The story involves two waiting games. Larry knows that he’ll have to put on a brave face when Rodgers, Hammerstein, and their entourage arrive. He’s also waiting for a woman, who, he tells Eddie, is twenty and beautiful. He is forty-seven, with a slicked-down comb-over, and all too conscious of being short and wizened. In other words, the vainly hopeful Larry is about to endure twin humiliations, leaving him feeling bumped out of his life and into the past—a has-been, instantly old. Eddie, like many, assumes that Larry is gay, but the songwriter says that he’s “omnisexual,” a conceit that’s vital to his creativity: “How can you be the chorus of the world without having the chorus of the whole world inside you?”journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter