Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

For an entire week, I have been isolated within my own space-time continuum. I have been entombed in static electricity and paper-flavored apathy.  The flu struck me down. It attacked just like a short chick in a black & white striped shirt at a punk show:  Out of the corner of your eye, you see her jump off the side of the stage near where you are, way outside the moshpit.  You think she's skinny and harmless until she shoves like a bullet through the crowd and clips you at a weird angle. Suddenly you're wobbling off balance wondering how the fuck that just happened.  When you're sick, day and night coalesce. At some point, I dreamed I lost my coat somewhere and was walking around in short sleeves. I wasn't super upset because I didn't really like this coat anyway. But I had no idea where I'd left the coat, and that bothered me. I had things to do, but I kept considering retracing my steps to find the coat. It was somewhere in midtown near the park. A...

Last Thursday, we swanned about the Diamond Horseshoe, a grand ballroom beneath the Paramount Hotel. We wore our most courtly attire and took our repast with the Queen. The  Queen of the Night .  The whole affair was  hotly smarmy,  faintly slimy, yet oddly charming. Half the time I had no idea what was going on.  I could imagine the show designer standing back and with lavish windmilling arms describe his vision. He would say, "This black and white umbrella balanced on a sexy man's nose surrounded by writhing trapeze artists and mud-covered jugglers ... it represents lightness and darkness. It also represents the delicate balance of life and its evanescence. It also represents a penis." Bubby Recalls the Diamond Horseshoe My Bubby was also at the Diamond Horseshoe. Except she was there in 1944. "It is not the Diamond Horseshoe Club. It is just the Diamond Horseshoe. Your grandfathah was not with me when I went there. He ...