MR. CELLOPHANE

Can I ask you a question? When did I start vanishing into the background?

Bradykins came to visit this past weekend, and, well... look, I live in this damned city. Bradykins visits irregularly and infrequently. So why, oh why, New York, have you decided to treat me like his guest?

Case in point: we went for brunch at the diner I frequent near my apartment on Saturday. I asked for a table for two and the hostess nodded politely at me... until she spotted Bradykins and squealed, "Oh, hello!" And then, adding insult to injury, the waitress brought him a glass of water twice the size of mine.

Case in point, Number 2: for the past few years, I've been stalking becoming friends with singer/songwriter Michael Holland, whose new musical (more about that later) opened on Saturday night as part of the New York Fringe Festival. My friend, got it? Mine. And yet, as we're riding in an elevator to the theater, this guy turned to Bradykins and said, "I'm bringing Michael his mail."

First of all, who are you and why should we care? But more importantly, if you are going to tell someone this important piece of news, Mr. Stranger, you should be telling the one of us who knows Michael, not his out-of-town boyfriend.

Sigh. My boyfriend is in New York maybe three days a month, and his popularity has seemingly eclipsed mine. Okay, not the highest hurdle to leap, but still...

There is a downside to being Bradykins, of course. After the show, when we joined my friend Mark for an six post-theater cocktails at O.W., a couple of old queens were convinced that Mark and I were a couple who had picked up Bradykins for extracurricular fun.

I got to call him 'Hooker' for the rest of the weekend. That was fun.