Usually there are people who live their lives in a permanent jaw drop state. Mostly it’s self-made millionaires who end up marrying Vogue covergirls or conversely women who manage to snag Ivana Trump’s latest Italian himbo. For me it was all about Mick Jagger.
You don’t understand, I grew up wanting to be him. From the low slung tight jeans, to the newsboy tanks, to my predilection to sway and gyrate at any given moment and the urge to pout in suitably starry fashion. I have an indelible mental picture of Bianca Jagger shaving her pits in 54 and Mick’s early shot as a new kid on the block in Rolling Stones looking like a sexy urchin, sort of a male Lolita, in a Sliman-ish suit (or better yet a suit that inspired Slimane). Jagger crooned that "You can’t always get what you want." However, this weekend I sort of did.Last weekend, we flew to Hong Kong, still very much destroyed from the Vuitton launch (I woke up with my right shoe on my left hand and a bunch of unfamiliar business cards) and joined in a fab party to celebrate our friend Sam’s 30th birthday. Sam, a charming guy with an equally witty outfit, rented an amazing boat that pissed grandly of Champagne. As the night progressed, amidst the sea of Brazilian dancers with talented butt cheeks, tanned and well-trained women and Adonis‚ in every version that the imagination can conceive, there he was jumping off a speedboat at 2 a.m. Stinkin‚ Mick Jagger. Oh excuse me – Sir Mick Jagger.
When they say that writers, chefs or DJ (or whatever the latest pop cultural obsession is), is the new rock star, that seminal moment proved that a rock star can only be a rock star. A night of remarkable insights and confirmed suspicions, every Cavallied and Guccied chick lost her momentary cool including me despite talking to a beautiful, beautiful man (but what am I talking about, I always break a sweat in front of celebrities even when I spotted Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen in Baskin Robbins). Then everyone tried to be cool. So I guess some may ask whether I am some sort of fabulist since I have no photos to prove this. I have no photo to prove him dancing with two Brazilian dancers. No photos of him dancing like a teenager despite his Sharpei/leonine looks (a plaque of the life lived in the fast lane I guess). No photos of him sitting next to me after exhausting himself saying a brisk stareless hello with coke in hand (the drink). None. My champagne goggles prove me right however that despite not having a hard copy memory of this surreal setting, his face that sort of looks more like a pug with a very sharp nose, hair which looks like it’s lived in that calculated tousled manner for some time now (30 years?), dress (the anti-thesis of glam rock but chic to the hilt indeed) and sex appeal, which was running so palpably through the creases in his face, was all there. I mean in a setting like that, a night like that where one is a flash or breast graze away from the rock god, how could I be so utterly hoi polloi and ask for a picture? Shit not!
Personally, I would have but I simply could not find any self-respecting person to do it for me. At the risk of doing that horrible armpit exposing a take-it-yourself photo maneuver was enough to scare Mr. Beautiful away who, by this time, I was singing ’80s music with. No, the moment was too perfect, oblivious rock god/fashion icon at left, Madonna singing Adonis at right. An ephemeral spasm of time that serves as a sort of aneurism for the pessimist in me. Life was so damn good at that moment. Then Kylie blasted from the speakers and life, just when you thought it was all perfect, just got better!
As Sam proclaimed that it was indeed very good to be him. I couldn’t have agreed more! My best birthday was when an Evil Knievel mascot came to my sixth birthday party sober and pretended to be really tight with me. Come to think of it now, it seems really creepy.
The next day I dragged myself for some dimsum brunch in rock star shades (you get what the dark tint and oversized lenses are for – not for glamour but to hide what concealer has surrendered on). As I tried to remember how to use chopsticks and keep my sweet and sour pork from flying, I was giddy with excitement for the upcoming concert.
A bunch of us met up at the Grand Hyatt (where most of us and the Stones were staying, making Marcel my friend from Manila say, "I seriously think the Stones are stalking us!") and walked to the concert hall. You know that you are a child of the MTV generation when you go to a Stone’s concert in high heels. Which all of us girls did. In between the cobblestones nipping at our heels like telling us I told you so and balancing the hotdog and drinks with élan, it was a time we all realized what the word fashion victim meant.
The concert was great, the Stones singing all their hits and not be annoying by singing some new age experimental tune that they have been working on while discovering their true selves. It was the anthem of groupies, roadies lying to the press, wives and girlfriends turning the other way and going to Rodeo Drive. Although it was sort of sad seeing the coolest guys on earth, living legends, as human. Watts thumping like a nostalgic grandpa on his drums, Mick though still sexy catching his breath and looking tired and Richards in his flamboyant saddest. I guess there is such a thing as nipping it at the bud. As adulated as we are with these men of myth, it was also sobering. It robbed me of that fantasy of my idol, Mr. 54, Mr. YSL, Mr. I fucked every Vogue model, Mr. Hip and Swagger, Mr. Lips and Mr. Rock god. He was an old man, a shadow of his naughty self. A man who drank coke.
However along with that fantasy loss came a new respect for these men. Amidst the glamour, they stayed together. They are genuine and therefore inimitable. In a time of manufactured fame whose recording company Mattel hatches these talentless wonders by the dozen, there are few who have lived on and proved Andy Warhol wrong. Fame can last for more than just 15 minutes. The Rolling Stones is an embodiment of a generation I missed and aspire for.
Like crazy mushrooms, scandale flourishes in the dark. We went to the after-party at the chic chic China Club where it again pissed with Champagne. Mick arrives with the entire Mick hungry Hong Kong fresh from a tantivy at the Mezzanine. When he arrives everyone claps and starts touching him like Our Lady of Lourdes or something. What did they expect St. Mick to do? I can imagine them saying, "Oh cure my Syphillis – by the way I got it from you." It was unqualified bedlam. I think Mick got delilah and immediately left with a generic Brazilian hottie in tow. I felt good about myself sitting in a chair with the girls sipping champagne, grateful for the fact that I have pawed less famous men with the same amount of eagerness. I was democratic in that way.
So it goes, the night ends with me and some friends in a dive defecting to another rock legend’s string of tunes – U2. What can I say that’s show business for you!