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Christina Aguilera arrived wearing a strapless cocktail dress looking true, truer. I
peered over a bodyguard's shoulder and into her cleavage at the risk of entangling my
eyebrows and jacket, cut, apparently, from the same bolt of fuzzy goods. Christina is
drop-dead gorgeous, with a wonderful personality, lives in the moment, and she imparts
that same happiness one might have experienced in ancient times at the sight of some
choice goats' paunches roasting over an open fire.
 Without a man, she may be lonely. Has her art been enough to sustain her, or does she look
to her blog for gratification? The music of Christina is like the sound of an autumn gale
sweeping down the Val d'Aosta. Her artistry is, in my opinion, and despite a certain
tendency to mannerism, the closest thing to perfection.
I last saw her in Paris when we were seated round the peanuts and had ordered our
drinks -- "Deux Scotch" Christina had said to the comprehending and indifferent
waiter. Christina gave me a brief resume of her "recent whirlwind and lightning
concert tour." From Cooperstown to Harper's Ferry, with a brief side trip to
Davenport to perform with Marilyn Manson, who is evidently beginning to find favor in
Iowa -- she held nothing back. She still maintains her usual discretion in that she has
revealed to no one that I sometimes wear Wonder Woman underpants. From my observation of
her behavior in public one could only benefit by her proximity.
Youthful vigor, a bronze tan, increased stature, a powerful jaw, a head of at times clean
hair, and a boyish exuberance. As my niece, she has been a total delight, and I have never
held it against her that she identifies herself sexually as a man who is gay. Only
recently I made her a chain of paper clips to wear with her sweaters, instead of the usual
pearls, and she shyly shook it lightly so that it danced back and forth.
Christina and her entourage are glorying and unrepentant. Her hangers-on include Pearl
Hurlburt (nail concern), Cynthia Bonita (massage), Delza Arana (voice), and Alice
Bridgewater (personal trainer). They siphon off the money of the performer. When I sat
before Christina Aguilera and her four friends, one seat over from Britney Spears, and two
from Paris Hilton, my lover, I felt I was in the New York of old, with the magic of El
Morocco, the conversation of the Algonquin Round Table, with no sheepish emanations
expressed from Lindsay Lohan, sitting in front of me, on Madonna's shoulders, or Beyonce,
one seat to the right, who arrived late with Hannah Montana.
The usually scruffy living room had been transformed into a sumptuously inviting salon,
its centerpiece a kind of rose window of God knows what. We all sat there, the Queen and
I, the stars, the different ISPs, the gossip columnists, the adoring eyes, the jealous
looks, amid some leftover turkey and rosettes of pale green mayonnaise. Everything was
there where it should be. I re-entered the TV and peace reigned in the desert of art.
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