AKA William

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Natalie and Jonnah came over early the next day. We cut another couple of songs (and added one) and moved the order around a bit. Reality dawned. The seemingly wide stretch of time between Friday morning and Monday night’s first performance would be mostly eaten up by Legally Blonde. Changed a couple of keys, finessed a couple of endings, zhuzhed a couple of transitions. Worked on the banter. That was particularly satisfying — patter is the most challenging aspect of cabaret. Friday, it felt like four years of collaboration between me and Natalie paid off.

I drove Jonnah back to Los Feliz, which was slightly traumatizing, being my first time behind the wheel in a while. Driving my dad’s car gave me driving-dad’s-car anxiety. There was like no traffic on Santa Monica and no speed felt right. I was going 39 when I crossed Cole Street so I took that as a sign that I was okay. Shout-out to Cole, “Heyyyy…”

Lucy and I went with our lesbian aunts to see Liza at the Hollywood Bowl, stopping on the way to pick up bento boxes from Susan Feniger’s Street. It was Liza’s At The Palace minus the back-up boys.

Grateful it wasn’t some LA Philharmonic pops concert with scores from the Harry Potter movies and the Gypsy overture. Liza was unsurprisingly scatterbrained, but she really locked into some numbers. I love the Hollywood Bowl! Worked there as an usher the summer before college.

Lucy came home with me to my parents’ house. We argued about sitting inside and had a short version of our usual catch-up. The next morning we took Sammy for a hike on Fryman Canyon. All the fit Los Angelenos made me think of all the LA publicists I dated (uh-huh) and their cute bodies and cute clothes and cars and houses (where I broke stuff) and of the life I can imagine with one of them as my cute LA boyfriend. I lit up a cigarette. Lucy thought I was nuts, but Sammy was exhausted from hiking in all that fur on the hottest day of the year. I got to have my moment.

We got back to the house and I jumped in the pool. Kind of a shock to the system, the cold and the water up my nose, but refreshing enough to repeat a few times that afternoon. Lucy agreed to hang with me outside, if under an umbrella. Smoking downwind and baking in the sun, I was in the cancer seat!