gay new york

According to the young male hustler character in the Broadway play I just saw (ahem), gay is a just a word that rhymes with a lot of other words, and that's why it was used in so many old songs. There's a hilarious scene (many hilarious scenes, but in this one...) where his "lover" (barf) is lying next to him in bed wondering what he (the hustler) is thinking about. And what he's thinking about kind of goes like this: "hay, ray, spray..."

The play is called The Little Dog Laughed, and when I read my first review of it, on Nerve(http://www.nerve.com/regulars/lifeswork/douglascarterbeane/), it was titled "No, It's Not the Tom Cruise Story", which is ridiculously accurate.

I tried explaining what the play was about to a bartender at Simone's afterward, but it only became apparent that I shouldn't try to pitch anything, ever.

What I hated most during the play was the couple next to me. More specifically, the woman. At the same time, she was a great source of very quiet and silent laughter for me. This is what she wore (and please note, she was, ehhh, heavyset): a hot pink cropped t-shirt. with rhinstones spelling something I couldn't decipher because it would have required staring directly at her chest. and I tried. rhinestone hoop earrings. white capri pants. pink bobby socks. She must have been, oh, 44. She giggled at all the wrong parts (like, say, every time the gay guys kissed...). I was dying to ask her where in the US she was from.

I went to Simone's later, a bar here in the East Village where I'm staying, because I was so happy after the play, I wanted a drink. I never feel like going to bars by myself, and I don't associate joy with alcohol, but here I am in New York and I've just seen a hilarious play on Broadway, and it's Saturday night, and... I wanted to have a drink. I walked by a few bars on Avenue A, but chickened out of walking into each of them. Simone's, I figured, was familiar, therefore safe. I went there last year with Bubi and we liked it. It's all red and chandeliers, you know?

One of the barmen had his iPod hooked up to the sound system and he played Kate Bush and Massive Attack's CD Protection, the one with Karma Coma. I got a glass of red. Anyway, there was this person there, who I noticed hopping tables. I asked one of the guys behind the bar and he told me she was Simone (no relation to the bar's name), a transexual who's a physic and "really cool". No doubt. I wish she had read my hand. While I finished my drink, I could hear her talking to a table of people hidden from my view: "hellooo!", as in "wake up!" and then a few minutes later, again, "hellooo!", and again.

Tomorrow night is the Christmas dinner with Chilean ex-pats I've been invited to. I'm really looking forward to it. I have to say, though, the times I've felt best in this city are when I'm by myself, ready for anything.