And I just have to add, I have the most ridiculously huge crush on Stephen Trask � he wrote all the music for Hedwig, did the singing for the character of Tommy Gnosis (I love his voice!!), and played the guitarist, Skszp (and looked mighty hot in eyeliner, dark purple lipstick, and a big grin). Cool story � he lives in the New Haven area, and occasionally goes into the video store where Jill works, and one day he came in while she was doing her shift, and she recognized him and got really excited and told him all about her friend who thinks he�s just so fantastic and talented and hot, too! He was really flattered (although a touch disappointed that I wasn�t some cute guy friend of hers ;-) to hear what a big fan I am, and I was totally bowled over that she gushed about how cool I was to Stephen Trask. Sigh.. I suppose that I am not immune to celebrity oooh-ing, no matter how above it all I can posture myself.

So, anyway, here I am still singing ("Wig in a Box" right now), so someone answer this for me, this deceptively easy question: why does music feel so good? I mean, really, when you think about it, in ultimate rather than proximate causes (simplistically stated, of course), other things make sense. Food tastes so good because we need to eat to survive. Sex feels so good (or so I vaguely recollect ;-) because we need to reproduce to propagate the species. But what ultimate, evolutionary cause does music serve? I don�t really need to know, it just makes me curious. Something so simple, and it is just so thrilling. For instance, as I write this, I keep getting distracted by just having to sing along (belt out, actually) with the songs, and why does my body feel so good when I sing? I�m not a terrific singer, although I�m not terrible either, but god, I love it, love how it feels. I took a class called Everybody Can Sing while I was with the Louse and while I was in the worst of it then, and didn�t get nearly as much out of the class as I would have liked to (I missed 2 out of 6 sessions because of him), and would like to take it again, but still, it was really something to feel like I could do it.

Lately I have been feeling a longing, a sadness, that I never got involved in theater stuff in high school when I had the opportunity, which is weird � I never had any interest at all then. But lately I�ve been feeling these inexplicable desires to dance and sing and perform � me!!! Brian#1 can tell you, he was there with me in high school and knows how tormented I was in the acting class we took together in our afterschool program; it was like physical pain, and like pulling teeth, I am certain, for the teacher. Then again, hello, we�re talking easily 13-14 years ago, but I do feel like it�s too late. Especially for living in New York, where anyone with any sort of theatrical aspirations wants to be famous and on Broadway and has been doing this stuff since they were in single digits. Me, I would be happy and totally content to be involved in some kind of dinky little lame-ass community theater project like Red, White, and Blaine! , which I�m sure as hell not gonna find in New York City! And I feel that with NO experience, I would need to find a safe, safe, safe place (did I mention it would need to be safe?) to just try, to learn from scratch. And I don�t know if I have a thick enough skin, even now, to deal with looking stupid and sounding bad and putting myself out there to be criticized. So I do feel like I lost out on something by not doing this stuff in high school. But maybe I can find some kind of outlet for all of this.

When I was in San Francisco, I got to see OT: Our Town , a documentary about a high school in Compton, CA that was trying to put on a production of Our Town even though the school hadn�t put on a show in over 20 years and they had no theater program and no money and not even a stage until the morning of the performance, and it was so hard and grueling and so many of those kids had such doubt, and they did it. It was an amazing feat, and the process absolutely appealed to me, enthralled me, to see how they got there and conquered their doubts � or, to be more accurate, performed marvelously with doubts still intact � and it made me cry to watch it, it was that inspiring.

Just things on my mind�

I�ve been sleeping really miserably lately � or, to be more accurate, going to bed really miserably � and I�ve been just exhausted, and today was really hard and looky here! 12:40 and still awake and not all that tired. I am not setting the alarm no matter what, I don�t care if I sleep until noon � if that�s what I need, it�s what I need. (One time when I was at Jill�s when she lived in her parents� basement, she set up a bed for me in the attached room that had no windows � it was absolutely pitch black (heaven!) and I wound up sleeping until three in the afternoon . It was a sensory deprivation chamber!) Tonight is a little hard being home alone; both Hans and Keith are away and I�m feeling a touch of loneliness. Nothing I can�t handle. I think I�m getting good at loneliness, which is probably not such a good thing, but at least I can sit with it and be okay.

This afternoon Andi and Doron and I went to see Lost in Translation and oh, what a lovely movie � I can never do movies justice when I talk about them; it is as if I am so in love with them that I can�t find my words and merely sputter over them � but oh my. I think this is one of those movies that I will need to see over and over again, to catch each nuance, to linger with it. To get it on DVD and turn the lights out and wrap myself in my down comforter and absorb the quiet and the leisurely pace and the melancholy longing and cry at the end again and again. (Which is often what I do with The Royal Tenenbaums , the first movie where I first appreciated what a fine actor Bill Murray really is, and he had damn better well get an Oscar nomination for this latest performance of his.) I already can�t wait to see it again.

Melancholy and longing. I am definitely feeling that tonight, although it is certainly bearable (being here on the page with you, my readers, helps a lot.) Spending the day with Andi and Doron was, as always, just a blast, and they so often make me feel so included, I never feel like a fifth wheel (all of my coupled friends are like that, actually), and I enjoy the warmth and laughter of their relationship, and they are such good role models for me on how to have a happy relationship. Today on the subway back from Queens Andi was telling me how they�ve never had a real shouting-and-screaming fight, and no matter how annoyed they get with each other, they always hug and kiss and tell each other they love each other before getting into bed together at night. I can�t really express what effect her words had on me � I felt happy for them, sad for me, and vindicated. She made it sound so normal.

(Warning: more emotional shrapnel ahead) Oh god, the Louse, sometimes I hate him so much still � he made me feel like I was asking for so much. Like I was some sort of bottomless vortex draining him of everything, a demanding shrew (motherfucker!! Remember his enforced reading program ? I just remembered that the week before I left him, he insisted that I put Taming of the Shrew on reserve at the library so I could pick up some pointers on how to behave � and then went on for half an hour on why I shouldn�t be offended at the idea that I needed to be fucking trained.) (Forgive me the profanity � he brings the worst out in me.)

Whenever I tried to kiss and make up, tried to go to bed together on a loving note, he trashed me, made me out to be controlling and demanding and asking so much of him. In his eyes, my emotional needs or concerns were not just not his problem, but they were an imposition, an assault. I can�t tell you how many times he banished me to the living room to sleep on the filthy threadbare futon mattress on the floor, for the transgression of asking him for something, for saying something the wrong way, looking at him the wrong way, hell, for anything at all. Even when we did sleep in the same bed, he piled pillows all around him and pushed me to a tiny sliver of bed crammed up against the wall. His selfishness astounds me to this day.

(I remember, also, a day when I had made some comment � an inquiry as to his well-being, perhaps, as he had been sullen and moody, and he absolutely refused to acknowledge that I had spoken to him, that I was even in the room. No matter what I said, he just sat stone faced in front of that fucking computer (the one that he manipulated his mother into giving him the money for out of a personal injury settlement she received), and I felt absolutely erased, just nothing, and I remember screaming at him, horribly and viciously, an amazing litany of profanity and rage, and I threw the remote control at the futon frame and it broke into pieces, and I can�t tell you how long I felt so guilty for that, for acting badly, for losing control, for treating him so badly. It pains me to admit how messed up my thinking was.)

But yes, I really think that he felt assaulted by me. That he viewed himself as on constant defense from me. That when he hit me, it was in psychic self-defense. I really honestly think he believed that, to his core. I am only just now starting to be able to separate that from myself; his vision of me was pure delusion, psychosis, sadism. That�s not who I am! But extricating myself from those tangles is still hard; it is why I am on this page so late tonight.

I was going to write about the first time he hit me and the last time he hit me as examples of this, but I posted them from my old diary instead. (Since I haven�t updated that in ages, it is unavailable except to me when I log in.) In case you don�t feel like reading the whole entries, the gist of it is that each time he hit me because I asked him for emotional support, and he felt attacked by that. (I just now recalled, also: the last time he hit me was because I was such a wonderful person and hearing me disparage myself the way I was upset him so much he lost control. How I wish I were making that up.) He really saw no difference. I�m sad and crying and ask him for help, I�m attacking him. He physically assaults me, he�s attacking me. Tit for tat, what�s the problem?

These mindfucks are what still lay dormant in my mind, my heart, like land mines. (Land mines, shrapnel � it is no accident that I use the terminology of warfare.) I like to think that the next time I love a man, that if I am sad or troubled, and I ask him for a hug, to hold me, to comfort me, that he would gladly do it. But there is such anxiety. Certainly to reach out like that is risking rejection, but it�s more than that. I have still not entirely shaken off the feeling that asking for comfort and kindness is a burden, too much. That asking for an affectionate gesture is not inconsiderate, insensitive, or cruel of me. It is lessening, slipping off slowly, but I still struggle. Again, that is why I am here.

I think Brian is right, in that the Louse might not be such a great topic for NaNoWriMo. I don�t think I can sit with this for a whole month.

And I am beginning to fade, yes.

I will go to bed now, and as I drift off under my comforter (how appropriate!), I will tell myself � even if I don�t wholly believe it yet � that someday I could meet a man who would come under those covers with me, hold me, place soft kisses in my hair - and want to.