Adam Kibbe

“Don’t scrunch up your eye like that!” said Tricia to me, laughing.

Hard not to when someone’s trying to get to your eyeball through the unfamiliar, thin skin of your eyelid with an even more unfamiliar eyeliner pencil. I was getting an improbable education in the things women put themselves through in the name of “beauty”, in the service of the theme of this year’s Dorothea Birthday Extravaganza chez Cynthia.

Last year it was “Titian and Topiary”, both color and set piece decor. This year it was the less precise but more flexible “White and Gold”. Tricia had gotten me a nicely pleated white tux shirt and burnished-gold-metal-mesh bowtie for a song at Keezer’s, a Cambridgeport emporium serving the formalwear needs of Harvard students (and others) for many decades, partially through clothing “recycling”. But even atop off-white pants and a metallic belt, we hadn’t yet “nailed it”.

Accessory one was a small paste diamond literally glued to my right earlobe (however good a sport, I wasn’t getting pierced for the event). Arguably, it started the thought process that led to the current excess. The ladies would augment their own splendid wardrobes with gold jewels, gold finger and toenail polish, and gold blush — why not yours truly? So here I was in Lynn’s bathroom minutes before departure for Le Bash, gold & white eyeshadow in place, along with a touch of mascara, and having eyeliner run along my already affronted lids. To say I was acquiring a case of self-consciousness would be an understatement.

But my homage to Valentino and Nureyev (and Chaplin and others from an era of men-with-makeup) was a hit. “God you have beautiful eyes! For a girl.!” A few homophobic come-ons followed, but whether earnest dissembling, flattery or truth, the ladies all seemed to dig my look. Arriving with the complementary clash of a long black cloak and woven black scarf, and unveiled in the obsequious glow of golden drama that is their house — itself tarted up something fierce — I was just another perfect accessory to the evening’s themed party. The melodramatic guest.

The others were “lovely” as well, in gold lame, or shades of varying golds layered with white, one full black tux with gold cummerbund and bowtie, melded tones of softweave whites, and even a cook’s jacket with gold buttons. The house positively shimmered, and the foods would carry the theme, with white mascarpone/Vidalia pizza studded with black Nicoise olives, a to-become-legendary leek/fennel/Pernod cream soup, and other delicious decadence, including the theme drink of cream, white chocolate liqueur and vodka. Cynthia gets her theme from some small inspiration and then uses it as a phrasing structure off of which she can riff as she conducts the songs and set changes of the evening’s opera.

But for all the color ñ white, after all is a blend of all colors and serves to let the use of simple saturated subset colors play in elevated accent ñ perhaps the most memorable passage was of the observance of some classic, colorless “black & white”. Though warned by her husband it could kill the evening, Cynthia eased us sideways into participating in her current rage for the DVD of the 1987 Roy Orbison tribute concert, first released as a CD in the year of his death, 1988, and recently remastered on DVD as “Black&White Night”. Staged in dinner-theater fashion before notable guests, and filmed in black & white in kinetic cutaway style, it features an astonishing ensemble of talent, and a playlist for a generation. Or two or three generations.

By then well-lubricated by champagne, the wines of dinner, and the evening’s signature drink, we were off-handedly asked our impression of/predilection for Roy’s music. With favorable to rave results, the path was clear for a surprise screening. And so, with the epic soundtrack ripping through the soundsystem-on-steroids of our hosts’ basement “Flamingo Lounge” party space, we settled into the demanding task of grooving to the outpouring of a stagefull of legends joyously giving everything to honor their leader for the night, this firmly pedestaled icon of their craft. He of the black helmet of hair and even blacker shades. He of the inimitable, operatic warble, with its deep-baritone-to-falsetto range. He of the quintessential 50’s and 60’s love ballads, such as “Only the Lonely” and “Blue Bayou”. And of the concert’s climactic coda, “Oh, Pretty Woman”, with which his name is arguably more lastingly associated than even that of the richer, more notorious (and still living) Julia Roberts.

But he of an amazing band-for-the-night, too. Elvis (Costello that is) earnestly handled acoustic rhythm guitar, while Bruce (need I say Springsteen?) shared moments of lead guitar with T-Bone Burnett and did backup vocals with Jackson Brown and J.D. Souther, while the oh-my-god trio of k.d. lang, Jennifer Warnes and Bonnie Rait did sweet doo-wop for the gang, and Tom Waits tickled piano and organ into the mix. Through it all, Roy stood stalwart at the center, only occasionally moving about to acknowledge his friends, but emoting whole eras of love and equaling the sonic power of any crooner name you care to conjure with matter-of-fact natural grace.

An epic concert, and this excess of talent melded into the tightest, livest, most professional group of studio musicians you ever saw, their own names and egos damped in the service of this greater name, their rapture to be there in whatever role evident in every move and note. And the enthusiastic audience of yet more names another active component of the visual and auditory energy. Transformed by shared experience, we shook our tambourines and booties, and despite the “just-a-song-or-two” premise of pushing “play”, we participated in the whole damn thing, start to finish. Just one part of how most of us rocked past 2:30 before heading home, leaving the even more hardcore to head for the hottub and their own “enough” of 5:00 a.m.

When we first got the annual invite, I little expected to sit for an application of eyeshadow and eyeliner, and while I knew full well there’d be dancing and tambourines, I also could not have predicted we’d have music royalty for “live” entertainment. There are times this evening seems but over-rehearsed ritual, with little discernible variation from those that came before, however unique and excellent the individual elements that go at great effort into forming each event might be. But through a certain amount of restraint in intoxicants, and the ebullient infusion of energy Roy & Co. gave us, we staggered home more replete of friendship and good times perhaps than usual, afterimages of many colors, but especially of three, still dancing in our eyes well past final curtain.

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