For some obscure reason, tonight I remembered being friends (acquaintances? - at least she seemed to think I was amusing for a time) with a gorgeous, extremely chic, rather wild, very sexy party girl of the highest order, while living in Hong Kong. I can't quite recall her name....
I'm the kind of person who remembers, for instance, briefly meeting Sondheim. I am rather boastful that I know Meredith Monk pretty well, and several major European composers, all of whom would recognize me if I said hello. I've had repeated luncheons with Diamanda Galás, with Alfred Corn and with activist Larry Kramer, and intermittent sex over the years (yes, I am, in my small way, a star-fucker!) with the most popular and famous of living gay writers (no, no names). So I've done pretty well when I've been touched by greatness (okay, Steve Reich ignored me, but he does that to lots of people.) That's what makes me think I'm (at least somewhat) cool – I'm thrilled to know certain writers, artists, and geniuses. Of course, in certain contexts, they all look like nerds – and they are – the ones I like best do tend to be among the nerdiest (I'd have been incredibly impressed to meet James Joyce, coke-bottle glasses and all).
But, a few times over the years, my world has accidentally crashed into an entirely different world, a world that would dismiss all of these people as pathetic losers – the wild, fabulous world of the high flyers, people who look perfect and have lots of money, who go to the right parties and clubs because they were actually invited. I never manage to maintain such contacts for long, because I obviously don't qualify under their value systems – it doesn't take long before I get too tired to party, and besides my conversation's all wrong – I inevitably talk about the wrong things and have the wrong reactions.
But, for a few months, because while I was living in Hong Kong I had a brief fling with an investment banker who was both smart and trendy, I became part of the circle that included this woman. (What was her name?...) And she found me amusing, so when the fling ended I was dragged into her orbit, sort of as a novelty item: oh look, she's got a university professor on her arm to take her to the opening of the new membership club. She was huge fun, as long as you answered questions correctly (and the correct answer to all questions was, of course, yes – let's face it, what other answer would a fabulous-looking Eurasian girl with sultry eyes and the perfect low-cut dress be willing to hear? – yes, we can go the club, yes, you can have some more, yes, I'll pay for the champagne).
For a time, I was one of her coterie – one of the gay men she dragged around and ordered around, part of the background to her fabulousness. She was very smart, but the intelligence was all pointed in a direction quite different from those I would normally be conscious of – it wouldn't occur to her to write poetry or make paintings; she wanted to make a fortune because then she could buy paintings, and I'm sure she was going to do so (as long as she didn't make a more serious kind of mistake – and that would have been no surprise, either, as I got the distinct impression that some of the rapid, complex wheeling and dealing that sped by on her cel phone was on the shady side).
You couldn't help but be aware that here was the Real Thing: she had indeed turned a few very well-paid tricks at some point in the past (wild girls always enjoy hanging around with gay men – the combination of loose morals with relative safety makes them happy, I think), but by that time she was rapidly surfing the upper and more stable levels of Hong Kong money and society, aiming for the kind of financial and social position that I could hardly imagine, and barely understand as such when it was right in front of me. Actually, the character in a novel that best resembles her is Peaches in Rupert Everett's decadently hilarious The Hairdressers of St. Tropez – go read it if you never have, it's quite something.
What was most remarkable was that she was so good at it – even tone-deaf to such high social frequencies as I am, even I could tell that – she really was amazing to see in action at a party: where she knew everyone, and could perfectly and gaily connect to exactly the right ones at an amazing and rather flashy rate of speed....
I wonder what her name was. It will come to me, I'm sure.
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