Lady NN put down her drained iced latte at last, and in a characteristic change of gear, and said with a soft sigh:
"But of course I've forgiven Bloody Mary. I pity her really, always wearing her heart on her sleeve like that. Fancy falling for a wild thing like Billy. She always had the worst taste in men.
"Of course Bloody Mary didn't really meet Billy at the fruit stall, though I'm sure Billy was selling oranges on Pradiphat at some point in his long and winding career; God knows he's done quite a lot of things - but never for long. After our little misadventure at Aqua, I sat Bloody Mary down at Cafe Harmonique over a bottle of Moet, and I said 'Spit it out, Bloody Mary'. And you know, she fairly howled (you know, Bloody Mary's never good with drinks and bawls like an abandoned baby when in her cups)".
This is Bloody Mary's Story:
"It was the weeks before Christmas, and we had sex, and then we said goodbye as usual about 5am, because Billy said he had to go and open the fruit stall. And I was seized with this freakish howling panic that I would never see Billy again once he walked down that apartment corridor and took the lift, and once I saw his shape walk onto Sala Daeng out the gate. We kissed and said goodbye again. I got back back into bed, as usual. The door thudded shut. I remember I was still rubbing the bump on my head where, when Billy had entered me so hard, I banged against the wooden headboard, and all the books fell off the table.
Billy had left without a backward glance.
I leapt out of bed, ran to the door and opened it but the beige foyer was heartlessly empty and dark, the lift doors implacably shut. Billy was gone so quickly. It was so hard to reconcile with his physical sensation, still so vivid on my skin, and his smell was still on my face. I kept thinking 'I'll never see him again.' I cried when I was packing my bags that day, and of course, I left my silk Costume Homme pants behind and my adapter, and all sorts of stuff but I didn't care. It's just that my jacket is now missing its pants, and I really liked that suit. As the car winded away from the apartment, I kept turning back, unreasonably expecting to see Billy still walking down that road where we've had so many dinners at the cafe; All I saw was Pui, the security guard with the horrible squint and a parchment face, saluting.
Billy said he would be going to the movies tonight. Maybe.
When I'm back home with Eric Tan, good old bad old Eric Tan in our own marital bed of 10 years, Billy would be watching a movie. Who with?
The bump on my brow was hardening into a pain not unlike a headache. I kept touching it gingerly all through the flight home, wondering if it was going to bruise or not. I'll just tell Eric I bumped into a door, not that dear old Eric was likely to notice. Billy had kept saying 'sorry, sorry' as he continued to nail me and I kept thinking, "I'll never see you again. And when we say goodbye, you'll walk down that foyer and down the lift and out of my life."
I could call, but what's the point?
Billy had said that he had to go back to his family farm for Christmas and the New Year. There was no way I could follow him there. He laughed out loud at the idea.
I still can't bear to look at the picture Billy had given me of him laughing slyly into the camera one hand on his hip, the swimming shorts wet and clinging. I've hidden it in the office at work. Who had taken that picture? What pool was that? Was that a hard-on?
The bump on my brow unknotted and softened away during the weeks counting down to the new year, when I was so busy that I hadn't even noticed that it had turned yellow, and then was gone. One day I reached up to touch it, and I couldn't even remember where exactly it had been. Billy's bump was gone.
But where was Billy? He hadn't called.
And then on Christmas Eve, just as I was tidying up the place and Eric and all of Eric's friends had gone off to dance in Taboo, clearing up the marital ashtrays, and lining the marital bin with a fresh marital bin liner, I got an SMS: A Merry Xmas messsage, one of those blinking trees made up of dots, dashes, semi-colons and parantheses, but still recognisably a blinking Christmas tree.
From Billy.
And then, I sat down by the empty champagne bottles on the marital doorstep and broke down. Maybe NN is right; It could have been the drinks.
"And that, truly, was the last that Bloody Mary ever saw of her lover boy Billy. That poor heartbroken bitch has trawled Pradiphat up and down, and the fruit stall, if it was ever there, was no longer," said NN finally. "Bawl your eyes out young lady, I said, but don't inflict Aqua on any of your other friends; You might find that they are not as forgiving as me."
I was meeting
The Rat for dinner back at my hotel, "that chintz hell Orientelle", as NN put it. (Each queen, obviously, had their own preferred modes de abode when they visited Bangkok: Their choices spoke volumes about their fussiness/ perversity and self regard: Some liked the clean lined modernity and a business center vibe; Some liked to stay with friends and don't mind watering plants and old towels; Some liked serviced apartments for the chance to play house; Some liked the cheap but cheerful - the YWCA. For my convalescence, I wanted the cosy civility of The Oriental. After the weeks in the wilderness, I needed good old fashioned luxury and unquestioning service.) NN was kindly ushering me back into her private tank in the jasmine-fragrant dusk of the quiet soi when I had a brainwave: "Lady NN, if you have nothing going on for dinner except tucking your 6 foot 2 human pet to bed and giving him a nutritious bottle, why don't you come and eat with The Rat, or at least have a drink or two?"
I didn't want to face the Rat alone.
...Unvarnished, real, dignified and really quite beautiful. Top down: Isabella Rosselini, James Franco and Bjork.
This was way back when poor Bazaar was good (Dec 1965!)... The art direction and the coverlines look wonderfully relevant and modern - just compare this to what they are doing today! On a different note... this is what Sophia Loren looked like.
You really can buy everything you need online... including this 5-1/4'' hard vinyl Jane Austen action figure! This doll comes with a book (Pride And Prejudice) and a writing desk with removable quill pen. Buy it at http://www.mcphee.com/shop/products/Jane-Austen-Action-Figure.html
...Sing along to the tune of Do You Know The Way To Saint Jose wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa... Sean O catching a tan in St Tropez. He's filled out a little bit don't you think? Still cute? Deadly boring?
After seven years at Hermès, Jean-Paul Gaultier, artistic director of women’s ready-to-wear is leaving this storied house. The spring 2011 collection (to be revealed in october) will be the last collection created by Jean-Paul Gaultier for Hermès. With its 45% holding, Hermès remains as the main shareholder of Jean-Paul Gaultier’s house after Mr Gaultier. Christophe Lemaire will replace him as artistic director of Hermès women’s ready-to-wear from the fall 2011 collection.
In becoming more interested in cooking, rather than just food, I've taken to watching cooking programmes and reading recipes. Last week, H lent me Cook With Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook by Jamie Oliver (I have to say that he is my favourite TV cook), The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (Mollie Katzen) and All-Colour Pizza And Pasta: Appetising, Exciting and Inexpensive Italian Dishes (Renato Rudatis). I'm looking forward to trying ou some of the simpler recipes in my bid to eating healthier; My recent struggles in the changing room, tussling with apparel no longer my size is a big impetus for me. It didn't help that last night we ate a heavy Mexican dinner at the week-old Casa Latina on Waterloo Street to celebrate P's birthday, and tomorrow my mother's birthday lunch at the Imperial Treasure in Marina Sands will be another rich meal. After tea and cakes at P's flat a short stroll down from the Mexican, I left shortly after midnight with reading he'd been keeping for me, a bag full of back numbers of The Financial Times Weekender and How To Spend It supplements.
Madonna before and after Photoshop Day Cream (she uses the Photoshop Serum at night too). Bang Bang.
June: Just a girl on a beach with a swimsuit... But what a girl and what a beach!
"The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts." - Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650)
The monsoon (sultry heat and thunderous rain) is perfect weather to watch this 2009 movie that will inevitably trigger memories of the controversial 1992 film The Lover (Jane March and Tony Leung). The Sea Wall has a French girl with an ambiguous affair with a worldly older man in 1920s French Indo-China (this period and place is my favourite, especially when done well - which it isn't really here); it is also based on a Marguerite Duras novel - a different yet similarly autobiographical book about the same period in the author's life. The emphasis here is on Duras's mother, played with typical impassivity by the wonderful Isabelle Huppert. Don't you love her? Can you imagine Ms Huppert as a rice farmer in Siem Reap who has made an unwise investment in land continually flooded because of breaches in the overwhelmingly symbolic sea wall? A wealthy Chinese man is infatuated with her 16 year old daughter Suzanne (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, gorgeous and seemingly straight out of an issue of Vogue Paris). This alliance would save their lives, yet Suzanne's mother and 19 year old brother (a smouldering performance seemingly based on the young Marlon Brando part in A Streetcar Named Desire from the deliciously shirtless Gaspard Ulliel), are nettled and humiliated by the prospect. There's a whiff of incest, and there's racial anger and resentment, and set against a never-convincing Cambodian revolt against French rule, the movie is not at all subtle, and pure clunky in parts. The beautiful leads all give watchable performances, however, and the wisps of atmosphere provide a nice escape. Directed by Rithy Panh.
Mona and her family were at BG's today half watching a French musical, half having a post-pizza snooze. We went straight into BG's room and she showed me all her new favourite perfumes (there weare so many that I ran out of body parts on which to spray them on for a sniff); Then she pushed her closet doors wide with a kick and pulled out some Pull & Bear shorts that she said I should buy; Next, she showed me some cast iron wood pigeon bookends and an antiqued wood frame that she said she bought from the Robinson's sale; And then I sat (gingerly) on her bed to study some photo albums from two decades ago. Horrors. Everyone looked so young then! 
I left an hour later with a bag of reading that BG wanted to chuck, including Interview (Carey Mulligan - who is she???) filled cover to cover with cool people I don't recognise and am not interested in; The Penelope Cruz-edited Vogue Paris; Eight issues of Real Living (I've never heard of this title before); Two issues of Martha Stewart Living; Last month's Men's Non No (I can't remeber the last time I looked in one, although there were years in my life when I bought every issue!); And two issues each of Vanity Fair and Time (these my father can read). Then we went out to look at BG's plants which forms a thick screen that hides his door. A single passion fruit hangs like a jewel from its serpentine twine, green and glittering like a jade fruit.
This Picasso painting of his mistress was sold for more than USD106.5 million by Christie's last week, shattering the record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at an auction. The 1932 Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, 5X4-foot, 'depicts' Marie-Therese Walter, the artist's lover. The painting had been expected to go for $70 to $90 million. The previous record for a piece of art sold at auction was set in February, when an anonymous bidder paid $104.3 million for an Alberto Giacometti bronze sculpture at Sotheby's in London.
Jil Sander is working on a book. The designer is currently working on her third +J collection for Uniqlo, but she's also got another, independent project in the works. She wants to produce a book: “Some kind of resume of my work in the past and the ideals that stand behind it.” Sensible proposition. Much more dismayingly:
"All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In remembrance of those days and nights that are gone forever:
Well, who are your top 10 fashion gods? In celebration of a decade since its launch, 10 magazine featured ten "fashion gods" for ten separate covers — each photographed by the lensman of the designer's choice. Helmut Lang used a passport photo; Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana commissioned Terry Richardson; Vivienne Westwood had Juergen Teller; Ralph Lauren was snapped by Bruce Weber; And Karl Lagerfeld used a self-portrait. Although these covers look really exciting and all, I think, when it comes to making a splashy statement like this, extra care really ought to be taken to choose quite the right 'gods' to honour. I don't see how someone like Miuccia Prada can be omitted when Donatella Versace is featured. And fashion at this point in time really is about Raf Simons and Nicholas Ghesqueire, isn't it? And what about Rei Kawakubo and Phoebe Philo? As for me, I would put Christopher Bailey right up there for consistent, dogged brilliance. Still, one must be grateful for small mercies: I'm pleased to note that Marc Jacobs isn't on the cover - one small victory in the long slow march of fashion?
For me it's less interesting that Givenchy designer Riccardo Tisci is using a transexual among the cast for the house’s fall ads than casting an ethnically diverse range of faces in the spots. It's a refreshing and relevant change from the bland blondness of everything else. The trasnsexual model is someone Mr Tisci knows well: His longtime personal assistant and former fit model. Lea T, a Brazilian with delicate features previously known as Leo, appears in the ads slated to break in the July. Mr Tisci explained that including a transgender person exemplifies the masculine-feminine dichotomy that has become one of his design signatures. The ads were shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott and styled by Carine Roitfeld.
Model Mariacarla Boscono, there with Tisci since his start at Givenchy five years ago, appears alongside nine other models, including the beautiful, beautiful Malgosia Bela, her hair dyed delightfully pink.
On F's instructions, I actually bolted all the four floors up to Basheer at Bras Basah Complex (isn't this the most old school of names for a building?) on Bain Street, to buy Fantastic Man and Vogue Homme International. The whole building smells of musty books and yellowing paper which is such a nice smell, redolent of my schooldays spent in second-hand book stores. And then home, and with a tub of strawberry ice cream, I settled down and studied the mags and couldn't wait to discuss every picture and page with F. I don't know anyone who's as crazy about models, mags and photography as F and I can't think of a nicer way to spend an hour (or two!) chatting away about the images and words and stuff that moves us, on the hottest of afternoons (aren't the days fever hot now?).
I'm now reading the superb collection of short stories Father Brown: The Essential Tales. These would be great on a flight. On a slightly more serious note, my bedtime reading is now A Scream Goes Through The House, by Arnold Weinstein, in which Professor Weinstein explores how great works of art, especially literature, illuminates what human life actually feels like, the human cry that echoes in the dark of existence.
