After a stressful five-week exam period, New York was the chosen remedy. Friends thought it was mad to go to such a manic city for restoration. Their preferred option - some spa hotel in the Home Counties. But NYC so hits the spot - a heady release from London's staid routine. And anyway isn't a change as good as a rest?

I stayed with my best friend - who lives with her lesbian lover. It was so fine and harmonious and fun that it is beginning to make me wonder. Each night three of us girls hit the town - hip new restaurants and bars, loft parties and clubs - and I only occasionally felt the gooseberry, catching a sneaky embrace or caress. Otherwise no one would have guessed.

This blonde and beautiful duo were constantly hit upon. I wondered, as we all tarted ourselves up each evening and threw clothes on the floor tirelessly trying to find the perfect outfit, whether they were dressing for each other, other girls or the men out there. They sure seemed to enjoy male attention. Dressed to kill, they cruise parties - men dropping at their feet.

As the dance floor hotted up at our Saturday night venue down in Tribeca they were grabbed, twirled and pawed at constantly. Talk about guy magnets. And the shame of it all, when it comes to the crunch, they just ain't interested. It was a matter of control not to rush up to those boys and put them out of their misery - they were wasting their time. Their frat-boy male egos were so huge that they would never have believed it.

With New York fashion week in full swing, shimmering into a few fashion shows deemed totally necessary. Luckily my friend Derek whisked me into James Cavioli and Jill Stuart shows. Forget looking at the clothes, which were actually beautiful - all steeped in Victoriana with lace and velvets - but these models were barely out of nappies. Such kids - the girls looked like death, the boys fresh from the beach.

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How is it that such sexual inequality exists even on the runways? Surely these Lolitas should be fizzing with youthful sexuality and health - like ripe peaches. The boys, on the other hand, were perfect specimens - Germaine Greer's dream. I scuttled off to my favourite paradise comfort island, away from beautiful people and expensive clothes, a place where simple things of life are important; Eileen's cheesecake parlour, to indulge myself and discover the real reason for living - chocolate cheesecakes.

Arriving back in London yesterday that sinking feeling snuck up once again. Pitifully few messages on the mobile highlighted that harsh fact - no one had noticed I had gone. Four days away and not missed. I might have been dead, rotting away in my flat for all anyone cared.

I had that odd feeling - only really acquired after stepping off a plane and being single - of not really knowing where to go or exactly what to do. Stuck between jet-lagged euphoria and mundane reality, with no plans in place, I meandered home to my parents' house. Somehow flatmates and beer cans at home just didn't appeal. My parents' cosy warm kitchen, complete with fully packed fridge, seemed a nicer option.

As it was Shrove Tuesday, I decided to show my parents how my culinary skills had developed. It was good to follow my downloaded recipes for American old fashioned pancakes - whisking and flipping away - with the added bonus of having no kids around.

Things were going well - Dad even asked for more - when all of a sudden the smoke alarm blasted our domestic bliss. Within minutes, two huge fire engines - blaring and flashing - screeched outside the house, 15 strapping young lads bounding into the smoky kitchen. Hysterical giggling as my dad explained and apologised - a complete regression to teenage existence. The parents weren't pleased - it cost them a lot with police, fire brigade and locksmiths turning up on the doorstep the whole evening.

Perhaps next Shrove Tuesday I won't have to disrupt their peace - who knows, I might have a family and house of my own.

Salvation of the Week
Virgin's cheap last-minute deals to New York City.

Answer my questions and send me some of your Valentine's Day dilemmas - want you to share your own trials and tribulations in love and war with me as I do with you.

When does home become home?
Is lesbian life more harmonious than heterosexual life?
Do we ever grow up with parents around?

• Dear Xanadu, Here are my answers to your questions:
  "When does home become home?"
  The answer to that is pretty simple: When the home contains love. I grew up in a very dysfunctional, pretty poor family, mostly living with my mother in very small, one or no-bedroom apartments, with clothes old or handed down from others. Could hardly call them homes. Yet, there are times now (when I'm financially MUCH better off) when I wish I could go back. There was quirky art everywhere, from one of my mom's boyfriends. We didn't have a TV, so we played music a lot, both on an old, beat up Hawaiian guitar my mother had and on a family upright piano that usually took up most of the living space. There were days at the beach, where nobody could tell your economic status. In the years since, I've done a lot of strange moving around and lived in some strange circumstances (probably inherited it). But when there was love, it was home, and I always looked forward to coming back. Tom Waits does a song which really describes this phenomenon. It's called The House Where Nobody Lives, off 1999's Mule Variations. If I haven't answered your question, this song certainly will.
  "Is lesbian life more harmonious than heterosexual life?"
  I've been around both, and I'd have to say that they certainly can be equal, all due, of course, to the individuals involved. I don't think harmony has anything to do with sexuality - it's a spiritual quality, not a sexual one.
  "Do we ever grow up with parents around?"
  Having had interesting parents, seen interesting parents of others, and been a parent myself, I can say with total certainty that it completely depends on the parents. If the parents continue to treat a child as a child as the child grows up, then no. But if the child is treated as an individual, as a person, then the child feels he or she can come to the parents as he or she is growing up WITH the problems of grown up, or even the wins of growing up. There you go! Bruce Boyers, Glendale, California

  
  Single in the city: e-mail Xanadu here

  Xanadu is a pseudonym

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