TRUMAN CAPOTE'S MASKED BALL

143. TRUMAN CAPOTE'S MASKED BALL:

I became for a while infatuated by Penelope Tree who was like a seventeen-year-old girl in 1966 at Truman Capote's Black and White Masked Ball - that famous soiree he threw at the Plaza Hotel on November 28 1966 and as I watched all or many of those crazy lunatic crazy wealthy people being ushered in up the stairs and out of their limos I finally did see her coming across the fountain area - amazing graze unusual demeanor stunning Betsey Johnson outfit in fact something never before seen and just designed out of the working Betsey Johnson collection and seemingly made from scraps and sheer scraps at that from the very trendy 'Paraphrenalia' the oh-so-hip 1960's Carnaby influenced fashion and designer accessories shop and all that had by this time - along with this amazing 'dress' catapulted Betsey Johnson anyway into the new stratosphere of chic designers but SHE wasn't invited you see it was only Penelope Tree who was ushered in and photographed in this amazingly elan something-fashion faux seductive almost lingerie-like 1960's outfit - causing paroxysms and despair and shouts and squeals from those present and the photographs flashed around the world too just then made Penelope Tree's reputation too forevermore as Model Grande Moderne - I have no idea where she is now alive dead or in-between nor on which continent or in what space but I'll always remember everything around her from that time - the crazed sickening people and the crazed sickening me and everyone was really an incestuous insider and nothing more and they each knew each other and their places and their fortunes and this clan-gathering was taking place in the middle of the Kingdom which was theirs and all ostensibly for the purpose of celebrating a book about a dead murdered farm family and two executed killers written up by some fledgling half-writer along with some To Kill a Mockingbird inward girl too named Harper Lee and everything together was a strange mix of people and occurrences as I watched and yet in a way - to the rest of the world - it was like a finger poked in the eye but I didn't care : of course I hadn't then realized that the line in the sand was drawn in the same sand that I'd later be sinking in but that had not yet occurred because at this point to me the world was still small and merely composed of perhaps a hundred very small places and I'd see the daily newspapers and see people moving back and forth with their own papers black inky fingers contorted and folded papers on seats and benches but all that was reported was the same fifteen situations and they each revolved around personality and not issue which was really the forerunner of the way the world would be turning and before long it was as if some separation anxiety was out and about and people could not for long (as in this present day) be without their connection to something someone a name an issue a situation and all the professionals bravely say the world is global and has widened and broadened so everyone is not connected but in reality the world has shrunk to inestimable small proportions and each little microcosm now is the same cell of local bacteria swimming in a much larger cup and even back then in 1966 all this Truman Capote elitist brouhaha pretty specifically reflected that idea - the people I watched the proud the austere the wealthy the made - strutted gainfully for their own selected audiences so that they could be seen and imagined and even as I saw Penelope Tree I at once realized it was another planet-world entirely and one I'd never set foot upon.