The invitation read, “Countess Christina Wachtmeister, Lord Jermyn, and Susan Blond invite you to a late night party in honour of Culture Club and their American triumph. Saturday, February 26. Mr. Chow’s. 324 East 57th Street. 11:30 P.M. RSVP Epic Records. Present this invitation at door.”
“I suppose you know the names and recognize the faces of many of the people here,” said the man.
“here’s a girl whose style of dressing was once described in a book on fashion and fashionable people as grouchy simplicity,” said the girl.
“I suppose you know this restaurant well and eat here all the time,” said the man.
“There’s the rock critic Lisa Robinson, there’s the photographer Sonia Moskowitz, there’s the artist and personality Marja Samson, there’s John Sykes, the director of programming for MTV, there’s Maria Vidal, formerly of the group Desmond Child and Rouge, there’s Gregg Geller, the A. & R.
man who signed the group Culture Club to the Epic label, there’s Lord Jermyn, a man who is said to own the longest Mercedes in the world and who is also one of the hosts, there’s the rock musician Rick Derringer, there’s the rock musician Stevie Winwood, there’s the English rock singer Boy George’s manager, Tony Gordon,” said the girl.
“Whenever I am introduced to someone, I always wonder what he or she was like as a child,” said the man.
“There’s a stunning black girl dressed in a long white shift,” said the girl.
“Though, of course, sometimes when I am introduced to someone I wonder what he or she might be like as something other than a child, doing things other than what a child might do,” said the man.
“There’s another stunning black girl, with hair that stands up on end as if she were in a comic book and had just had an incredible fright,” said the girl.
“Boy George is a man and yet he wears makeup and therefore sometimes looks like a woman,” said the man.
“I saw Boy George walking down the street one day and to myself I admired his shade of lipstick,” said the girl.
“Boy George is a white man and yet when he sings he sounds like a black girl, a very young black girl,” said the man.
“That day, just before I saw Boy George walking down the street, I had been singing his song ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ to myself: ‘Do you really want to hurt me, Do you really want to make me cry.’ I thought, What a coincidence, until I saw that it was a big hit on the charts. Half the people
who saw Boy George that day were singing his song shortly before. That day I saw Boy George, I thought, How bold of him to wear so much foundation on his face and not worry about clogged pores,” said the girl.
“I should like to go home and sleep in my bed now,” said the man. “My bed is a bed, I recognize it to be my bed, I never wonder about anything when I am lying in my bed.”
—March 14, 1983