She took my hand and slipped it between her thighs. “Most of it, then, darling boy.”

We were helped from the boat onto the yacht. The owner, Matte, an excitable young man, greeted us on deck.

“Thank you, Patricia, for bringing your crew! You are all welcome!” he said. He waved at the women following us. “Come along, girls! Let’s get down!”

As we looked around the boat, Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in the von Karajan version began playing. I adore Richard Strauss, but am ready to admit how much great music has been turned into kitsch. Where is there to turn for something that sounds fresh today, except to the new or weird? You couldn’t turn Bartók’s quartets or Webern’s meditations into easy listening.

Oddly, though, the Strauss didn’t seem only sententious. Against the sea and sky, in this place, and taken by surprise—which, it seems to me, is often the best way to hear music; walking into a shop one Saturday morning and hearing Callas; tricked into amazement—it thrilled and uplifted me again.

This was what I, as a young man, would have wanted.

Food, drink, and sexual possibility appeared to be limitless. Matte’s uniformed staff walked about with trays, some of which held sex toys and condoms. There was a disco and a band. Those people already there appeared to be British, American, and European playboys, models, actors, singers, pleasure seekers, indolent aristocrats. There were also people that even I recognized from the British newspapers, pop stars and their partners, and actors from soap operas. These were people with groovy sunglasses and ideal bodies—I guessed that different parts of their bodies were of different ages and materials—who made it clear they had seen all this before, and liked being looked at.

Alicia nudged me. “Someone’s staring at you.”

A young woman was indeed looking at me. I smiled, and received a timid wave.

“As always, you’re popular,” said Alicia. “Can I ask who it is?”

“I don’t know. She looks like a movie star.”

“You know movie stars?”

“Of course not, but they all know me.” I returned the woman’s wave. “Come on.”

We all strolled around. Patricia seemed to be doing a fine impression of Princess Margaret in her heyday. Alicia and I, at least, weren’t sure whether to resist or swoon at the sight of so much gold. Alicia said she liked the way English Londoners were sneery and hated to be credulous, whereas I now found that tedious. This time around I wanted to like things.

When, for a moment, Alicia went to fetch a drink, the “film star” who’d waved earlier covered herself up and hurried over.

“How funny to meet you here,” she said, kissing me.