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I do love New York.

Of course, in recent weeks the motherfucking blizzard of 2003 hit us when we were down -- chicken scratching our wills, frantically buying gas masks and other items that looked like maybe they were some sort of bioterrorism protectors and taping up our cats and dogs with sheets of plastic and duct tape -- and I was seriously about to kill someone. Anyone, really, who so much as looked at me the wrong way or cut me off on the sidewalk with their stroller or deigned to speak to me when I was busy hating everyone and everything.

I don't know where else besides this ridiculous city I would actually live. When it comes to the state of my geographical location I feel the same way I sometimes feel about men. I want to take parts of, say, California, Colorado and Portland, Oregon and mix them up with New York in a huge beaker, maybe with that Bunsen Burner thingy and some chemicals and safety goggles and make one perfectly imperfect Weird Science city in which I could settle down. So to speak.

Now, the mother is always asking me to visit Florida and I never do. It's where she lives and I hate it there. I don't hate it because she lives there. I hate it because it's gross. (Okay, fine. There are mother-issues too but let's pretend that's totally irrelevant for the purposes of both reader and writer getting through this post.) She even tries to bribe me sometimes if she knows I'm dating, fucking, or even remotely interested in someone by saying, "Oh! Does he want to come to Florida?" But since I don't have a sugar daddy or just a willing boy with a fat wallet to whisk me away to Costa Rica, or the scientific know-how to make My Perfectly Imperfect City-Town, this time around I could no longer sit on my shivering lazy ass complaining and crying into my cup of chammomile tea. Even the tea was unsympatheic. Sunshine, 86 degree weather and a round-trip ticket paid for by the mom were calling my name.

A mere four hours after being frisked by security at Kennedy airport, my mom greeted me at the baggage claim in an atmosphere so different I felt like I'd been supertransported to some other side of the world. She was in sandals and a little sweater. I was in black high-heeled boots, denim floods and a cowl-neck sweater, carrying my winter jacket in a big puffy lump under my armpit. When we stepped through the automatic doors to the outside, the sweet air was my welcoming committee. Heat? Palm trees? My eyes literally began to water. New York was fucking miserable. I threw my luggage in the trunk of the car and tore shit up looking for my flip flops. I freed my shriveled up toes and tossed my boots, my scarf, my sweater and my jacket into the back. I gave my winter clothes the finger and slammed the trunk shut. "See you in a week, you stupid bitches!"

We went to dinner where we sat outside under the palm trees and I watched young surfer boys run toward the SUVs and the Passats pulling up for valet parking. All the cars are really shiny in Florida. The pool boys must get paid extra to hose them down daily. Everyone was dressed to the nines. The girls were straight out of catalogs with their hip-hugger jeans, evening halters and clickety-clackety strappy high heels. Everyone was blonde, every lip was botoxed and not a rack was real. I saw a woman who looked just like Christina Aguilera except she was like, 96.

To me, my mom's life in Florida looks like a sort of gaudy permanent gay vacation. She has a gay husband. They have a heated enclosed pool in the backyard, a home office, a red miata convertible, one wall in the back hallway covered with framed photos of the two of them smoking it up in Amsterdam, and Liz Taylor's image handpainted on their breakfast nook chairs. They have a male cat who bites the tails off of intruding lizards and then passes out on the dining room table and a female cat who sucks her own tit and purrs.

My first full day in FLA, I was awakened by the sun streaming through the shutters in the guest room. A room in which, the night before, when I went in to the nightstand drawer searching for a pen to jot down my thoughts before bedtime, I found a traveler's guide to South Florida, a box of tissues and some KY jelly.

We had coffee and bagels poolside in the morning and Gay Husband read the weather report from the Sun-Sentinel aloud. It was 26 degrees in New York. Ha Ha.

Cruising around South Beach that afternoon, my mom's fabulous friend Russ (Hi Russ!) said he'd never been able to tell the breeder boys from the queens until he'd walked up and down the strip behind me, observing which male heads did double-takes and which ones were checking out my homegrown pedicure. For once, I didn't notice anyone looking at me at all. I was busy trying to soak up every possible sun ray to tan out the dark circles under my eyes borne out of cold and sleepless nights in Metropolis.

We sat down and ordered cocktails and got our midday buzz on to the sounds of Thelma Houston and Gloria Gaynor filtering out of the cafe. We people-watched (I was loving the Kenny Rogers look-alike who decided to plant himself in his lawn chair in front of the Calvin Klein billboard) and shopped for mangos and, of course, shoes. They only sell special shoes for special ladies in SoBe, I discovered. In New York, unless of course you're shopping on Fifth Avenue (as if), you'd never see shoes like this that aren't marketed for drag queens. I had to try on every single one.

Russ, who'd purchased some supercute coffee colored kicks while I was prancing around the shoestore in a pair of twelve inch vinyl-covered leopard print thigh-highs, and the mom and I hustled our way in to the famous Phillip (Phillipe? Phillippe?) Starck-designed-Ian Schrager-owned Delano Hotel like we owned the place, or could afford a room there. We lounged by the pool until after the sun went down sipping Pina Coladas, gossiping, and flipping through the pages of Fancy Shmancy Magazine™ with pics of P. Diddy and the Hilton girls crunking out in the very spot we were slouching in. The atmosphere inspired Russ to reminisce over hanging out at Studio 54 back in the day and it moved my mom to want to share with us the best sex she'd ever had. Guess which topic we stuck to?

I went to Target because I'd never been -- not even to the one in Jersey. Mom wanted me to see the special escalators for the shopping carts. Who says there's no culture in South Florida! Okay, there is no culture. There are mostly highways and yellow and teal houses in pink stucco "developments" and every radio station has A-Ha and John Mayer in heavy rotation. We went to the movie theatre to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in Love, Liza and we were the only ones there. Even the girl at the box office had no idea what movie we were buying tickets for. She had to look it up on some movies-that-no-one-in-Florida-has-purchased-tickets-for cheat sheet to see if something called Liza something or other was even playing. Ultimately, it was better that way because my mom snored through the entire thing and I belched a lot and threw popcorn at the people who weren't sitting in back of me.

While Florida is still gross to me with its strip malls, pastels and Beautiful People, the grass is still green and the sky is still bright blue. The tension in my neck disappeared, my feet were happy being perpetually bare, my hair was loving the mild humidity and my tan was looking good to me. I'd shoved my sad belly in between the two pieces of my bathing suit and baked at the beach. I drank orange juice. I did Pilates, of which the mom is a die-hard fan. She commissioned her instructor, a cute Asian boy named Cecil to give me a private session. My stomach hadn't seen that much action since the last time I'd gotten laid. By Day Three, I was asking my mom to send my boss a sick note by fax so that I could extend my vacation. But I couldn't. There was work to be done and winter clothes to let out of the trunk.

For posterity's sake, here's a picture of me in my bikini and the lizard that the cat ate.

New York feels less oppressive having gotten out of it for a bit. Maybe I really, truly smell spring right around the corner. Or maybe I'm just in denial. Either way, I could still stand to escape for another weekend. Because another thing I got to do while I was in Florida? Pretend there's no war. And yesterday the city swarmed with shiny happy people revelling outdoors in the 63 degree weather. I spent the whole afternoon about town and spotted little girls in twirler uniforms. Also, two people in Tevas and cowboy hats. Assholes. I convinced myself to treat the savory weather like a miracle rather than be cautiously happy. Because, you know, in a couple of days we'll go to war and it will be ferociously freezing again. We'll probably have some hail and no one will come pick up the trash.

It's so not all bad to be back. A lot of places are nice to visit and there is, afterall, no place like your own home. But I'm always wondering. Where is there a place that's just like New York and has every season except for winter? Where you can see the stars at night and get paid to sit under a palm tree by day sipping your iced coffee and working on your lap top with your toes dug into the sand and then go to an East Village dive with all your friends and stick quarters in the jukebox or watch Rock Boys strike poses on stage with their long hair and low-hanging stratocasters and get a little sweet action to sum it all up and then get up the next morning and do it all again. In flip-flops. 'Cause that's where I want to be.