04/7/16
Photo: TheSultanette

Trickery! Cheating! Chicanery! It’s Tax Time!

Head over heels at The Met.

Welcome to the perilous days of April, fellow Americans, when we’re reminded that nothing is certain but death and taxes, and that cheating (not the fun, sweaty kind) is a patriotic duty. So what better inspiration than a trip to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit, Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play.

Encouraged by Andy Battaglia’s Wall Street Journal review promising “shady characters, dirty deeds and their often grizzly results” I hopped an uptown subway to the Met, still a sacred monument to art in spite of its jazzy new logo. Read more . . .

09/16/15

Space Travel: The Sultanette Guide To Wanderlust

Cocottes,1905, Axel Torneman, repro PD Posse Stryngford.

Cocottes,1905, Axel Torneman, repro PD Posse Stryngford.

The Sultanette has survived harrowing abandonment, deplorable betrayal, and world-class hangovers. Despite enough bad behavior to raise a nun’s eyebrow, I’ve managed to get home in the morning with keys, credit cards and lip gloss. To quote French tart and woman of letters, Colette, “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”

But who has time to reminisce? Now that The Male Harem has fueled my wanderlust, I’ll be heading for Mars on SpaceX as soon as Elon Musk offers in-flight Wi-Fi. Meantime I’ve signed up for another X-related adventure this fall. Read more . . .

07/14/15

Why Men Lie

Dishing with my colorist one day while getting a dose of honey blond highlights at a Mad Ave salon, we got on the subject of why men cheat on women. (I always build his invaluable gay man Male Harem advice into the extortionate cost of age-defying maintenance there.)

Joey’s brilliant take on men’s hot pants surprised even The Sultanette. Men cheat, he said, not because they can’t keep their dicks idle or because they can’t help from snacking on a pair of ripe melons or beefy buns. They cheat, he said as he foiled me up like a Christmas tree, because they like the intrigue.

10/29/14

Save The Date For The Sultanette Dinner

Dinner at the schlass, Jorge Royan.

Dinner at the schlass, Jorge Royan.

Except it won’t be dinnertime (the most wicked fun happens in the afternoon) and it won’t be a “date”  because that term is stricken from The Male Harem lexicon due to its fostering of bazaar expectations and sex-by-numbers. (Third date? You snooze, you lose.)

Minor details aside, stay tuned for The Sultanette’s fantasy dinner hosted by Courtney Price Design. If you’re not following Ms. Price’s tasty blog on culture, fashion, interior design and the best martini in San Francisco, you’re missing critical factoids on the art of living with style and heart. What better venue to  treat The Male Harem in the manner they’re accustomed than @courtneymprice where Emily Post meets C.Z Guest and Madame de Pompadour pops by for an aperitif? Read more . . .

09/4/14

Looking For Mr. Wrong

B-25_Wolf_Bait_Nose_Art

Wolf Bait, WWII B-25 Mitchell bomber, Ed Uthman.

“I’m a very difficult person,” Jeremy Irons.

Untwist your knickers, scandalmongers! The Sultanette is not looking to add Jeremy Irons, aka “serial snogger” aka “the thinking woman’s pin-up” to The Male Harem. Yet. He does however, share one thing in common with each and every harem member along with wicked charm, a shameless love of the feminine form, artful duplicity, and the basic requirement for membership, a penis. They are all difficult men.

I may have denied this last feature even to myself before reading Cristina Nehring’s A Vindication of Love. Women who are drawn to rascals must “secretly believe they don’t really deserve a ‘good’ boy,” writes Nehring. ”It’s chalked up to low self-worth.” But when men pursue women who cause them “trouble and turmoil” Nehring contends, it’s credited to their “high spirits, predatorial adrenaline, to chutzpah, competition, and courage.” Read more . . .