In New Orleans. Clouds like planes of solid atmosphere. The heat that sends you scurrying and then laying flat. An atmosphere of dazed reconciliation. My gay pride was spent here amidst sudden showers, and not knowing the gay scene at all. The feeling of being displaced, uncomfortable, was balanced by the joy of not knowing who one is when one travels. Before I left New York, I stopped in at a party where I was pleased–indeed, honored–to run into the brilliant stage and costume designer Machine Dazzle, whose decor strikes me as the most original I’ve seen in years. Dressed in his customary original manner–his dress looked like the lining one would find in an expensive coffin–Dazzle offset the other versions of maleness that have enriched me over the years, including another reveler whose chest hair was as much of an accessory as his angel wings and the rose tucked behind his ear. In New Orleans, the late Sylvester glowed like an angel as one of his old videos played in a dark, wooden, bar, the rain falling out a sun bright sky, and then there was this young boy today, who was working out in the hotel gym just now, frightened and then not, to look at his evolving gay image in the mirror.
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