Making a Ruckus over Rufus       Girls love Rufus Wainwright. They love his lake-blue eyes, his black Elvis pompadour. They love his sumptuous croon and his songs about eggshell hearts breaking on the stones of romance. Girls love Rufus because he understands. He'll never give them grief, because he's too busy getting grief from the same source as they are. "You broke my heart, Danny Boy/ Not your fault, Danny Boy," he bemoans on his gorgeous debut album, Rufus Wainwright.  Wainwright, 25, has become a new poster boy for gay culture- he's on the January cover of Out- but he's also getting an inkling of his potential in the straight world. He was on tour in Canada with his piano, opening for a traditional frat-boy guitar band, and after the show, chicks were flocking to him. "A lot of them were young, like 14, 15," Wainwright says. "They know I'm gay, but it doesn't really factor. I don't think they're thinking of sex. They just want to know about guys- just hang out and flirt and be open. They were hugging me, those fuzzy little girls. I said, 'I feel like Luke Skywalker, surrounded by Ewoks'."      Some type of force is with him. Wainwright's record is the kind of artful, oddball pop album the music business seldom bothers to produce anymore. Wainwright's emotions have an adolescent intensity- from track to track, he threatens to throw himself into a river, hang himself in a doorway, and hurl himself under stampeding bulls. Yet he's a disciplined, inspired craftsman, able to wring big power out of tiny wordplays. "I'll pray to God this song will end happily," he gasps near the close of one romantic travesty. If you had to put him in a camp, Wainwright belongs with eccentric classicists like Tom Waits, Randy Newman, and Rickie Lee Jones, only with a modern, glam edge. He got help on his debut from some industry heavyweights: producer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple) layered on quirky instruments like castanets, chamberlin, and tack piano. And legendary orchestrator Van Dyke Parks, who collaborated in the '60's with Beach Boy Brian Wilson, supplied dense, playful string arrnagements. Wainwright's style, particularly his cotton-mouthed vocals, takes getting used to, but once you're there, you'll be a goner. He certainly has the personality to match. We caught up with him at New York's Kennedy Airport, where he was en route from a vacation in London to his home in Montreal. He was the only person in the terminal with a bright red leather coat, green trousers, purple carry-on, and suitcase the size of a steamer trunk. he parked himself in a T.G.I. Friday's and chomped down on an oozing bacon cheeseburger. "Do you like this jacket?" he said coyly. "It was, like, 800 pounds. that was why I had to leave London. I bought it and it was fun and exciting, and I thought, 'I could do a lot more of this. I've got to get home'."     Home in Montreal is a much safer place, financially speaking: Rufus stills lives with his mom, acclaimed folkie Kate McGarrigle. His father, singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, divorced Kate and split the family when Rufus was young but still shows up at holidays. Rufus's parents were supportive, but each was occasionally concerned. "Dad was worried because my mother's family allowed me to be totally an artist," Wainwright says. "He wanted me to mow the lawn, at least." McGarrigle, meanwhile, became his most stringent critic. "My mother was very tough on my songs," he says. "There was an element she perceived as being very florid, very into my own depression. She was aware that if I did this, I'd have to be damn good to pull it off. Otherwise I'd be singing in Holiday Inns- the little gay lounge singer." Rufus absorbed all kinds of music, everything from Tin Pan Alley to Nina Simone to Maria Callas to David Bowie. Wainwright studied classical piano, but quit McGill University after two years. "I was turned off by the factory aspect- and I don't mean Andy Warhol- for turning out those cookie-cutter musical types," he says.      Wainwright's label, DreamWorks, is anxious to see if the pop world at large will gobble up his sweet excesses; Rufus, meanwhile, has his own pop-operatic ambitions. "I know the direction I'm going," he states with a flourish. "Which is to be"- here his voice drops to a whisper- "the next Gershwin." Do you think teenage girls in the '30's had crushes on him? Newsweek January 18, 1999