Rufus Wainwright is a foppish young thing, a queeny, amped-up cabaret star with a big head perched on a skinny neck, long hands that can do great things to a piano, and a knack for twisting sad love affairs into clever, gorgeous sing-alongs. Armed with a staggering musical vocabulary that stretches from Will to Schubert, Gershwin, and beyond, a soaring nasal baritone, and a taste for sweeping melodies. Wainwright is an unlikely standout in an age of electronica and ghetto superstars.

The Poof Daddy of '98, he's a certified critic's darling, and his eponymous debut album, a delirious orgy of torch, pop, opera, and musical theater, was a beacon of possibility in an otherwise lackluster year for music. he's a beautiful and talented, the son of two folk legends, and, like many 25-year-olds, he has more ambition than you can shake a stick at. he also looks great in a dress.

"With, like, maybe some mascara and, like, a not-shaven kind of thing in a negligee and, like, army boots," he says on the phone from his native Montreal, slouched in a hotel between tour dates. Spawned by Kate mcGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, rufus was raised in showbiz. Pefectly charming and at ease on stage, he's equally rambling and yakky in an interview. "Gay men are the worst dressers. thats actually the main reason I don't like gay people and a lot of gay stuff, 'cause they don't dress well. They all look the same. The thing with the tight shirt and the jeans, the chains coming out--they look like the Backstreet Boys." Wainwright is hoping gay men will start to dress more like the Edwardians. "Oh, God," he quips. "Those hats!"

A self-described extremist and devoted classical music fan (Mahler is his current obsession), Wainwright spent his high school years in Millbrook, New York with "the drug addicts and the gay people and ...basically the freaks." His voice is deadpan, nearly affectless, but he takes some pleasure in describing his bad boy ways, recounting a long and detailed list of crummy times at gay clubs, including a Rohypnol date ("He gave me these two pills that he said were quaaludes"), empy, over-the-top nights of K-holes and vomit--and one especially memorable evening at age 17 when he overindulged at New York's gender-bend fest Jackie 60, where he collapsed and was tossed on the sidewalk by a posse of unamused drag queens. "Either i'd end up fucked-up or I'd end up with the most fucked-up people there," he says. Now "it's not as much fun as it used to be, so that's cool. I just like drinking.

But if he's dumped certain habits, Wainwright reveals no urge to curb his taste for the opiate of emotional abandon. Though leavened by self-mockery, his rococo songs display a terminal hunger for the spectacle of heartache. "I was hanged at the doorstep , played like a two to a four set," he sings, openly loitering among the ruins of a doomed romance, in his very own "Danny Boy," Wainwright freely admits he makes his own troubles. "I really fall for straight guys...I almost like it more," he says. "This is terrible but basically, I just don't want to be married. Unless it's really exciting. I just like the thrill of the chase more than getting the [prize] itself. I like to be a bit of the shit disturber...the home wrecker, the whore, the bad guy.

The relationship that inspired many of the album's songs--a three-year affair with a drug-addled "straight" man--is over and done with, but Wainwright has one regret. "I'd kind of like to be in that again, acutally, just because it was so good for songwriting." This is teh misgiving not of a devoted lover but of a professional doomed hero, the lame boyfriend who your friends might say is "in love with love" rather than with you. Wainwright is fixated on the drama-packed turning points in romance's theater: falling in love, longing for the unattainable, despairing over what has faded. If such a fondness for grand gesture is tedious to deal with in a mate, it is absolutely appropriate for a songwriter: the scenes are familiar, and they pack a big old emotional punch. He may reveal his youth in so exuberantly diving into wistfulness and longing, but Wainwright displays his potential by getting meleage out of his own absurd tendency to linger in such places. "I'm a wet blanket at times," he admits.

Hopeless romantics are rare these days. Rarer still are those who can take their misery and spin it into tunes you'll want to sing on the street. And lucky for us, Wainwright isn't yet satisfied.