Kwan Kevin - Sex and Vanity

CHAPTER TWO: HOTEL BERTOLUCCI

1 Pretentious Italian for “olive oil” and “balsamic vinegar,” which, by the way, only Americans use to dip their bread in. Italians would never be caught dead doing anything like that, preferring to eat their bread plain.

2 Cantonese for “You go talk to them. They will listen to you.”

CHAPTER THREE: POOLSIDE AT THE BERTOLUCCI

1 Dropped out his junior year to go to shaman school in Peru.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE GARDENS OF AUGUSTUS

1 Gramercy Park is not the real downtown, but for Charlotte downtown meant going only as far south as Buvette on Grove Street or occasionally to Tribeca, back when Chanterelle was still around.

2 Hawaiian for “half,” the word has come to mean a person of mixed Asian and other racial heritage. These days, “hapa” has generally become the most accepted word to use among hapas.

3 Actually, she’s wrong about Bruce Lee’s mother being half German, but it was an oft-repeated myth. Bruce’s mother, Grace Ho Oi-yee, stated that her father was Chinese and her mother was English, and when Bruce himself was once asked if he thought of himself as Chinese or North American, he replied, “I think of myself as a human being, because under the sky, we are but one family, it just so happens that we look different.”

CHAPTER FIVE: DA LUIGI BEACH CLUB

1 Podarcis sicula coerulea, the famous blue lizard of the Faraglioni that scientists believe developed its distinct color to camouflage itself with the surrounding waters and blue sky.

2 Rhode Island School of Design, which, incidentally, is where three members of the Talking Heads—David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, and Chris Frantz—first met.

3 Even though Emma Watson majored in English literature, Duncan Sheik studied semiotics, and JFK Jr. chose American studies, biology is tied with economics as the most popular major at Brown University.

4 Don Johnson, to my knowledge, never wore a Speedo on television. Talitha is obviously confusing him with David Hasselhoff on Baywatch.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ARCO NATURALE

1 One of Capri’s most spectacular natural wonders, the arch is actually the remnant of a cave that collapsed millions of years ago during the Paleolithic age.

2 Over the centuries, there have been many theories about the cave, which was most certainly a sacred space in ancient times, with some archaeologists believing that it was used in ancient Mithraic rituals (google that), while others think that it was a temple dedicated to Cybele, the goddess of wild nature and fertility. Whatever the truth might be, many teenage locals believe it’s the best place to get stoned, or laid, or preferably both. Wild nature and fertility indeed.

3 Consistently ranked one of the best public schools in New York City, Stuyvesant excels in math and science and counts among its alumni Thelonius Monk, Tim Robbins, Ron Silver, Lucy Liu, and many world-renowned mathematicians and scientists you’ve never ever heard of.

CHAPTER EIGHT: MARINA GRANDE

1 “Ready for the queen!” in Malay.

CHAPTER NINE: VILLA LACHOWSKI

1 She’s lying, of course. She had a face-lift and neck-lift back in 2000.

CHAPTER TEN: THE HIGH GARDEN AT VILLA LACHOWSKI

1 His name was Michael Schoeffling, and after retiring from acting in 1991, he started a business producing handcrafted furniture (if you believe Wikipedia).

CHAPTER ELEVEN: HOTEL BERTOLUCCI

1 This line is just one example of the kind of bullshit Auden learned to write in his Deconstructing Art of the Postwar Era course at Amherst. If he hadn’t dropped out, he might have had a whole other career as a critic for Artforum .

2 This architectural masterpiece by Le Corbusier was formally named the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut.

CHAPTER TWELVE: CERTOSA DI SAN GIACOMO

1 The annual Young Fellows Ball at the Frick Collection is one of the highlights of the New York social season, partly because it is one of the few charitable events that manages to draw a chic “under forty” crowd, or rather people who claim to be under forty.

2 A 1988 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny Cuvée Vieilles Vignes, to be exact, put away in the year of Dolfi’s birth precisely for this occasion.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: VILLA LYSIS

1 Actually, Alexis wears a white spangled cocktail dress in the famous “Blake chokes Alexis” season finale, not the gold ruffled gown worn by Rosemary. Both dresses are fabulous, but nowhere near as fabulous as the pink taffeta ball gown Alexis wears to her daughter Amanda’s wedding to the Prince of Moldavia, where (spoiler alert!) rebels storm into the cathedral in a coup attempt, spraying bullets from uzis that manage to kill everyone at the wedding except the cast of Dynasty .

2 Unfortunately this potential side effect does not appear anywhere on the warning label for Viagra.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: VILLA JOVIS

1 The private yacht club in the Hamptons that Lucie’s family belongs to.

2 After selling his business to Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy in 1988 and retiring in 1995, Hubert de Givenchy spent most of his time at Le Jonchet, his beautiful Renaissance castle from the early seventeenth century. #goals

3 His full name was Baron Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, the Swedish-French heir to a huge steel fortune. Interestingly, he was related to Axel von Fersen, rumored to be Marie Antoinette’s lover. (In the exquisite Sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette, the character of Axel von Fersen is played by Jamie Dornan, aka Christian Grey.)

4 That would be Eros Ramazzotti, who might have been unknown to Lucie but in Italy is pretty much as famous as one gets, having sold more than sixty million records in a career that’s spanned three decades.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: HOTEL BERTOLUCCI

1 “Not Our Class, Darling.”

II: NEW YORK

CHAPTER ONE: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

1 A preschool in Odessa, Texas.

2 Yes, that’s really what they call the body paint combination at Bentley. I personally prefer the “Silver Tempest over Damson,” but I figured no one would know what the hell that meant.

3 That would be the late María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart, Silva, Falcó y Gurtubay, the Most Excellent Eighteenth Duchess of Alba. As the world’s most titled aristocrat, she was five times a duchess, eighteen times a marchioness, eighteen times a countess, fourteen times a Spanish grandee, once a viscountess, and the twenty-ninth Lady of Moguer. She also took part in a bullfight in Seville. Olé!

CHAPTER TWO: 821 FIFTH AVENUE

1 Billionaire + millennials = billennials

2 She would be referring to Grange Hall, the much-missed restaurant at the corner of Bedford and Commerce Streets.

CHAPTER THREE: THE SEVENTEENTH FLOOR

1 Stéphane Boudin, one of the most influential interior designers of the twentieth century. As president of the Paris-based interior decorating firm Maison Jansen, he was the mastermind behind the restoration of the White House for Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 and was also known for designing interiors for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, C. Z. Guest, the Agnellis, and the royal families of Belgium and Iran.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE PREPPIE GURU LOUNGE

1 “Grandmother” in Cantonese.

CHAPTER SIX: OUTLOOK AVENUE

1 “No need to be polite” in Cantonese.

2 A brilliantly talented singer, songwriter, and actor who went from being a teen heartthrob to a pop icon in Asia, Leslie starred in Wong Kar-wei’s Days of Being Wild and Ashes of Time, winning best actor awards for both performances. He committed suicide in 2003.