4:01 AM
afraid, sometimes, that I am indeed as crazy as a few people have tried to convince me. The irony is that the people with the most reason to think me a crazed stalker (my ex Eric and John), don't think I am. I know I am intense in even the most casual interactions, but isn't that a matter of intelligence, passion, conviction and just the Goddess squeezing a lot of stuff in one package?. Also, there's no way I'm aware of to endure 20 years of a variety of abuse and manipulation and come out perfect, but we all are works in progress.

One person who's been on my mind lately told me never to write him again, that I needed professional help, etc. It just sticks in my craw, I don't know why. I keep reminding myself that there are certain things that just don't add up to his conclusion. As readers of my journal and anyone I've ever had an email exchange with knows, I'm wordy. That person took all my words and assumed they were about him. When I send anyone long emails about my political and philosophical theories it is only because something they've written me made me think they were intelligent enough to comprehend them.

He said I wrote, called, visited and emailed too much. The email ratio was about 2 for 1, about twice as good as I have with most of my friends because, again, I'm freakin wordy. I called two or three times in three months. The first time he gave me his number and told me to call because he might be able to help me get a job and make friends, since I was new to New York. The second call was to return his returning of my first call. The third I don't recall, but I'm sure there must've been three. I don't remember more than that. I also faxed him a drawing of his adorable doggie after said dog spent an hour on my chest at a show and wouldn't go back to him. The dog and I were instant pals. Goofy though the last may be, it serves as no red flag that I was going to show up at his house or anything else strange or scary.

The band was playing in a bar every Thursday for two months and I went almost every week. I'd just moved to NY and it was the only regular, routine thing I had in my life, having lived in various addresses in all five boroughs and Jersey City in the course of four months. I felt accepted into this family of old friends, fans and the band because he always came up to talk to me at shows, sang songs for me, talked to me from the stage, hung out with me after shows, etc. Silly me to think he thought of me as a friend.

Oddly enough, he was slipping me money, beers and lots of ego strokes even while telling his friends across the room that I was a psycho stalker. Even when I turned down the money, which I didn't need, he'd keep slipping it in my hands and saying, "You just moved here, you probably need money, huh?" I appreciated this and, thinking he'd never let me pay him back in cash, made them a gift basket. It's what I do when it's someone's birthday or to repay a favor. I'm known among my friends for my gift baskets, cakes and cooking. It was a rock and roll decadence basket with beer, cigarettes, tiny bottles of hard liquor and nudie girl cards. They thought this was funny at the time, but it's one of those things I think might have been wasted on a hard heart.

I am not sure what bothers me more -- to see anyone being so mean-spirited or to be the one on the receiving end. I wish it didn't still bother me two years later, but I hate that once a person claims you're a stalker (like a rapist or child molester), as Michael Jackson said, "the lie becomes the truth."

I also try to keep in mind the words of wonderful friends like Pete and Scott. Pete said anyone who would mistake my kindness and the love I'm brimming with as mental illness ir a threat is missing out on the Erica Jackson experience.

I met this guy on the 38 Geary who I had great conversations with and we started emailing each other just before I moved to NY. I really enjoyed our conversations but after a few weeks there was some drama about his wife finding the emails (he confused me as to which was the current email address, turns out one wasn't so much "outdated" as it was shared with his wife) and thinking we were having an affair. I'm not sure how she got that out of a few emails and chance bus encounters.

On the one hand, I did find him attractive, but on the other just having good conversations was wonderful for me, so I had no idea where that came from. I told Scott that I just didn't understand how the other person was always dumping me when I felt close, connected to the rare person who understood things I spoke about. He responded that we are ALL connected, but a lot of people refuse to acknowledge that, so it wasn't my problem or fault.

I really needed to hear all that because I was growing alarmed at how many people had told me I was some variation of a stalker or psycho over the last five years. The truth of the matter is that my behavior didn't change or escalate, their response did. Rather than be pleased at finding a good friend (as John, Scott, Pete, Dorothy and my other inner circle friends are), some people freak out and assign a psychosis to it.

Still, I was really bothered by this whole state of affairs. One day a coworker at Zomba asked me what all the situations had in common, that was probably the answer. At first I thought, "shit, what they share in common is ME...it's true, I am a psycho stalker." Then I remembered that all the people who accused me of stalking them had been "stalked" before, usually several times. For some people this is like some sort of cooler-than-thou merit badge. What sucks worst of all is that their selfish need for attention/validation, hurts people who are in true danger.

Enough words wasted on hateful souls.

I am still convinced that you can do no wrong when you try to make a friend.

Watching
Woodstock. Oddly enough, I've never seen anything more than a few performance clips of this. Janis is on, yeah!

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