He's Not The Gay Messiah, He's Just A Very Naughty Boy!

There’s late. There’s fashionably late.
And then, it’s fair to say, there’s us two.
I’ve come hotfoot direct from theatreland.
Took my bow and jumped straight in a black cab.
Rendezvoused at Waterloo station’s platform 18.
Caught the delayed 21.36 all the way to Hampton Court.
We take our seats in the historic open-air courtyard
just in time for the closing song of a 2-hour setlist.
Cultural duties fulfilled, the locals are shuffling away in droves;
clutching pacamacs and wicker Fortnum & Mason hampers.
They can’t be waiting around for any falsely-tabbed encores.
It’s a school night afterall, and they’ve got
Poggenpohl kitchens and miniature daschunds
and Eastern European home-help to get back for.
Some might call it folly, yes, but it’s not like I’m here
to see Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright perform live for the first time.
And besides which, and more to the point, the tickets were free.
I first saw Rufus play live on the eve of my 30th birthday.
As time’s arrow ticked unbendingly towards midnight,
I stood next to Leonard Cohen’s only daughter
on the well-worn floor of The Bowery’s CBGB club,
and watched Rufus sing ‘Moon Over Miami’, in French,
with his sister Martha. I didn’t pay on that occasion either.
For Miss Milla Mouse, Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright
reminds her of that summer she spent living in New York.
The summer she spent out in Greenpoint
with the transvestite and the 2 puddycats.
She first saw Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright play live
in the basement of a lesbian-and-gay bookstore
just north of Manhattan's Meatpacking District.
Afterwards, he signed her shirt while she smoked a cigarette.
She wore that shirt every day for the next week.
Rufus's affected vocal warble has certainly grown on me over the years.
Tonight, his grand piano doesn’t look at all out of place
beneath the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis.
This, afterall, is a royal palace used to entertainers.
Like Rufus, King Henry VIII grew up surrounded by music.
So much so, that by the tender age of 10, he had
developed into an accomplished multi-instrumentalist.
Henry VIII could play the harp, the viola and the drums.
Though he didn’t write ‘Greensleeves’, as some might have you believe.

Rufus & Martha singing 'Nuits De Miami' in Amsterdam