2001-03-28 - 8:50 p.m.

forbidden world and crave the emptiness.

So tonight after my utterly borring day at work I went to a networking mixer at a very tutty falutti resteraunte/bar in Beverly HIlls. I got worked. My persception that is.

Everything inside the placejust felt like velvet, rich, deep purple. I kept feeling so much less than almost everyone there. You can just see the women, the ones drapped in clothes that cost the amount of my rent. I watched in fascination, jealousy and timidness. I just don't understand how some have so much. What is their life like? It seemed so good on the outside. Fashionable friends, prada clothes, who I assume all have fabulous lives where they barely have to work and get to travel all over and do creative things. And the joke is that I must look nice on the outside. I drive a nice fast car (that I bought so I could drive fast and feel better about myself). I am attractive, have a fun sounding creative job etc. But I always feel so different. It's the cat throw up (read earilier journals). It's that feeling I had growing up that I wasnt' enough, that I couldn't fit in, that all the other girls had great nice healthy families and I didn't deserve to hang out among them. They would know that I'm broken. So I carry this with me.

It's burned into me. Like branding, on my hide. Telling me I'm different, undeserving, dysfunctional, a freek, fucked up, too sensitive, not good enough clothes,you can tell didn't come from money.

There is this one woman who always goes to this group and she is always dressed great, monied, and has a job at a VC firm. She went to Biz school w/ my 'x'. So I hate her. ha! I'm so mature. She represents once again all that is a part of the forbidden world to me. The world where people are professional, meet out for drinks, only drink one or two, it has NO meaning to them. The meet men, socialize normally. Don't have issues, don't go home and journal later. Don't get in outrageous fights w/ friends and walk home. I imagine all these things. and I how only have strippers as friends. I don't think I am worthy once again of the pearly white polished crowd. The ones that talk about more than the crack problem they had and their feelings about the boyfriend that has screwed them over again. huh?

I was seething w/ jealousy and awe of this woman who was accepted by my 'x'. Who has wine tasting parties and seems so normal. I don't do this. I'm a sensitive recovering alcoholic. I grew up in an alcoholic home. The woman that was w/ her is some Executive big wig (and she looked young and pretty) at a company that I'm sure I'd like to get to know. But I was too intimidated to talk to her, cuz she was w/ the one that knew my 'x'. When will i ever accept, better yet, embrace myself fully? Sometimes I do. But I get snagged. And driving home I thought to myself, what would my nature loving, far leftest friend up north think of my obsession to be okay in the glitz and gloss? She hugs tree's and looks down on those who are their jobs and cars. She didn't want to date a guy once cuz he had a BMW. Most of my friends in LA are JUST the opposite. And I'm thinking what would she think of me in this world? Why am I drawn to it? Why can't I leave?

I think of living in Northern California. Among 'real' people, talking about politic's, world affairs, consumerism, art. I think of mtg people that we go to cafes that are simple and our company is enough. That the pearly lights and pretty people drapping the place isn't what is important. But I also wonder if I would miss the emptiness, crave it. Crave being in the hottest spot in town, among the __? The what? I hate this part of me that likes this. Did LA do this to me, or was this a part of me waiting to sprout? LA can crawl onto a persons spine, like a leach, envelope them and change them. What changes have happened to me that I'm not evenfully aware of? I felt so good when I was visiting NYC. It felt at least a bit different. Most of the time, LA challenges me to be okay in the midst of the bullshit. It makes me break to it and submit or be more firm with knowing who I am and that the outside bullshit doesn't make me happy. That I can steal some shine from its light, but never be warmed by it permanently. I know where happiness comes from. And how the hell do I know that these people are so happy? They never smile. haha.

ITS JUST A MATTER OF PERCEPTION. I am thinking of this job that I want. And I'm thinking, when I get it, I will feel okay. The job is huge and I'll never get it. It's too big. But I will feel okay among these people when I get it. I will be okay w/ myself. When it comes into view at all, and I think it is possible to have it, then I think, oh the job's not a big deal. ITs small time. I used to think the job I do now was so big. Now I do it and I think it's not enough. Small. Years of thinking this way of myself. Now I'm out in the world 'proving myself' and it's no wonder that a car, a job is so important to myself. of myself I feel nothing. I feel unimportant at best. So these things...ya know the story. It's like I want to win at this game, make it. Have the job I want. To then be able to let myself retreat into peace. Into N. CA, a simple non-profit job. Once I've known I can do it. Then I will let myself be at peace and do maybe what it is I would be doing if my ego wasn't at all involved. If no one asked what it was that I did. If I thought I was enough no matter what. Without all the decorations. Cuz I thought the end all would be when I Have an art opening. It's in two weeks. Do I feel different? Not at all. Good yes, but changed? No.

I went to my framers house early to pick up my prints and the happy damn fool kept talking to me about finding Jesus's love. When I met him he looked so directly into my eyes and it reminded me of how much I hate intimacy. Or that I react w/ walls when someone wants to touch me in that way, looking directly into me. Jesus. He seemed glazed over. It works for him. He says his life is so much better now that he's found Jesus. He said I could to, that it is a person relationship. Thx fucker I do have a personal relationship w/ a sense of the spiritual, but fuck I don't call it Jesus! I hate when people put their frames of thinking onto me. That it has to be Jesus. I think of Jesus like I think of any prophet, Mohammad, Martin LUther King JR., Gandi.

Today I bought the lighter fluid for project burn the bunny. I've started to like the guy as this big baby blue fella drives all over town with me in the passenger seat. He's a good listener and he never talks back! I love it.

One more thing in my life's defense. That strippers are hellaciously more fun than muther fucking business women!! haha. I relish in their stories like a wild eyed kid. I dance in their memories of a harsh, skid road past. And I remember being out to dinner with the x and some of his perfect professional friends and being BORRED OUT OF MY FUCKIN NORMAL NORMAL NORMAL mind. So save your normalicy for some other white bread wonder.

cheers, l

now i'm going to go eat some cheese and manipulate that damn londoner to let me dress him up as a woman and take pix of him.