I didn't blog yesterday because the Puerto Rican day parade was here in NYC and all the police blocked me signal, so I went downtown to get away from all the hubbub. I love Sundays.  It's my favorite day of the week. I used to hate them. I was so scared of my life that I didn't want another day to come. Well, yesterday we went to friend’s restaurant again and the hot boxer waited on us. So cute, the bartender was saying something to him and he came over to the table and whispered “the bartender wants to take you out on date" I replied "get in line" (jokingly) and then the boxer said yeah behind me.  So much fun.... esp. because I had on a t shirt, jeans and converse sneakers. The rest of the place was dressed to the nines. The boxer said something about my being flexible and I asked my friend how he knew that and she said, "He’s imagining." Its amazing this power called sexuality. It’s not how you dress its how you treat people.

I've been reading this spiritual book and it talks a lot about women’s sexuality and how it’s so important to use it to make the guys feel good, which is the complete opposite of what I was taught. It reminded me of when I went down to hand out food a few days after 9/11. I remember all the cops and fireman flirting so much. I was shocked that they could be in that much pain and still be sexual.  It made me feel really good, because there was something about it being an affirmation of life. That life goes on. It has to, we have no choice.

This spiritual book talks about how your sexuality can be a counter force to all the bad in the world.  Think of that image, we are standing downtown, these guys are digging out there friends form the rubble, we smell burning flesh and gasoline and there is sexuality surviving among all that destruction.

When I left the restaurant, I got an email from a girl from my neighborhood that another girl that we grew up with had died.  I'm not exactly sure of the cause of death, but I know she had been struggling with drugs and alcohol. As matter of fact, last time I was in Boston someone had told me that she was missing.

I cried so hard. I was surprised by my reaction. I was telling my NYC friends about her and how all weekend I had been listening to Grand Master Flash. That was one of the songs we listened to when she and I would go into the Old Harbor Projects. I was telling my friends about the guys we would meet and all the drugs. It just hit me, how dangerous it all was.

I also felt such sadness about how I got out and she didn't. Some people call it survivor guilt, but I think that sounds grandiose. Who am I to judge what someone’s path is?  All I can do is feel my feelings.

Every time I do my show people are like "Sue do you have any idea how poignant it is that you are alive to tell that story?' They are implying that I should be dead, and that most people don't live to tell my story. Or if they are alive, they are so shut down from the pain that they never could re tell it. I've been writing and performing my show for years now, but since going back to Boston it has sunk in even more.

I will say that coming to terms with my past has been an excruciating task. And I'm still going through it. I realized that when I had my success years ago I had to insulate myself. I used all the money and the fact that I had moved away as a buffer.

But as we all know, it’s and inside job. It's easy to stay away and pretend to be something that I’m not. But the true test is, to change and be able to go back as the person I have become.  Not only that, but to be able to maintain who I am in the midst all the pain. To show up with love, and to cry at the things that make me sad.

If I can show one person that there is hope for some freedom, and by freedom I mean, being a person who feels sadness, joy, sexuality, anger ...everything, then I feel like my life is worth it. And I mean show them, by being real about how sad I was as a person and how lonely and scared I was. And to show them that shame is not a necessity.

Like I said, guilt is just another form of ego. I'm very sad that the girl I grew up with no longer with us. And i felt it last night. I cried so hard I thought I was going to throw up.  But like I said maybe she was in so much pain that she needed out.

For the rest of us we need to keep going. We can't let sadness of that weigh so heavily on us that it takes us down too, life moves on,  every second someone is dying and every second someone is being born, though the act of sex. If we all just died, there would be no more world, no more life. If we are going to be alive, I say live until it's our time to go. And part of living is grieving. Feeling the loss and letting it go, somehow some way.

I woke up to an email from a cop I used to date 20 years ago who heard I was coming to town and if i need anything to call him. Sexuality- the counter force to all the bad in the world.