tears and diva worship

This time round, things seem to be going in reverse. It's exactly one month until I have to leave the US (just as well I noticed my flight out was originally booked for after the 90 day limit of staying legally without a visa...) and I've only just hit the "I don't want to go" stage. If I remember rightly, this hit within approximately 48 hours of arriving in New York last year. But then last year, I didn't continually burst into tears within the first two weeks like I did this time, thinking about home and my special people. In fact, it only took a matter of hours after leaving Sydney, somewhere over the Pacific, holed up in the aeroplane bathroom, three or so aeroplane-strength gin and tonics under my belt, finding personal resonance in the romance narrative of a thoroughly adorable indie movie. (After all these years, I finally discover why people claim gin is a depressant!) Last year, the floodgates didn't open until I was mere hours from leaving New York to fly home, and mere seconds after closing the door (literally but not metaphorically, as it turned out) behind The Russian with whom I'd spent my final night in New York. The last month we'd spent hanging out was part of very calm and settled winding down from a pretty frenetic and self-indulgent first two months in a city where anything and everything seemed easily within reach and frequently was. Of course last year, as Darren so cleverly pointed out, I was running away from something whereas this year I'm running towards something. Reverse. And so if this theory of reversal is true, the things I should still have in store for my final month would include: the purchase of at least three pairs of gorgeous shoes; a hectic schedule of partying until 4am three or four nights a week; a killer flu most likely caused by said partying; and a misguided flight across the country to a midwestern backwater to spend an awkward and sexually unfulfilled weekend with a handsome near-stranger.

One of the highlights of the last week was finally going to see the musical Gypsy on Broadway starring the formidable Patti LuPone. Were I an authentic gay man, certain friends pouted jealously, this would be my wet dream. At least I knew who Patti LuPone was and all of the other uber-divas in whose steps she now trod in this role to end all diva roles. And while I can report that no fluids were expelled during the viewing of said dream show (the first half of which left me a little cold, frankly), La LuPone did cause me the most extraordinary moment of full-body, goose-bumpy, hair-on-end electricity during her showstopper number. Cue a five minute standing ovation, before the show was even over. She was amazing. And she knows it, judging by the series of bows with which she received her final applause. These were a performance in themselves - all extended ballet arms, flick of the head, followed by the kind of very, very deep kneeling bow probably not seen since Maria Callas. Fabulous.

Oh, and I keep forgetting to report on my really quite paltry celebrity sightings so far: actor Ryan Gosling, looking faux-troubled by a group of squealing teenaged girls on the street; the very familiar, funny-looking character actor who Clare and I spotted in a restaurant in the Village ("Yeah, that guy! What was he in??" we both attempted); one of the members of Blonde Redhead, one of my current favourite bands, walking a fey little dog here in Williamsburg; and a Baldwin, but saying "the pudgy, unattractive one" won't really narrow it down, will it? Let's hope for someone more stellar during the home-stretch, something to compete with Clare's way cool "I'm standing 30 centimetres from Bjork in a sake bar" text message. Maybe Madonna, in the bathroom at The Cock, if I were an authentic gay man.