My Man Crush

I’ve got a “man crush”, well it’s really more of a “man/boy crush” but I’m proud of it. The only real problem I can see is the man/boy I have the crush on lives in New York, oh and one other small detail, he’s a little younger than me. I’m guessing he was born on or around the year 1988 – in that year Australia was celebrating its 200th birthday and I was celebrating my 31st. You see my dilemma – geographical distance and that other kind of distance.

Let me tell you how it all began.

About a year ago I became a huge fan of [title of show], the little show that could and did make it to Broadway. The way they did it was to set up a web site dedicated to raising awareness and creating a buzz for the show. They filmed “webisodes” for YouTube and used their friends who just happened to be Broadway celebs to help promote their push to get the show on to The Great White Way. All the usual suspects where there, “Broadway” Cheyenne Jackson, Bebe Neuwirth, Michael Arden, Nathan Lane – are you getting the idea. One of the NYC celebs they used was a fresh faced young chap by the name of Jeffery Self, cute as a button and funny to boot.

A couple of months later another friend in London, who was appearing in The Sound of Music, sent me a YouTube link for the “VGL (very good looking) Gay Boys”, starring the very same Jeffery Self and his perky but cheeky offsider Cole Escola. These boys have about twenty or so clips listed and between the two of them they manage to send up Broadway, the recession, flies, post coital chat and Bernadette Peters to name just a few. Their humour is gentle and not nasty and they have the good sense to send themselves up at the same time. There is nothing malicious or mean in their performance. They’re just funny.

I was trapped, I couldn’t stop watching and I became an addict demanding more and more from each clip that I saw. Never once have they let me down.

But getting back to my “man/boy crush” – those who know me would be forgiven for assuming that Jeffery would be the object of my rather scary cyber stalkering, (there you go a new word), but au contraire, it’s the delightful, discerning and I think slightly demented Cole Escola. The boy is a genius. There’s nothing he will not do for a laugh, not a wig or an accent that he will not wear out, no piece of scenery he will not chew to get that gag.

So yes I have unrequited “man/boy crush” on a performance artist who lives over 30 hours away by Qantas Airbus380.

And you thought you spent too much time in front of the laptop.