How Diana Ross changed my life

From the Courting archives. It’s the last real week of summer; I’m not motivated. Hope to be tomorrow. Like this story.
Diana Ross stands on the driver’s side of her limo with her mouth frozen in a huge smile, and her right arm soldered into what could be construed as a wave. Her office is down the street from my mini-loft, and I see her most nights on my way home from work. I can never decide whether this is her way of recognizing me.

Perhaps she is standing giving a mass greeting, or she suffers from some syndrome that freezes her body. I ponder this each time I see her for the thirty seconds it takes me to walk to my building. But I would have heard as I’m tuned into New York and/or music gossip. I hate Diana Ross. Her friend, Ed Koch, the otherwise occasionally fabulous mayor has let her put “no parking” signs on either side of her building. 63rd Street, between Madison and Fifth, is a deceptively quiet street where nothing ever seems to happen. It’s a great place to live partially because people who insist on driving everywhere could always find parking, and can’t bitch about the hour wait. Secretly, they love the hunt. I’m a big proponent of banning private cars from Manhattan, but enjoy having company more. Diana Ross is ruining my secret parking street as she almost ruined my birthday when she insisted on having that infamous concert in the park during a thunderstorm when young boys ran to Tavern on the Green to overturn tables, and frighten people. A new term will enter the lexicon that night wilding.The boys wanted to take me to a club on the East Side that features Maria Monteyo, a singer in drag, who looks almost as good in gowns as I do. Actually she looks better as she knows how to walk in stillettoes. She has tried to teach me but I’m hopeless. We’ve agreed to go to the club the next night so that the boys can come to my surprise birthday party. It’s going to be at my girlfriend, Lucia’s apartment, and I’ve planned almost every detail as one of my talents is planning parties. If only I had planned to get to the Upper West Side earlier, but how was I supposed to know that people wouldn’t be allowed to go from one side of the park to the other. Both Central Park South and Central Park North are cordoned off to traffic for too long. My boyfriend has to work late, but IÂ’ve seen pictures of the ring heÂ’s going to give me. It’s immense. I can’t get to the West Side until sometime in the wee morning hours. Everybody’s blitzed; I’m shown Polaroid’s of my birthday cake so I can see what I missed; my boyfriend’s making out with some unknown girl who he will impregnate that night and marry. He won’t give her that ring. He will call me every night for months and beg me to take him back.“It wasnÂ’t anything. She was there and you were not. “Should have thought about it then. I’m nothing if not principled. Later I will realize that he was a good boyfriend who actually had money, values (though not that night) and loved me. I hold Diana Ross personally responsible for all that happened that night. Too bad she wouldnÂ’t give a damn if she had learned about it. I spend a long time lamenting not accepting the boys invitation. It was the last year that they were all alive; and the last year before people begin joining “A” groups enmasse.

New York will lose some of its glimmer; stars literally will burn a little less brightly, and for the first time I won’t blame myself for everything that will go wrong. No, it’s all Diana Ross’s fault.