other than that, the workshop and traveling experiences have been a great time. I love these broads. Our roadtrip from Chicago was a good time; they are pros, three of them being singers. It's fun to hear of their travels, their crazed fans, their lives. It's good to be around fellow tomboys, too.

Lynda is really great. She's spoiling us gals.