As Capote learned, a successful coming-out party is a matter of knowing how to yank strings, though he never understood that certain public people will not tolerate having their private sides bandied about. In the end it's all about timing, and the orbiting planets of hype were in an ideal celestial formation over the Thanksgiving holidays. As it happened, Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone celebrating his birthday at Liquid on the same night as the club's opening. The moment was ripe to be seized.
Given that all publicity-driven affairs are work, hard day's nights one and all, I formed an alliance with New York City social photographer Patrick McMullan, both of us showing up early to avoid the crush. For an hour, nothing much was shaking in the Liquid VIP room, and then Madonna materialized in the inner, inner sanctum. The other chicklets of chic trailing in after the mother hen, clucking around her brother's clown-shape birthday cake. Calvin Klein, rider on the teen-sexuality-as-commodity storm, doing some youth-revolution research in the post-Studio 54 era: "Is this the hot new club that everybody comes to every night?" The forever pleasant Kelly Klein, solidly in the superwife program, defining the semiotic subtext of her new coffee-table book Underworld -- "It's really more about the human body than lingerie" -- and insisting that her next project was top secret. Spookily enough, she said the exact same thing at the Miami launch for Pools, her previous effort. A woman's charm is 90 percent illusion and mystery.
A great buzz sweeping the room, a triumvirate of Hollywood executives A the true stars of our age A having arrived. Manager Sandy Gallin, the famed handler of Cher, Michael Jackson, and Andrew Clay, among others. Barry Diller, the king of the QVC home shopping empire, who's now putting together a television network. And my fave rave, David Geffen, former Cher companion, partner in the DreamWorks SKG studio, and general master of the universe. All three were casually dressed, the symbol of power in Lotus Land, Geffen and Diller in their trademark neato grunge: jeans and flannel shirts. Rather than employ the hateful-but-redolent "velvet mafia" tag, let's just say they're all regular guys who look after one another.
The luxe lounge filling with the sort of names you see in the columns. Rita and Ian Schrager of the Delano, along with the Blue Door's Brian McNally. Kate Moss -- Johnny Depp companion, Calvin Klein model, and one bright woman -- going over to sit with Madonna, Ingrid, and Peck's-bad-girl Naomi Campbell. The foursome being introduced to Michael Caine, a polite sort unaccustomed to the club fray: typically, the just-us-gals barbershop quartet softly singing the line "What it's all about, Alfie?" and giggling after he'd moved on. Fate meted out my own moment with Lady M, a personable chat about her work in the upcoming film version of Evita: "I'll be shooting through March; it's more consuming than I'd imagined." Even as an emissary of that necessary evil, the press -- someone who lives without fear or respect -- it seemed wise for me not to linger unduly.
Geffen, who operates with a lot more money and power than just about anybody, going determinedly huggy/kissy face with a recalcitrant Madonna, the pair's friendship having gone through a dicey period. Perhaps the tensions involved Geffen hiring away her chauffeur and commenting on the matter in the glossier publications, although the frictions seemed deeper than the eternal help problem of the rich. Whatever the case, it was great stuff, Madonna hanging tough: "I'm a sensitive person, and you were talking all that shit about me. I don't have a dick and I don't play that game." Geffen, who looks like an ambitious choirboy, staying Hollywood light: "And you actually believe what people say?"
After that juicy interlude, the close encounters of all kinds involving fashion designer Victor Alfaro, singer Albita Rodriguez's camera-shy date, plus Ingrid's parents -- a nice touch -- and assorted icons of the gilded age. For a brief moment, it is the romper room that dreams are made of: no other press, friends, or local black holes of attention, a perfect party where all the other guests are more fabulous than you are. Like some kind of omen, the great film director John Schlesinger turning up, his masterpiece, The Day of the Locust, coming to all-too-live fruition, the hordes starting to engulf the room like locusts, feeding on Madonna. Being so glamorous and all, everyone needed a little breathing room. Ingrid leading the core group to the larger and self-contained Situation Room, free from the greedy eyes of second-string important people.
Another three hours on the job, the velveteen mob arriving with Carrie Fisher's former husband, the Creative Artists Agency's Brian Lord, whose dalliance with a male companion created considerable consternation. Lord traveling with his buddy, and, naturally, running into his tabloid Boswell, Richard Johnson of the New York Post. Now there was a moment to savor. Naomi Campbell and Calvin Klein immersed in conversation forever, Campbell eventually going off to make an urgent phone call to Los Angeles. Two adjacent glitterati unzipped with a Klein debate, Pret-…-Porter revisited: "Calvin's a genius." "He's a monster." "Well, he might be a genius tonight." Geffen continued his charm campaign on Madonna, and everyone stayed on till the celebrated left, Patrick McMullan contentedly announcing, like the tiny slayer of ghosts in Poltergeist, "This room is clear."
But by then the fever mounting for other crowded rooms, other voices, with me dragging McMullan and Johnson along on a quest for the fresh terrain of Club USA, the terminally industrial Steel space gone disco lush. The clubs blurring after that, the three of us taking a 4:00 a.m. dinner at the News Cafe, Mario Van Peebles at an adjacent table. The following day, Thanksgiving, all cruel aftermath A life as a hurting unit. Friday bringing the Kenneth Cole/Interview party on Collins Avenue, not your ordinary shoe-store opening: barbarians and Hare Krishnas swarming at the gates once again. God forbid anyone should miss anything.
Saturday night, and the movable feast starting off at the Delano for Kelly Klein's Underworld party, a benefit for the CFDA (Council of Fashion and Design Associates) Foundation Fund for AIDS. The same cast from Liquid turning out again -- Geffen, Gallin, et al. -- and wandering among the public, a roped-off celeb corral going totally unused, the democratic nature of the circumstances taking the thrill out of blood-sport journalism. Photographer Bruce Weber representing the new-faces division, and trainer to the stars David Barton squeezing my limp muscles and liquid flesh A a dream come true A while muttering like a concerned oncologist. Everyone talking about the tan-and-trick boys who'd lolled around the pool all weekend in search of sugar daddies to buy them the whole plantation. All conversation everywhere ceasing with the arrival of Madonna, her presence automatically robbing the guests of their own authenticity. But that's the way the fame game goes.
The press, always up for free food and booze -- if it's not catered, it's not journalism -- stumbling along to the roof of the Sony building on Lincoln Road, where the Health Crisis Network is saluting its White Party benefactors. Moving on to a civilized birthday gathering, the vanishing point unraveling at Wallace Tutt's impromptu bash at his North Bay Road estate -- sort of like the White Party without costumes, Vizcaya, or mangroves, the power crowd everywhere at once. By that time the week encompassing 40 hours of chitchat in various shattering contexts, but there's always something new on the rounds. A treat to speak with one cultivated gentleman, enviably centered and composed, full of useful information and insisting that he hadn't been to a party in sixteen years: "Have I missed anything?
