11:21 PM;
It’s about a fourteen minute drive outside of Hidden Palms— by the time you pull up, you find Uber Xs sidling down the long driveway and rounding the cul-de-sac like airport drop-off, and people milling about, talking and smoking near their parked cars; some are still dressed in finery from the gala, but most have arrived wearing shorter, tighter, more after-party-appropriate outfits. You wedge your vehicle between a purple Huracan and a heavy-looking Range Rover. Music spills from the house, a super-sized Hamptons home masquerading as a Beverly Hills mansion for the night, and you’re drawn in by the boosted bass, beating like a disembodied, electronic heart. Fingers wiggle at faces, shrieks of glee erupt; some of these people you recognize, many you don’t. As you slip through the front doors, you’re struck by how little this place resembles a home. They must have hired a decorator, you figure, looking around at blank walls awash with a pulsing disarray of colors— no family portraits on the mantle, just ashtrays, sleek vases, and a cursive neon wall sign warning all those who enter: NO BAD VIBES. There’s more to see outside; the whole party’s really out there, in the enormous backyard shrouded privately by dark oaks and elms, enclosing a salt-water infinity pool and a spacious jacuzzi with steam curling off it. The real showstoppers tower above you: twenty full-size palm trees, swaying in the night breeze, each one floodlit from below. They stand at attention on either side of the pool, whose waters are kaleidoscopic with colored strobes, the surface crowded with various pool toys— pineapple floats, beach balls, an inflatable swan dyed pink, then blue, then green in the changing light. Two make-shift bars are serving drink specials with cheesy names— Botox Bombshell, Rodeo Drive 75, OG Kush on the Rocks (with weed-infused vodka, of course)— and there’s a teakwood cabana, intended as a pool house, now converted into a DJ booth for two long-legged twins bobbing their heads to an endless succession of dance beats and clubby remixes.
And beyond that, behind the DJ booth and the food tent and the out-of-season sauna room storing fresh towels, past the clustered groups of models and NYC trustfund brats that have all turned out in droves, a stretch of land leads down to a private beach, the walkway completely dark except for some fairy lights strung along the railing. You find yourself here later, music pounding at your back; the dune grasses whisper and the ocean roars, climbing hungrily up the shore. Other party guests are barely visible along the beach, walking with drinks in hand, some of them paired off and reduced to shadows in the privacy of the dunes. You crane to look at the palms silhouetted behind you, shivering like black paper cut-outs in the breeze; and for a second, it’s actually hard to tell (or maybe just easy to forget), whether you’re not on the West Coast after all.
SOUNDTRACK.