Woke up a little tired on Friday morning, after sleeping on my host's sofa-bed. I really like the guy I'm staying with. He's around fifty, Jewish, and looks somewhat like a younger, less neurotic version of Woody Allen. He's very cheerful and easy to get along with, and it was enjoyable to have coffee with him while I figured out what I was going to do with my day.

I decided to start the day off at the gym, where, just like the day before, it was very quiet. As I did seated rows, the one cute guy in the gym (I'd noticed him earlier) sat in front of me to do lat pull-downs, and our eyes met, and we smiled and nodded at each other. One set later each, we were chatting, and his somewhat severe, focused face resolved into a charming smile and sparkling eyes. He was Venezuelan, and had lived in San Francisco for much of the time I've been there. He even used to be a waiter at Posole, a Mexican restaurant in the Castro which was noted for only hiring gorgeous waiters. We exchanged phone numbers and arranged to meet in the late evening for a drink.

Afterwards, I made another fruitless trip to Lower Manhattan to try to get half-price tickets for "The Play What I Wrote". It was very cold down there again, and I realized I couldn't go much longer without breaking open my wallet and buying something to keep me warm. As for the theater, I decided I'd have to spend money there too since I really wanted to see this play, so I returned to the apartment and phoned in to buy a full-price ticket.

That taken care of, I took off to meet an acquaintance for lunch, a trip to Macy's where I bought a sweat-shirt, and an afternoon movie. It was raining again. And all of a sudden it was early evening, and time to get ready for the theater. It was still raining when I came out of the subway in Times Square, but the atmosphere was electric in the late dusk, with car and neon lights shining off the damp, grey roads, and Fleet-Week sailors from all nations mingling with the mobs of tourists.

Although I was in the very last row of the topmost balcony, I could pretty much see and hear everything in the show. To understand why I wanted so badly to see this show, you'd have to have lived in England during the 70s. At that time, the TV comic duo Morecambe and Wise was in its heyday. The highlight of Christmas Day was often their annual special. Their style of comedy, which they'd honed through years of stage performances around England, depended on buffoonery, pratfalls, stunningly obvious jokes (example: "I have a long felt want." Response: " You can get arrested for saying that."), and a great deal of affection for each other. They were institutions in England, and I always had a particular soft spot for Eric Morecambe, with his thick black glasses, because my Dad had a similar sense of humor, and even did some of the same silly tricks (which is where I got my corny sense of humor).

"The Play What I Wrote" never mentions Morecambe and Wise by name, but the show followed the same format, with a mixture of silly sketches, bedroom scenes (only in 70s England could a male comedy duo share a bed without any innuendo - just two unmarried guys living with each other), a mystery "special guest" and a finale performance of one of the duo's awful plays. This show was hugely successful in London, and I never thought it would transfer over to Broadway, where nobody has heard of Morecambe and Wise. But here it was, and I was in the audience. It had even gotten a good review in the New York Times

So I was a little dissapppointed with the first act. Without the affection I had for Eric and Ernie (as Morecambe and Wise are fondly known), their tomfoolery just didn't seem to work very well for me. The second half was much better, though, especially when Alan Alda made his entrance as the mystery guest. Just like used to happen in Morecambe and Wise, they kept calling him by the wrong name (for example, the great Sir Alan Alda), they would insult him, and force him to wear silly costumes, do silly dances, and voice the horrendous dialog of the play within a show. The show ended with the Eric and Ernie stand-ins (who are well-known as a comic duo in their own right, in England), performing "Bring Me Sunshine", the song with which Eric and Ernie used to wind down their act. It finally brought back to me some of the fondness for their memories.

After the show, I darted over to the Marriot Marquis to use the bathroom, and hang out for a while, talking to my friend Brett back in Berkeley, sharing with him some of the excitement I felt over my trip. Then it was back into the subway to head up to 62nd and 9th Ave to meet the guy I'd met in the gym. We'd arranged to meet at a bar called Therapy, which he thought was around 62nd and 9th. My first problem was when I got on the wrong subway. All of a sudden I was in Queens! So I had to hop on the return line. I made things even worse when, upon arriving back at 50th street, I saw the D line across the platform, which goes uptown. Unfortunately, it also goes downtown, so I ended up back where I'd started over half an hour earlier, in Times Square. Finally, in the heaviest rain since I'd arrived in New York, I was on 62nd and .... Problem. There is no 9th Avenue at 62nd Street. I called directory enquiries, who had no listing for Therapy, and I kept getting the voice mail of the guy I was supposed to be meeting (I was now over half an hour late for our rendezvous).

I was on 59th and Amsterdam by now, sheltering from the rain just inside a deserted deli, when the phone finally rang. But it was my friend Josh from Washington, not my new acquaintance from the gym, about whom I was now wondering if he'd deliberately led me on some kind of perverse wild goose chase. Finally, the guy called me, asking me where the hell I was. He was at the bar, at FIFTY-SECOND, and 9th. By the time I finally got there, somewhat wet, angry and bedraggled, I was sorely in need of a drink. The bar/lounge was a beautiful, large bi-level, expensively styled place, lined with New York's finest gay men - at least all of those who hadn't made the mistake of going to Long Island for the first (and probably coldest) holiday weekend of the Summer.

We found ourselves a comfy sofa to lounge on, and chatted somewhat drunkenly in each other's ears, watching the other guys around us. It was a great place to hang out - we don't have anything remotely like that in San Francisco. It will be no big surprise that the evening concluded with us taking a cab up to my friend's apartment in Harlem. He told me that he lived up there for peace and quite, and because it was much more affordable. Well, I can agree that it's affordable, but I spent a rather disturbed night trying to block out the sounds of cats fighting in the alleys below.

In the morning, we took the subway together back down to Chelsea, where he works on Saturdays. Oh, I'd forgotten to mention that it had suddenly struck me that I'd actually known this guy in San Francisco. I finally remembered that I used to have a crush on him when he worked at Posole, and he used to flirt with me. Back then I was far too self-conscious and shy to think that he could truly have been interested in me. I probably thought that the only reason he flirted with me was because he wanted good tips. But it turns out that he had remembered me too, and more quickly than I had; in fact he'd realized as soon as he saw me in the gym.

On the subway downtown, we continued joshing with each other. He has a playful, sarcastic way about him, but sometimes I find that rubs me the wrong way. I start to feel prickly, as if I'm being picked upon, and criticized, and it started to make me feel a little depressed. I ended up telling him so, though not in those precise words, so we parted a little bit confused about each other. I'd enjoyed the night, and liked and respected many things about him, but I doubt very much that we could ever have gone very far in an intimate relationship had we met when we were both in San Francisco.

I got back home to Chelsea around ten this morning, took a shower, and ventured out again to get some brunch at a real old-fashioned New York diner in westernmost Chelsea, where they served real, full-sized sausages - not the pale, wiggly things you get in most diners. And here I am again, at home, finally running out of energy. Tonight, assuming I can take a good catch-up nap this afternoon, is my big night out on the town, at the Roxie. Then tomorrow it's back home again.