High life
That sinking feeling
Taki
iving in Palm Beach is like making love to a beautiful woman who insists on reading a gossip column during the exer- cise. Better yet, it is like living with a woman whose exquisite looks have been designed by a plastic surgeon. One gets tired of them rather quickly. When I was young and didn't know any better I took the place seriously, but wisdom has finally opened my eyes. The place is a Gulag for the rich, the last refuge of the lifted, a Mecca for the monosyllabic. The nicest thing I can say for its denizens is that they suffer from halitosis of the intellect.
To make matters worse, it rained for the four days I was down there, which meant my children and their tutor spent their time indoors ordering goodies at a clip which would make Jackie Onassis green with envy. In fact no one since D-Day has prayed more fervently for sunshine than the poor little Greek boy, but it was not to be. The first ray that hit me was when I wearily climbed inside a TWA hearse for the flight back to the Bagel, and even that one was short-lived. The ghastly woman next to me asked me to pull down the blind as the rays were bouncing off her diamond and blinding her.
Needless to say, there are some nice people in Palm Beach, but as the great Marx (Groucho) once said, not this time. Mind you, it could have been worse. I could have rented a house on the beach and had a large and greasy tanker park itself in my swimming pool. This actually happened back in 1984 during the Thanks- giving holiday to a friend of mine, Mollie Wilmot, of trademark sunglasses and flow- ing blonde mane. Mollie, who is brassier than a Sousa band, was sitting down to dinner and about to give thanks for her Picassos and Miros, when her maid came in and announced that more guests had ar- rived on their yacht.
Mollie was perplexed, but only for a moment. When she went out on her patio to welcome the late arrivals she heard only Spanish. She thought it was Reinaldo Herrera, or perhaps someone less chic, say Oscar de la Renta, but what she got was a 193-foot tanker that had broken free of its moorings and had docked right into her swimming pool. The crew was Venezuelan and rather frightened, so Mollie brought them inside for dinner. The captain, need- less to mention, had disappeared, as did some of her guests when they realised they were not getting Herrera.
The boat's name was Mercedes, and she stayed in Mollie's pool for three months, until she was finally salvaged on 5 March 1985. Mollie threw a goodbye party for her and the skeleton crew, but on 30 March the Mercedes was sunk off Fort Lauderdale as an artificial reef. It seems her owners could not afford the salvage, and the port of Palm Beach wouldn't have her, so down she went. Mollie insisted Mercedes was sunk because after three months among the Palm Beach crowd she had become unstable and was suffering from severe depression. Being a sailor, I agree. Ships are like people, but they have more feel- ings. Three months in Palm Beach will kill anyone, especially a sensitive soul like a 193-foot tanker. This is why I only stayed four days and need to go on a holiday next week to get over them.
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