New York Wednesday

June 5, 2013

19th floor of the Paramount Hotel, the transformation of which has been little less than miraculous. The rooms are about the same- cramped, but with the visual elegance of a starship– but the lobby is a polished dark underworld, achingly elegant and enticingly forbidding. My window looks south on many theaters. Wandered a bit after the perfect flight, drawn as water downhill to O’Brien’s Bar on 45th (whose clientele was, in fact, almost exclusively Irish), had a good pinot noir, but over-spicy food, after which I was sick and barely made it back to the room to thrown up, whereafter I napped in several kinds of exhaustion until it was time to go to the theater.

Tuesday in New York was cool, stainless, the best welcome imaginable. The bartender at the Asheville airport gave me free iced tea. The desk clerk at the hotel told me that in-room WiFi would be $13 a day, then winked and gave me a code to get it free.

Loyalty to Gayest led me to Gross Indecency, a play about the trials of Oscar Wilde, which I had seen in Dublin years ago, done “straight,” whereas this production featured nine leggy gay boys in street clothes. It was choreographed, frenetic, impressionistic, very exciting, and of all the shows I could have chosen, I’m glad I chose it. The best theater is not shown on the firesigns on Times Square. That this is not fully known must be, I believe, a matter of public relations. Met Jack and Bruce in the lobby. They made much of me and bought me a water. I made much of them and assured them they were going to win another Tony on Sunday. Bruce is the harder of the two to read. He told me about the glorious costumes for Lincoln, and assured me how pleased I was going to be with everything. He said of me, “He’s wonderful. He never asks for anything.” The tone led me to believe I had asked for something outrageous–which I don’t remember– or that maybe I SHOULD ask for something. My lack of temperament baffles theater people. He said “We’re going to have a big party Friday night at the opening.” Then he fingered by ratty denim jacket and said, “Wear something nice.” Met the playwright David Ray, who moved from LA to NYC, and is miserable, except that his theater career has picked up. I thought we were contemporaries, but he spoke of being admitted (maybe) to the Julliard playwriting program.

Drinks at the Playwrights, and then at the Rum House, where I was so smashed that having no more hangover than I do is miraculous. Dawn now, the sounds of the waking city very different from the sounds of my garden.