March 04, 2003 | 9:59 AM

So Debbie is leaving Saturday, and I am very very sad. I had been trying not to think about it, but now I�ve been hit with the realization that she�s actually taking off, and I feel terribly bereft about it. I�ve only known her since June, and in that time we�ve had a lot of fun�dinners and drinks and karaoke and camp sing-alongs. She�s become a dear friend and I�ll miss her horribly.

Of course she�ll be back�in May for Cabaret and for her birthday. But her absence will be felt. No doubt it�s definitely the best thing for her. I am 100% supportive and happy that she�s doing this.

And truth be told, I�m jealous too. There is nothing I would like more than to shake off Boston right now, much as I love it. I want to be away away away. I want to be somewhere new. It�s so enmeshed here, so incestuous and claustrophobic. It�s almost like a very small town. I often feel like I can�t breathe, and like the discarded pieces of my history are up for grabs�like my past is constantly being auctioned off to the highest bidder and there isn�t anything that is mine, that can be held sacred. It�s all recycled like bad plot lines from lousy TV shows that have been kept on the air too long. Every part of my life winds up being soiled and demystified eventually, shrunk down to its lowest tawdry common denominator. It�s terribly depressing.

I want to leave so that for a long long time I won�t have to think about it at all. I know myself and I know that in brand new environments I can forget, and that is what I want. I want out. I want away. I want new. I don�t want to know what�s going on here. I want to leave it behind the way Kalel�s spaceship hurtles away from Krypton as the planet explodes in the foreground. That�s what I want Boston to be like for me�something that does not exist, at least for a long long time. And not because I don�t have amazing friends here or that there aren�t wonderful things about being here. But I need to be somewhere entirely new, and I have some serious healing to do that can�t be done while I am consistently reminded of the past.

But the leaving, is for logistical purposes anyway, going to have to wait. And I do after all, have Cabaret which is at this moment the one pure source of uncorrupted joy in my day to day life (well besides the beautiful small moments like icy cherry coke and walking through the rain over the Mass Ave Bridge.)

I have the next best thing to leaving permanently, though.

In ten days I�ll be heading out to NYC to be with Sean. I am so excited about this that I can scarcely contain myself. There is no one I would rather spend my birthday with. And I miss New York with an overpowering intensity. I am desperate to be there. Desperate to walk through the Village. Through Times Square. Through Central Park. Desperate for an egg cream in Brooklyn, and if I�m lucky, to see Gonzalo Sliva playing bass in the subway.

And desperate most of all for Sean. To sink into his arms when I get off the bus a week from Friday. To drink beers with him in many dive bars. To listen to his new 4-track recordings and trade snarky comments with him over shots of whiskey. To tussle his hair and read poetry and hold his hand when we�re drunk on the subway at three AM. There are some people you love so much that you physically ache to be close to them. And that�s how I feel about Sean. Being with him is the best birthday present I could possibly hope for. I�ve always known I loved him. But I never realized just how much until the last time he was here. He�s one of those friends that comes along once or twice in a lifetime, and you do everything you can to protect that relationship because having it is like winning some kind of metaphysical lottery.