New York 4

April 20, 2010

Yesterday morning was spent down in the Village, as TB had conceived the idea of going to Tisch for playwriting, and wanted to scope out the facilities. Tisch didn’t look like college too me– too vertical, too crowded, guards at the doors, and where are the cows?– but it was clearly a hotbed of activity, intellectual exchange, and premature ambition. We think TB might have an interview this afternoon. Phoned Mickey from the same Starbucks I had phoned her from after the opening night of Edward the King.

TB’s confidence is stirring. He looks at New York as a city pitiably unaware that it is about to be conquered. Let’s hope it all turns out exactly as he foresees,

Made myself physically sick in anticipation of Leslie’s opening–though, in fact, nothing whatever depended on me, so where all that anxiety came from I don’t know. I’d invested in the show, though the money was already in the “loss” column until it comes back into the “gain,” so it couldn’t have been that. I think I couldn’t imagine what the crowd was going to be like, and was afraid I wouldn’t know how to behave. All was well, finally. There were pink arches and a crowd at the entrance of the little theater on 46th, and celebrities that I didn’t know but the reporters did. The guy who wrote In the Heights wore a jacket covered in flowers and was interviewed all the time. He looked like he had sent a statue of himself, all polished marble and artful blending of skin tones. TB recognized someone from Sex and the City. Jack and Bruce had time in the midst of it all to recognize me, and told me “The next time, this is all yours. But bigger.” I had absolutely no context for that, but took it as exciting news nevertheless. Jack said the problem now is finding a star for Lincoln. I mentioned the handsome bartender I’d met at the hotel, but that’s not what he meant. He meant someone that the cameras would flock around as they were doing the hombre in the flowered jacket. Leslie Jordan’s My Trip Down the Pink Carpet turned out to be spectacular. I’d read the script, but it was all in the delivery, and the delivery was funny, humane, knowing, professional, nuanced just enough, brutal just enough. I laughed. I cried. I thought, “Jesus, I’m in on the real thing.” I was not only relieved; I was proud.

We hiked to the reception afterwards, in the penthouse of the Trump Tower at 1 Central Park West. Elegant, but too damn crowded. Did some networking, among people who were unexpectedly kind and approachable or else such obvious assholes you didn’t care. If you could have got near the windows, you would have seen the city laid out below in a sea of twinkling fire, the dark of Central Park a rumpled velvet.

Released from anxiety into hunger, we bought food from a sinister Arab at the end of 40th Street. He was like a swarthy character in Thomas Mann who signals doom in the midst of festival, and we arrived back at the room, perhaps fortunately, subdued. Visited Eric the bartender for the last time, as he has taken a job near NYU where he works till 4 AM but can wear shorts and a T-shirt. If everyone fell in love as quickly as I do. . . well, I don’t even know how to end that sentence.