Hamptons Detox

A toxic mixture of dread, fear, panic, paranoia and self-doubt was brewing in my head on my way out to the Hamptons the last weekend in June.

On the train, I sat on a fold-up chair next to the bathroom and listened to the contents of the bowl swish and swirl around, like the economy and the Bush administration. From time to time, I looked up from my novel (about a sleazy opportunistic journalist in late-19th-century Paris), saw baseball caps, tall boys, tattoos, flip-flops, and shuddered.

I had been invited to stay at the large, elegant estate of the interior designer Tom Britt. When I moved to New York in 1977 he was on the plane with me and I’ll never forget how he uttered the words “exactly!” and “precisely!” Class.

At lunch on Saturday, sitting under a huge umbrella from Thailand in an outdoor white gravel court, I sat next to Jean-Claude Baker, the owner of Chez Josephine and the adopted son and biographer of entertainer Josephine Baker.

“It’s hard because it’s not my East Hampton anymore,” said Mr. Baker, who first came here 30 years ago. “It is like St. Tropez. I knew St. Tropez when it was a little farm with cows, before Brigitte Bardot came there. I’m not saying that Brigitte Bardot’s a cow, but anyway, when she came, it changed everything.”

What did he think of the social scene now: the battles of Baldwin and Brinkley and Perelman-Duff playing out high above the potato fields? The Sex and the City viragos? The young rich gyrating at the clubs?

“I’m too old to be part of that game anymore, but I’m very happy about it,” Mr. Baker said. “A lot of people are making money; they still have lots of sex, you know, and lots of drugs I never did, even when I was at Studio 54. I’m certainly the only one who never did cocaine there—and the good times there! So that’s the Hamptons. Good luck.”

Somehow, later, I made it to the parking lot of Nick and Toni’s where I met Joan Jedell, publisher of the celebrity magazine Hamptons Sheet, who would be my guide through Hell for the next seven hours.

At the LongHouse Reserve, an arboretum and sculpture garden, a blissful-looking Martha Stewart was judging a competition between 22 installations on the grounds. I passed what looked to be a hollowed-out soccer ball the size of a house.

Had she picked up on any new vibe in the Hamptons?

“Yeah, everybody’s riding bikes, because you can’t drive,” Ms. Stewart said without breaking her stride.

After she announced the winners, I asked if there was less extravagance this summer.

“Well, that’s hard to say,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and stretching out her arms, as if to say either “open your eyes and behold paradise” or “leave me alone.”

Next stop, a kickoff party for the Hamptons Designer Showhouse to benefit Southampton Hospital. The fashion, art and social people in the backyard included furrier Dennis Basso.

“This summer, I want to have lunches and dinners for good friends, hang out, feel a little toasty, lots of rosé in the day, lots of red wine at night, and have fun with friends,” he said.

Could anything go wrong?

“No, summer’s a happy time for me! I’m a happy guy. It has to really be bad for me to think it’s bad.”

“I think it’s a very calm summer,” said publicist Scott Currie, by the pool with his boyfriend, who was wearing a cashmere sweater around his shoulders. “People strangely are more polite on the roads. I haven’t got cut off once.”

Fashionista Lauren Ezersky was in between interviews for her show The Juice, which airs on Plum TV. “You know what, I think the mood of the Hamptons has been really cool, calm, collected, not frenzied,” she said. “I think in August, it gets a little ugly sometimes because you have a lot of day-trippers.” Ms. Ezersky shared some local scuttlebutt: Someone has been stealing copper pipes from houses, including designer Isaac Mizrahi’s.

Anything else from the dark side of the Hamptons?

“Permits. Ooh, it gets ugly when you need a permit to park at the beach and they’re all sold out—that’s funky.”

The third party was the Beaches and Bays Gala benefiting the Nature Conservancy. Intimidating crowd. Unapproachable Wall Street and country-club types.