I was committing a crime at Number 4 Cogedon Lane. The rush of adrenaline quickened my movements, causing a flush of nervous perspiration to collect under my Hermes silk ascot. My friend Flora kept a nervous lookout on the quiet London street. I had to work fast because my hand was stuck in the front door's mail slot. The bracelet I had just purchased in Shanghai, three rows of south sea pearls, was jammed in the opening's little metal door, and I couldn't get it out.­

    "What are you doing? Let's go!" Flora said, looking around with distraught eyes.

    "I can't get my hand out, it's stuck!" I gruffly whispered.

    I had my orange Goyard bag, with a big "M" hand-painted on its side, hanging on my other arm. I flung it to the ground. It occurred to me that if Flora ditched me, and a skeleton was discovered here months later with its arm stuck in the mail slot, the monogrammed bag would at least let the authorities identify me. As I struggled in vain, Flora continued to dart her eyes discretely up and down the lane. It was mid-day; there was no one around.

    "Then why did you put your hand in there?" she demanded.

    “I had to!" I stopped struggling to look at her to say, "We couldn't get in otherwise.”

    I'd been in an irritable mood all day because I still had jet lag. I'd only arrived from New York yesterday. But now, I was cranky and also panicky. I was amazed that Flora was able to successfully maintain such poise and nonchalance as she scanned for nosey neighbors. I took a deep breath and noisily scraped my wrist horizontally back and forth along the slot flap's metal edge, trying to not break my bracelet and have the unstrung pearls fall inside through the door and onto the living room floor.

    I wasn't afraid anyone inside would hear my clacking; the home we were trying to gain entrance to was deserted. It's just that the bracelet in question was very expensive, and I knew I wouldn't be unable to retrieve the pearls. Not to mention the fact that they would leave evidence.

    Flora continued to protest; "Marc, we're going to end up in jail."

             "I wish I'd taken yoga classes back in New York after all," I confessed to her, reminding myself that I was an optimist. Then, testing the limits of my arm's tendons with one last stretch, I reached in toward the lock from the inside with a trembling, eager pinky.

    "Besides," I said calmly to Flora, masking the excrutiating pain I was in with eyes half shut for dramatic effect, "We're too nicely dressed to be considered criminals." We then heard a loud rip as the sleeve of my newly tailored linen blazer tore loudly on the door.

    The home my arm was lodged in is a charming little Mews house. It once belonged to a town house, where servants lived and carriages, and later cars, were kept. It's a modest, rather ordinary building, actually, done in white stucco. On the first floor is a garage door to the right, and the entrance door and window to the left. I was amazed to discover that on subsequent trips to London, I had stayed around the corner from this infamous address. Personally, I felt there should be some sort of commemorative plaque on the front of the building, saying something like: “Judy Garland, American Entertainer, Died June 22nd, 1969."

    But placemarker or not, both Flora and I knew this was the place. Could a visit by two fans to the home where an artist died be considered macabre? To non-Judy fanatics, sure it might. But to us this was a holy shrine. It was like the School Book Depository and grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas where John F. Kennedy met his end, or even the Pont d'Alma road tunnel in Paris, where Princess Diana left two princes mother-less. People are drawn to these spots.

    Flora and I aren't conspiracy therorists, though. We were there to pay our respects to Judy, who we felt was the greatest entertainer of the 20th century. We were also there to snoop around. Flora had made the formal effort to reach whoever might live at the address a few weeks earlier, sending a letter explaining ourselves and asking if we could enter and have a look. There had been no response, we assumed because they probably thought we were dangerous stalkers.

    But when we'd arrived, we quietly strained our necks to peek through the windows, and were able to make out through the curtains that the home looked spacious, and possibly deserted. I'd knocked on the door repeatedly. And after much pounding, ringing, and spying while glancing over our shoulders, we determined no one was home permanently.

    Now I was trapped. The mental images of dark London jails and dank torture dungeons ran through my mind.. Would I be able to avoid sentencing if pleaded that I was simply mad about Judy Garland? Would that be considered a plea of insanity? If asked, I would tell them this stunt was the conclusion of a glorious, four-part pilgrimage that had taken Flora and me a year to complete. First there was Carnegie Hall, then the masoleum, then Judy's 85th birthday celebration—The Judy Garland Festival—held in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and now breaking and entering.

            Flora was usually such a trooper, but now she begged, "Let's leave now, please!" Just as it ocurred to me that I could send her on a search for Crisco, the lock clicked loudly. I had it! I could now turn the inside knob to the left.

            After pausing to hear if an alarm would sound (it didn't), we where in! I snatched my Goyard bag from the ground and we slipped in the door quick as liquid, with my hand oddly slipping out of the mail slot just as easily. We closed the door quietly behind us. We stood with our backs pressed against the inside of the door, gasping for breath.

    Away from imagined eyes, all was still. Our gaze lingered around the room as thoughts of consequence fluttered right out of mind.

    Judy Garland had spent her last moments on Earth in this home. Entering this place was a profound experience for obsessed devotees like us. Holding hands, we took a step forward and began to creep through the space, without uttering a word. We were both thinking of the loo upstairs, but neither of us acknowledged this. Our faces darting around as we advanced, taking in every inch. The home was neglected. The living room's carpet was a nightmare, and the walls needing a serious cleaning, or a good paint job. Even worse, the kitchen was screaming for a complete re-do.

    Here I was at my equivalent of the Hill of Calvary, and I could pay respect only in terms of complaining about interior design. We turned and began our walk up the steps, toward the bedroom. We entered and stopped just inside the bedroom door. This was the chamber that, almost four decades ago during the twilight hours of an early summer morning, Judy woke up, dazed, and walked…where? There! Our heads turned to the left. We briskly moved in unison to the door of the bathroom, creakily pushing it open. And there it was: the toilet that Judy Garland was sitting on when she left this planet.

    Breaking the reverent silence, I asked Flora if she regretted that I had not taken a photograph of her sitting on the toilet at the Judy Garland Birthplace Museum in Grand Rapids, when we'd been there a few months earlier. She didn't. Well, I certainly had no regrets, as I'd proudly had a photo snapped of myself back there on the can in Grand Rapids, in Judy's actual childhood home. And I was about to do it again.

    The tale of her death is very sad. Apparently, she had risen in the early morning and taken more sleeping medication (accidental overdose of barbiturates was the cause of death according to the coroner, not suicide—I should know, I own the death certificate). Mickey Deans, her fifth and final husband—that's how he used to refer to himself—discovered her after a phone call came for her around 7am. He called out to her upstairs, and when she didn't answer, he found the bathroom door locked. With no response, he climbed out of the bedroom window and moved to the window ledge of the bathroom, where he could look in and see her sitting there. He climbed into the bathroom and held her. A moan that he mistook for life turned out to be air caught in her throat, which was released from her lifeless body. He called the coroner, and news of her demise spread around the world as the global press descended on this quaint little address.

    Flora got the camera out and I sat down. I didn't smile, I didn't pose. One doesn't often get the feeling of the alpha and the omega while in Judy Garland's bathroom. That bathroom in that little house was the only place in the universe to me at that moment. I wasn't just a fan of Judy, I was an explorer, and at this moment I was planting my flag on the North Pole. So, sitting there, I did what came naturally. I prayed. I told Flora that we needed to do right there in that deserted bathroom what we had done twice before on our journey: say a Hail Mary. I reached up and took Flora's hand, and we recited.

    Afterwards, a tear fell from Flora’s cheek. She looked at me as I got up, wiping her eyes as she melded back to reality, saying “Marc, we really must be going, we can’t be thought of as squatters!" Dear Flora was always so thoughtful, and not the type to be frightened. But it was true. The last thing she wanted was to end up in some London booby hatch because her crazy American friend broke into a residence to be photographed sitting on a toilet.

    I offered again, telling Flora we'd break for our escape after I gave her a turn being immortalized as I just had. "I recommend the experience!" I chided. No was her answer. But, suppressing her haste, she did ask to be photographed in the bed chamber. A tasteful choice.

    She stood next to the window, pausing as if she was looking out onto the road. She couldn't help but pose. I looked through the camera's viewfinder. There was Flora, lovely, staring out to an empty lane, just as Judy had done, seeing the same things she had..

            Glancing again at the open doors of the bedroom closet, I finally looked into them. Judy's large closet was a dim, gaping cave, save for a stray coat hanger or two. It occurred to me that most of the hundreds of hats, purses, gloves, capes, coats, frocks, shoes, skirts, dresses, jackets and other sundries I'd spent countless hours pouring over on Ebay (hunting for genuine pieces that actually did belong to her) or seeing auctioned off at Christie's (and sometimes gleefully buying, many of which I personally loaned or donated to the Judy Garland Birthplace Museum), were probably pulled out of this very closet. I felt an undercurrent of something bad in my gut. Was it shame at my plundering? Was I a tomb raider? Or was it just sadness at my now crisp realization that we were ghost-hunting in vain, amongst an unrecognizably hallowed space that the rest of the world had moved on from ages ago.

            I looked back at Flora, remembering when I'd first met her a year ago, and what had brought us together. We met through a lucky star, our mutual admiration for everything Judy. I'm grateful to know someone who wants to know Judy like I do, still, and isn't ashamed of acting like a disciple from time to time. I've often realized that I never actually have to try and turn anyone on to Judy's legacy, I just have to introduce her work and life to them. For many, something automatically takes over and one becomes obsessed. You can watch any one of the DVDs and instantly see just how ridiculously quirky the early MGM movies are. But eventually you notice—surprise—that she's to be taken seriously. Whether she's playing a vaudevillian's spunky daughter, or the rough-and-tumble child catching watermelons in a worn wicker basket (in her only loan-out to another studio), or perhaps the doe-eyed Betsy Booth who is second best to the debutante of the year—she moves the viewer in unusual, often astonishing ways. There's something so genuine about her screen presence. It's a realization that comes from behind the film, and suddenly it's right there next to you. It feels very personal, and is something that is only felt occasionally.

    I never was fortunate enough to see her live. But I can only imagine, from discriptions told to me by people who had. They all claim it was something you could never forget. I remember reading in a book that Maria Callas, the most beautiful and famous soprano of her time, once said of Judy, "If you want singing, Judy Garland, that's singing." Even Lucille Ball, while being interviewed about how she was the funniest woman alive, once stated, "I have funny writers. If you want to know a funny woman, Judy Garland. She’s funny. She makes me look like a mortician."

    Judy was a real person, and it shows in her performances. But she was big enough and vulnerable enough,  to touch hearts. She reached many. To have so many people, years after her death, wanting to know more, is testament to the enormous value of her talent. Here we were traveling to, then breaking into, this home to gawk at everything with wonder. People are still trying to unravel her. She was the real thing.

            Resigning ourselves to what we were actually doing, we decided to take one last look around, and make our exit. I didn't want to leave.

    We ambled, still wide-eyed, downstairs to the front entrance. I felt unexpectedly cheered by the realization that I would have to lock the door again from the inside, while outside. I should have just left it alone, but I felt it was like preserving the premises from harm. Once we closed the door and slyly peeked around the street again, I turned and plunged my hand once again into the mail slot, twisting and fidgeted around until I found the lock’s turn key. "Hurry!" whispered Flora. I pressed half of my face against the front of the door, squishing my cheek like a jellyfish to allow my elbow a few more millimeters. Then, through the other ear, I suddenly heard Flora sputter, "I hear footsteps!" I heard them, too. 

    "Put that camera away!" I mumbled in a whisper as she fiddled with her purse.

    "Leave it Marc, just leave it! Leave it!" she begged. A good idea, however, I was stuck again. I rapidly contorted in ways I thought I never could. Then, with a loud click, I had done it yet again! The door had locked.

            I exhaled and yanked my arm out of the slot, already putting on my best "confused and lost American tourist" face to greet the police with. But I felt something quickly snag. I glanced down through the metal slot just in time to see its metal edge rip a whole section of my bracelet's precious pearls from the clasp (I really should have had them knotted) which then tumbled downwards and bounced very loudly inside the foyer, and also outside. The footsteps were growing still closer. Flora turned blue. I stood holding my arm, continuing to grin like a madman and pretending not to notice the loud sound of my Shanghai pearls bouncing all around us like popcorn. I looked at Flora's jaw-dropped face and announced, “Well, at least these pearls aren't cast before swine!" We both burst out laughing—we had no choice, really. Flora's face suddenly glowed.

            As the footsteps approached right around the corner, I looked at Flora and into my mind popped an image of her on the first day we'd met…

    Years ago, Flora greeted me in New York City with a bursting bouquet of gorgeous roses, and wearing a cotton , a formal peasant dress with open tatting work. She told me the dress was new, for the occasion—and I was honored. She had blonde hair, bright skin and bright eyes. She was pregnant! We had met for lunch in one of New York's best restaurants. We didn't really know each other at that point, despite the fact that we had technically met for the first time the night before, in the mad rush of the crowd at a Carnegie Hall concert. We talked for real this time, without the previous night's excitement to distract us.

    I told her my story. She told me hers. We were rabid fans, so there was too much to discuss. Our destined meeting came by way of a very real by-chance introduction. Months earlier, a friend had e-mailed me an article Flora had written on a blog about the purchase of Judy Garland's Dorothy dress from The Wizard of Oz, and how it had sold for over 140,000 pounds. I contacted her out of the blue to let her know how delighted I was with her comments. She wrote back, letting me know that she had been a fan, and wanted to know about my relationship with Judy Garland. I then sent her a very lengthy e-mail, really pouring my heart out, telling her about how my troubled relationship with my father had lead to my to discovering Judy.

    I was amazed by her article on the sale of the dress; she recreated, in print, the atmosphere, energy and excitement in that auction room. It was a situation I could relate to.

            Many years before I'd even met Flora I had purchased a very unique and rare Judy Garland relic at Christie's: her personal address book. I brought it to our lunch meeting, and Flora carefully fingered and thumbed her way through it with studied excitement as I related the story about how I'd acquired it. I had shown up enthusiastically at the auction preview, gazing in awe at different items like her satin shoes from the film Meet Me in St. Louis, her own collection of photographs, clippings of reviews and telegrams, as well as the Oscar from The Wizard of Oz (which was later withdrawn). Amongst those and other items, was the address book.

    I picked it up and leafed through the pages as though I was in a dream. It was estimated to go for $300-$500. I decided I was at least going to bid on it. I attended the auction that day, and sat in my seat nervously. What a scene the place was: wall-to-wall men with receding hairlines, Castro-era leather jackets, unfortunately tight jeans and age-old mustaches. I swore I caught the whiff of poppers in the air at one point. I didn't possess facial hair or cheap leather, but instead I had an exquisite pale green cashmere coat, and was holding Gomez, my precious Chihuahua.

    The bidding began, and the address book was one of the first items. It instantly accelerated past the $500 mark, and my heart sank. There was an audible groan in the room as it reached $1000 and then more as it reached $2000. I sat there, heartbroken that I wouldn't get a chance to ever own it or have it for myself. But I kept thinking how precious and important, and in good taste, this object of Judy Garland's would be to own. The bidding climbed and climbed, finally reaching $4500. The auctioneer, a woman, was getting ready to let the gavel go down when she reached the final bid of $5000. "Can I get five? Is there anyone in the room to bid five? Going once, at $4500, going twice," she said. And a hand went up. "Sold!" she yelled as the gavel went down, "Sold to the man in the green coat with Toto!"

    I received an ovation. I was glowing as I left the room, almost fainting. I was partly woozy because I hadn't a clue how in the world I was going to pay for it. As I walked out of the auction room, a man approached me and said he'd been running late, and offered me $7,500 for the book. No sale. It took a loan from my mother to pay for it, but then it was mine.

    It's small, bound in a white leather, three ring binder. When I got it, its cover and spine were in great need of repair. I remember quickly taking the book, minus the pages, to a known bookbinder. When I arrived in his shop on York Avenue, I found the proprieter to be quite snobbish. He loudly wondered why I was troubling him with an old leather address book. At one point he told me he was "busy with precious volumes of great importance." When I informed him that this was the address book of Judy Garland I'd purchased at Christie's, he paused. His demeanor changed and he looked at the artifact with care, ruminating out loud about what he would try to do to make it like new again. When I returned days later, he unwrapped the cover to show me how the spine had been completely restored. He confessed that he'd kept a small scrap of the old one, which he pressed between two pieces of a laminate and had embroidered around the edges, to create a book mark for himself.

    When I first looked through its pages, I was like a child finding a new toy, going slowly over each entry, being so excited by the different names. My favorite entry was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and Desi's name had been scratched out—obviously from the divorce. On one page you would find Betty Davis, and then Doris Day, and then Sammy Davis. It went on and on, each and every turn held another stunner.

    Flora agreed. She later told me that she felt it was almost a holy item because it encapsulated Judy's life history on those pages; her songs, the husbands, the concert halls, the celebrities...the pharmacies. I remember before I handed it to her she offered to go to the ladies room and wash her hands (I told her that one shouldn’t over-respect such things).

    Afterwards, Flora looked at me and said, "Marc, why don't you tell me about your relationship with your father, and Judy Garland." It was the first time anyone had ever asked me about that, in that way.

            I began to tell Flora about back in the day, when I was a sophmore in high school, in New Orleans. I had attended my new friend Nancy's birthday party. As I entered her family's home, I remember seeing her younger sister, Sally, carefully pressing a reel-to-reel tape recorder against the speaker of a large television set, trying desperately to record Dorothy singing "Over the Rainbow," and capture that voice coming out of the speaker as The Wizard of Oz aired. I told her I didn't think it would work, and when she rewound it and played it back we heard a scratchy, inaudible recording. I think that moment was my first encounter with a Judy fan, before I even knew I was one myself.

    Around that time, my father had been on the advisory board for the Salvation Army (my father was on several boards and committees for different charities and organizations). I loved this because when I joined him on his visits, I was able to search through the vast stores, rifling through mountains of other people’s junk. I think it sealed my future; I would be dealing with other people’s objects forever, as my profession calls for. But I've always loved antiques and second-hand stores. To this day, when I shop, I don't like going to places where items are shiny and new, or prissy and old, and some other person has picked the pieces out to display for me. This planet is too vast for that kind of thing. I like to excavate unexpected places and discover treasures myself. I love the dusty old discarded chandelier which can be cleaned up to become a grand prize. I like the mismatched hinges on a Sheridan sideboard cabinet which can be put back into order and transformed into a true gem. One day at the Salvation Army with my father, I happened to notice something perfect for my friend Nancy's little sister, Sally. It was marked 75 cents (mind you, that wasn't cheap in those days) and was called Forever Judy, a record album of MGM favorites. It included "The Trolley Song," "You Made Me Love You," "Who Stole My Heart Away," "Johnny One Note," "I'll Cry For You," "Danny Boy," and of course, "Over the Rainbow."

    I bought it quickly, not wanting to lose it. My father inevitably asked what I'd purchased. My father and I had a strange relationship, although in hindshight, it probably wasn't that unusual. As a kid I used to get the backhand remarks from him over many decisions I'd made. Never physical, but sometimes very bruising verbally. I thought I was going to get a ripe rant from him on this instance. I sheepishly showed him the album cover, expecting some caustic remark, and his face kind of lit up, with him saying, "Ahh…Judy. Dear Judy, poor Judy." Surprised, I asked him why. He explained to me that in World War II, stationed in different places, he would hear the recording of "Over the Rainbow," and it made him and the boys think of home. He fondly remembered a friend of his, a roommate in one of his stations during his service in the Air Force, who had been crazy about Judy Garland. Most people had pin-ups of Betty Grable, Heddy Lamar or Lana Turner. But this guy had a cute picture of Judy Garland and swore that one day he'd meet her. Later it was announced she had married the composer David Rose, and this young man's heart was broken (I would later learn how Judy would find out that her friend Lana Turner had married her love, Artie Shaw, and her heart was broken—I wondered if Judy realized that hearts were broken when she married David Rose). My father told me more, and I listened. It was an unusual connection between my father and me.

    I also vaguely remember my mother and father watching The Judy Garland Show on Sunday nights. I feel guilty to this day, remembering that I acted like I really wanted to change the channel and watch Bonanza. I didn't. Cowboys were the thing to be, but Judy Garland was the thing I really wanted to know. I remember, on the show, her crying at the end of her runway with the light bulbs and the wobbling vibrato and all of the emotion—it was like a kind of supreme voltage reaching out of the television set, and grabbing me by the eyes and ears. While I would sit there, pretending not to be transfixed, my father would begin talking about Judy again. He told me how it was so sad that such a talent had withered, and we discussed it. These were the first conversations that I had with my father about something outside of our lives. It wasn't something about school not being right, or older siblings complaining about the way I had treated them, or that I had been mistreated by them. It wasn't about nuns calling on the phone to talk about homework that hadn't shown up at school, or priests complaining that I had been late with my altar services. I would never have guessed it could happen, and still find it remarkable. Judy talk ended up being the familial glue between my father and me, in place of the sports talk that is for other dads and sons. It took something that excited us both in different ways, something sparkling, tragic, amazing and legendary. It took Judy!

    A week later he came home from his office and handed me an album. The cover was bright yellow and orange, with a photograph of Judy Garland, looking much older than I was familiar with, and her daughter Liza Minnelli. It was an album from the London Palladium, their performance there in '64. I was disappointed when I initially put it on because it was a different voice, more mature. But it was a voice I would become familiar with. It conveyed emotion that no other singer seemed to carry or catch. When she sang, it all came through the grooves of that vinyl and right into the room. Those were the early days of hearing that voice, the initial "learning phase" of the legend of Judy Garland. I spent all of the Christmas and birthday money given to me running down to the Doubleday book and record store on Canal Street to buy albums that had been produced during her life, and collections after her death. This was the early 70's. My collection grew quickly. Soon, I had every biography coming out written by her husbands, people who had worked with her, or just unauthorized biographers. I learned more and more.

    I had chance encounters with people who had seen or met her. I would bleed them for as much information as possible. And the more I learned about Judy, the more opinionated I became about her. I was once on a beach at Lake Ponchitrain, cutting school with a friend, and a man came along and saw that I was reading the Ann Edwards's Judy Garland biography (yes, I cut school to do that!). He sat down and told me the story of how he had seen her at the Palace, and was disappointed that she was overweight. This was her first Palace performance, in 1951.

    I told him, "Everyone can't be beautiful."

    "That's true." he said. "But you always expect a legend to be beautiful." He also had seen her in a restaurant, and she was eating and laughing "too loudly," and he expected more from her. I told him that a real person was what she was, the fact that she is a legend is where the public placed her.

    Later, I learned that a woman named Joyce who worked at the pharmacy that filled my family's prescriptions adored Judy Garland. She saw an album under my arm one day when I was there picking up a package, and glowingly reminisced to me about how she would save her money to go to Judy’s films and watch her on television many years later. I asked her if she wanted me to play Judy over the telephone for her. She thought it would be wonderful. So I would actually telephone the pharmacy, and she would get on the line, and I would leave the receiver next to a stack of albums that could drop automatically onto my turntable. I let her know that she could stay on the line as long as she wanted and and listen all she liked. Sometimes I'd pick up the phone and realize that after three or four sides of album she was still there, waiting for more. There were obviously no phone orders at this pharmacy when Judy was playing. That's the one thing about Judy's audience, they always want more. Judy was only human, sometimes she couldn't give anymore. But on vinyl, and now CDs, she certainly will.

    Flora listened intently to all of this at lunch, giving the ocassional smile or sigh. It felt great to share it all with another devotee. She instantly became one of my best friends. We decided we weren't sycophants. We didn't think Judy was a saint. But she was one of the most remarkable talents of the 20th century, the likes of which will not be seen again any time soon. As we finished eating, the talk moved to the concert we had attended the night before, which is where we'd previously decided our first meeting would take place.

    The singer Rufus Wainwright was going to re-create the famous Judy Garland concert at Carnegie Hall right around the time I'd contacted Flora about her article. I thought it was an audacious and brave thing for Mr. Wainwright to do. Flora thought it was fabulous. Even though we'd seperately obtained tickets for seats for from each other, we decided to meet in person outside the theater before the show.

    When I arrived at Carnegie Hall on the night of the event, I stepped out of a bicycle rickshaw taxi I'd hailed to ride me there, wearing a pair of ruby-red, sequin-covered pumps I'd had made for myself. The shoes were likenesses of Dorothy's from The Wizard of Oz, but I was otherwise dressed in street clothes, jeans and a blue and white gingham shirt. As I lifted my foot out of the vehicle, there was a hush in the crowd and a few pictures snapped. And there she was, smiling. I knew it was Flora, she was very pregnant. She knew I must be Marc, and we joined each other in a kiss and a hug. We began gabbing non-stop about what we were about to see, feeding off each other's excitement. I was thrilled because I would be finally be seeing the historic program that Judy had performed in this great hall, even if it was by another performer. I had been in Carnegie Hall many times, but always for classical performances. But whenever there, I would often sit in my seat, close my eyes, and imagine—based on the recording Judy at Carnegie Hall—that I could hear that roar of the audience and the magic of Judy's voice, and Mort Lindsey's fantastic arrangements, regardless of who or what was actually on the stage in front of me at the time.

    Although Judy wouldn't be there that night, many of her people would be. The androgynous free souls who love Rufus Wainwright were in attendance, and the people who love Judy Garland and wanted to see if this man could really pull it off, had arrived. The rest of the sold-out crowd? The curious—it was a highly unique event, after all. I was in the nosebleed section, but had a clear view of the stage.

    Once the show started, I became transcendent. I was transformed into the little boy in his bedroom listening to albums again. To hear the overture, that spinning violin, then the drums, and then the songs: "The Man That Got Away," "The Trolley Song," "Over the Rainbow." After repeated listens to the album of this performance, I'd personally thought it would be a wonderful to mix in modern dance, choreographed for those songs, using slick, clean and crisp modern ballet. I envisioned a dance of light gaiety, yearning and hope for "Over the Rainbow;" one of excitement, exuberance and youth for "The Trolley Song;" and then the dancer looking mystical—swathed in black tulle and soft sequins—looking rather sad as the woman in the song "Man That Got Away," swooning across the stage.

    All this ran through my head before Rufus even walked on stage. Once he began performing, I must admit I was impressed. It was very moving. Rufus gave his all, and was rewarded with frequent and loud applause. Due to the shoes, I ran out of that performance with my heels hurting like you can't imagine (or as a lady I know in the south says, 'With my dogs biting me'). I secured a cab amongst the mob scene outside, while waiting for Flora. A policeman told me the cab had to move, right away. I said, "I'm loading a pregnant lady in this cab," and he gave me a break. I put her in the taxi and off she went, with our promise that we would meet at lunch the next day.

Part two (of four parts) to Munchkin Luncheon…next Monday