I'm writing as the survivor of a brutal workweek, and an even more brutal nightlife. When I came out of the Roxy this morning I was shocked to see it was daylight. I don't know anywhere else that time gets so compressed than in a nightclub.

On Tuesday night, my first night in the city, I got to bed around two, and deliberately failed to set my alarm clock. As a result, I slept blissfully until 9.30, then scrambled to get to work. From then forward, began the brutalities, working until midnight on consecutive days (except for a couple of long exercise breaks). There's a huge team on this project; not only our own people, but people who ostensibly work for the customer. In practice, we're all one big team, answerable to out true customer, the high-powered executives sponsoring this project. The technical challenge we've faced on this project has been immense, but we've pushed through and built a system which works; so many seemingly impossible obstacles overcome. But at the eleventh hour, it's beginning to seem as if it will be our teammates on the customer's side who may let the side down. They're being lashed and harried by a powerful British executive, and it seems that some of them are working eighteen hour days on a regular basis, and their morale is near the breaking point. I think an explosion is on the horizon. So I'm just plodding along, doing my part, trying to keep my tin helmet on.

As I remembered from my life in Philadelphia, Spring barely seems to exist on the East Coast. It goes almost straight from being cold to being hot and humid. I dn't mind it too much, since it's a pleasant improvement on the cold of my earlier trips this year. And it meant I could take up running outside again in New York. I suppose most people by now have heard of Brood X, the monstrous cicadas that crawl out of the earth in their billions every seventeen years, emitting a whirring shriek that stuns the sparrows. I remember now my second Summer in Philadelphia - the hot and humid walks along Philadelphia's weed-cracked sidewalks accompanied by the steady din of cicadas. I'm a big baby when it comes to insects, even harmless insects like cicadas. So I decided against running in Central Park for my first run (I had some pretty horrific visions in my mind of crunching hundreds of whopping big cicadas under foot), and ran my other route down the Hudson. But I didn't hear a single cicada on that run, and apparently they haven't come out of the earth yet in New York City. So on Friday, I had my first run in Central Park in six months, and it was perfect.

On Saturday, after working out with my New York trainer Wendy, I decided to do something I haven't done for a long, long time, just take a long walk through New York by myself. It used to be my principal New York occupation when I used to visit New York in the 80s. But I've gotten out of the habit of aimless wandering; I'm always pressing myself to get things done instead, whether it's writing, book-shopping, or culture imbibing. So I set off walking downtown after an all-you-can-eat brunch at the Marriott, and sauntered first down Broadway, then over to Sixth Avenue. I have a definite love-hate relationship with New York. I hate the noise, the constant business, the squalor, the rudeness. But those are all the flip side of the coin of what makes New York so compelling, the shear toil and squirm of humanity on the streets. In just the first few blocks down Broadway I came across a street preacher, Hari Krishnas, a Peruvian pipe band, a tall man with long blonde hair being photographed in nothing but his underpants and a guitar, throngs of people of every nationality, doddering old ladies who looked fresh from the grave, and sidewalk vendors selling rip-off handbags and "designer" watches.

As you head South, you pass through different neighborhoods. Soon after you leave the glitz of Times Square, Broadway becomes rather shoddy - cheap fashion outlets, and fast food restaurants. Briefly, things improve as you pass Macys in Herald Square, then it's more, many more sidewalk vendors until you reach Chelsea, where the streets are suddenly tidy again, lined with newly built residential towers. Then the entire character changes as you pass through NYU, with its quaint, gentrified, tree-lined side streets, and some more hustle and bustle of college-age fashion and record stores.

My walk ended in Soho, which has become a sort of high-end Fisherman's Wharf without the fish. By the end of the long walk, I was beginning to feel a bit frayed by it all. I was soaking with sweat, and craved the retreat into a Starbucks for coffee and air-conditioning. But first I had to find Phoenix's workplace, where we were supposed to meet up. I called him from the street, and it was torture trying to understand his directions, in the heat, while taxis honked through a crush of traffic heading for the tunnel. But soon I found his office, and we retired in comfort to Starbucks.

Phoenix trying to look as if he's unaware of the camera

I ended up walking up and down the less than glorious section of Seventh Avenue from Times Square to Macys about five times yesterday. Once during my long walk, then four times in the evening as I tried to find Chris, and two of his friends for dinner. I don't know who had the idea of meeting on the corner outside the world's biggest department store, but Chris and his friends weren't there when I arrived, fifteen minutes late. A message on my cell phone informed me they were in a restaurant on 7th between 39th and 40th, so I went back uptown, just a few blocks from where I'd started out. No sign of the restaurant. I called Chris and, oh no, he'd said between 29th and 30th. So back downtown I went again, in the humid evening. When I finally reached them, they were just finishing up, and I had no more than ten minutes with them before they had to leave for the movies ("Troy", which I had no desire to see again, Brad Pitt's torso not withstanding).

I had to do a couple of hours of emergency work back at the hotel, dealing with yet another crisis. There then came the issue of whether or not to go to the Roxy. Neither Chris nor Phoenix were up for it, so what to do, considering I hate going out by myself. I decided to go on gay.com to see if I could meet someone who wanted to go to the Roxy with me. I met this 21 year old, visiting New York from Miami for the first time, staying in a swanky boutique hotel in Hells Kitchen. We agreed to meet at his hotel room at midnight, and then go for a drink in the hotel bar. Not really knowing what to expect, I showed up on the stroke of midnight to find a cute, young guy with a shaved head and model looks wearing an expensive tailored, brightly colored shirt and sunglasses (this in his hotel room at midnight). It took him a further twenty minutes to get ready, throwing on a variety of outfits before he finally emerged wearing exactly what he'd been wearing when I arrived. I, meanwhile, was in my usual Diesel jeans and white t-shirt, so we were a study in contrasts of age, height, and garb.

The bar in the hotel was a mad house, as anxiously dressed straight people jigged to overloud music while trying to get laid. We didn't last long there, and took off for the Roxy in a cab, arriving at about 1.00. Before long we were dancing, and touching each other playfully, just enjoying being young and free. The night passed in a bit of a motion blur, whether I was dancing with my Miami friend, or flirting with a gorgeous black guy I met last year, dancing arm-in-arm with a hot Air Force Reservist Major and his hunky boyfriend, making cute throw-away remarks to every goodlooking guy who looked in my direction, or pushing through the crowd on the "grope" balcony at the back, which I'd never visited before. There's a lot more than groping going on there in the wee hours of the morning.

I got home at six, and really couldn't fall asleep to save my life. So I got up around eleven, read the Times in Starbucks, and now I'm hear, in the massive lobby of my hotel, waiting for my room to be cleaned so I can go take a long nap. New York - the city where I never sleep.