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if it’s not what she wants?”
    “I expect it will be,” said Mrs. Madrigal, “but you must be patient with her. She’s just now learning how to fly.”

Ah, Wilderness
    A T LEAST TWICE A YEAR THE SAN FRANCISCO GAY Men’s Chorus made a point of retreating to the wilds of Northern California for a weekend of intensive rehearsals and camping-around-the-campfire camaraderie.
    The “wilds” were always the same: Camp Eisenblatt, a summer camp for Jewish teenagers which leased its sylvan facilities to the one-hundred-fifty-member homosexual choir during the off-seasons. And this season was about as off as it could get.
    “What a pisser!” groaned Michael as he stared out at the driving rain. “I was gonna start on my tan line this weekend.”
    Ned laughed and clipped an olive drab jockstrap to the clothesline strung across one end of the baritones’ bunkhouse. “Cowboys don’t have tan lines,” he said.
    Since the theme of this year’s retreat was “Spring Roundup,” the western motif was in evidence everywhere. Even their name tags were affixed with swatches of cowboy bandannas: red for the first tenors, tan for the second tenors, dark blue for the baritones, dark brown for the basses and royal blue for the nonmusical “chorus widows” who had come along to make sure that their lovers didn’t have too much fun in the redwoods.
    “Just the same,” said Michael. “I liked it better last fall when we had the luau and the eighty-degree weather.”
    “And the sarongs,” added Ned. “I thought we’d never get you out of that damn thing.”
    Michael inspected his fingernails blithely. “As I recall, there was a first tenor who succeeded.”
    “Well, shift fantasies,” suggested Ned. “Pretend you’re in a real bunkhouse. You’ve just come in from a long, hot cattle drive and the rain is cooling off the livestock.”
    “Right. And my ol’ sidekick Lonesome Ned is about to dry his jockstrap with a blowdryer. Listen, pardner, I don’t know how to break this to you gently, but real bunkhouses don’t have REBECCA is A FAT SLOB written in pink nailpolish on the bathroom wall.”
    Ned smiled lazily. “Jehovah moves in mysterious ways.”
After a long morning of wrestling with Liszt’s Requiem and Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody, the chorus converged on the Camp Eisenblatt dining hall for a lunch of bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid.
    Later, Michael and Ned and a dozen of their compatriots gossiped jovially around the fireplace. There were so many different plaids in the great room that it looked like a gathering of the clans.
    “Hey,” said Ned, as he warmed his butt in front of the gas-jet embers. “I almost forgot. I got a call from______this week.”
    “No kidding,” said Michael, his voice ringing with unabashed fandom. It was almost inconceivable that someone he knew got personal phone calls from movie stars. Even if Ned had been this movie star’s lover.
    “He’s royally bummed out,” said Ned. “They canceled the musical he was gonna tour with this summer.”
    “He sings?”
    Ned shrugged. “When you look like that, no one notices.”
    “Tell him to come with us,” offered Michael, meaning the chorus’s own nine city summer tour. “God, wouldn’t that knock ’em dead in Nebraska?”
    “I think he’ll survive,” said Ned. “He still gets two million a picture.”
    Michael whistled. “Where does he spend it?”
    “On his friends mostly. And the house. Wanna see it?”
    “Uh … pardon me?”
    “He invited me down for a weekend. Said to bring a friend. How about it?”
    Michael almost yelped. “Me? Are you serious? Lordy mercy, man! Me at______ ______’s house? Is this for real?”
    Ned nodded, beaming like a father who had just offered his eight-year-old a shot at Disneyland.
They rode back to the city in Ned’s pickup, carrying six buddies and their bedrolls as cargo.
    The illusion presented was almost redneck—except for the telltale chartreuse crinolines from last night’s