Isn’t it funny how you can love a person or thing to the core of your being, and yet still despise it sometimes, too? Like a boyfriend. That’s just an example. I’m not mad at my boyfriend, simply because—for some inexplicable reason—I don’t have one. But I didn’t give a rat’s ass about music or writing this past week. I just wanted to spend Christmas in New York. And get laid.

I always get grumpy about my job during the holidays. Party guests corner me to inquire what the year’s best records were, and I feel violated, like they’re asking how big my penis is. If you really cared, you’d just check me out discreetly in the locker room. Or read my writing the rest of the year. But instead, hopped up on eggnog and pretzels, I’m suddenly squirming in the hot seat.

I hate compiling Top 10 lists, too. I’m always worried that I’ve overlooked some seminal release, and scandal will ensue. I’ll be laughed out of my profession, because I wanted to see my name in the Village Voice‘s Pazz & Jop Poll, even though I haven’t cracked the seal on Lauryn Hill’s album.

Please don’t think I’ve boycotted music entirely during my Manhattan holiday husband hunt. I danced around to an old Mary Jane Girls jam in my boxers the other morning (alone, and no, not for tips). A record-store clerk turned me on to this dubby German techno dude, Thomas Brinkmann. I even got the latest single by my future ex-boyfriend, UK sensation Robbie Williams.

Did I want to devote a column to any of that this week? Hell no. I wanted to write about Brendan Fraser. Because I’ve got one thing only on my mind.

I went to see Gods and Monsters. It has everything that distinguishes great cinema: sweaty Brendan Fraser in a tank top; freshly scrubbed Brendan clad only in a towel; naked Brendan emerging from a swimming pool. Full-frontal Fraser! But it was no George of the Jungle. It actually had a complex story about the nature of love between men. I left the movie feeling pensive. The only possible column topic the film had inspired was one addressing how I get too attached to straight guys in bands, and that involves more information than I’m comfortable divulging.

But as I rode the subway, fantasizing about Brendan wrestling with Ewan McGregor in a giant tub of butter, I realized that all my interactions with potential paramours this week have been pushing me back toward my first love, music. The nicest afternoon I’d spent was playing Sinatra records with an ex-boyfriend (who wouldn’t put out, even for auld lang syne). And the only thing that cheered me in a deserted homo bar one night had been hearing Chaka Khan on the jukebox.

Even when my chances of getting lucky had seemed decent, music intruded. I was chatting up a cute boy. He mentions the recent suicide of Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons. But she’s not dead. He’d confused her with the Plasmatics’ Wendy O. Williams. “Can I go home with a guy who can’t distinguish two of the most outrageous artists of the ’80s?” I wondered. This seriously concerned me. Fortunately, he solved my dilemma . . . by wandering off, midsentence, to cruise another guy.

I surrender. Even when I want to push music aside, it won’t let me. I should count my blessings. After all, records are more reliable than boys. CDs skip, but they don’t tell lies. Or borrow your razor. Or wander away in the middle of a conversation.

So I’m through with trying to wax prosaic about how humpy some Hollywood heartthrob is, or how desperate I’m getting for a goddamn date. Next week I’m publishing my Top 10 list. And then I’m crossing my fingers that this weird curse works both ways, and sitting by the phone, waiting for Brendan’s call.