High life | 3 May 2012

New York

I have settled into my Bagel routine as if I had never been away: up early, a 25-minute walk through the park, one hour of judo working with three opponents, walk back, have breakfast and collapse with the newspapers. In the evening it is karate with Richard Amos and a couple of other black belts, then dinner at home. Three times per week I go out and get hammered in case I get too healthy, more often than not with Michael Mailer in the Boom Boom room, André Balazs’s downtown extravaganza. The women are mostly young, tall and thin, and much better than the men, except when either sex is Russian. Then they’re both awful. I’m trying to find one of those old communist hammer and sickle pins, in order to draw their attention, as I once did in Gstaad, by wearing a CCCP judo jumper. It was my favourite system because it kept people like you locked inside, away from us, is what I hope to say when and if anyone asks.