High life
Happiness is variety
Taki
INew York 'm off to Rome for a grand wedding and — if I survive the three balls and innumerable parties — to Antibes to check on my sailing boat, and finally to London for a party or two come June. It might seem like an empty life — especially to Labour life peers without access — but in reality it's quite interesting. For example, a lunch at Palazzo Pallavicini in the company of Roman grandees surely beats drinking in a shithole like the Groucho packed with Guardian readers and lesbians. Not that I would ever go to the Groucho, but I know people who do, or did, rather. Actually, Jeff Bernard is the only one who comes to mind. But back to civilised topics.
I began hanging out in Rome during the 1960s Olympics. It was Dolce Vita time, and Gianni Agnelli was 39 years old. And his friend Anita Ekberg was the sexiest woman east of Hollywood. Respectability back then was not what new Wall Street money believes it to be nowadays. Someone like Prince Galvano Lanza would take a snort of happy dust and deconstruct Napoleon's campaigns until dawn. Prince Dado Ruspoli would hit the pipe and bring Rimbaud to life. It was Lampedusa time, but with Ferraris and Maseratis. And beautiful sailing boats. Mistresses, too, were different. Divorce was a no-no, so the upper classes played sexual musical chairs. And why not? Happiness, after all, is variety.
And speaking of variety, I've yet to understand nouveaux riches Americans. The moment they make it, they try to become respectable, which to me is like having a face lift, an unnatural act designed to impress one's betters. In Southampton, Long Island, last weekend, I noticed some of these horrendous types putting on the glitz as if they were in Hollywood. There's no style, just the Margaret Dumont of Marx Brothers fame look. Without the fun factor. You recognise it the moment you see it. It's the old arse-licker who no longer has to lick look. Very superior and all that.
These masters of the universe types are a pathetic lot where manners and style are concerned. Once they've acquired the accoutrements of wealth, they begin to arse-lick interior decorators whose husbands are on boards of country clubs. Their PR gurus make sure the gossip columns refer to them as respectable and charitable. Some ignorant hacks even go as far as to call them aristocratic. An acquaintance of mine, Nixon Doarman, a man who made his pile the old-fashioned way, he married into it, has gone even further. He calls the gossip desks himself, handing out daily bulletins about his upcoming wedding to a newer model. It's all done in the name of respectability. Give me viciously promiscuous, satyromaniacal perverts any day. Rome, here I come.
Mind you, not every American is as boring as the masters of the universe circa 2001. Bartle Bull, an old buddy, half Brit, half Yankee, has just published the last of his trilogy, The Devil's Oasis. (Cafe on the Nile and The White Rhino Hotel are the first two.) Historical novels are the caviar of the gendre, and Bartle is the Rommel of African sagas. His book party, at the Explorers Club, was also up to par. Mayor Giuliani (the best the Bagel ever had), Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, and some very pretty ladies like Sin Mortimer, Carol MacFadden and Amanda Burden made the evening almost as much fun to be with as reading the opus.
The next day I got as high as the flag on the fourth of July. No, it's not what you think. I was at West Point, with Captain Chuck Pfeiffer, silver star special forces, and Eddie Ulmann, writer, racquets player and lover of exotic women extraordinaire. We watched the parade of the corps and then dined with the cadets in their dress grey, swallow-coated uniforms in the great Washington mess hall. There is nothing like a military band and a marching corps of cadets in an historic setting such as the Point to make one forget about the fairer sex and think only of America. Alas, almost immediately I fell in love with a blonde cadet announcing the different marching companies. Lieutenant General Daniel Christman, 55th superintendent of the Point, was retiring, ergo the parade and dinner.
Christman gave a wonderful farewell address moving some of us to tears when he mentioned a cadet who was dying of cancer and asked the general if he could wear his uniform one last time during the Army-Navy game. He never got his wish. America may be known for Wall Street and nerds like Bill Gates, but it owes its greatness to people like Christman and the corps of cadets. And something more. That blonde cadet with her braid. For her I'd even become respectable a la those ghastly bores in Southampton.
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