It Started in Rhode Island on New Year’s Eve

It started in Rhode Island on New Year’s Eve, 2010.

Ben and Stephanie were coming to town. I had just started working at Apple in November, and one day at the lunch table I began brainstorming a party for my friends.

Then the guest list widened. The team should come. I should cook. My friends should bake. We needed music. Were we really making punch?

It got expensive fast.

I don’t do punch.

So I decided to charge cover.

My friends: “You’re going to charge cover?”

“Yes, and people will pay. Watch.”

Oh, the haters.

They showed up anyway. With cash.

More than sixty people I knew came through the door. I didn’t come close to breaking even, but that party…

My friends and I transformed my loft into a glowing dance hall. A real DJ made tracks on the fly. Shirtless bartenders served top-shelf alcohol in actual glassware. At midnight, we climbed to the roof and toasted with champagne.

If you arrived early enough, you got to sample the treats my culinary friends had put together.

I was creating Las Vegas for my friends before I ever dreamed of living here.

Now I don’t have to pretend.

In the years since, the guest list has kept expanding.

More than three hundred people have worked for me in Las Vegas. Hundreds more on the East Coast. Clients followed me from one chapter of my life into another. A few celebrities did the same.

Artists, designers, manufacturers and people in the C-suite shared their little pieces of knowledge with me because I was willing to listen.

I remembered the story before I remembered the name.

I usually still do.

The names are written in little black books piled on my desk, with notes beside them that made perfect sense when I scribbled them. The real directory lives in my head.

I know who makes the thing. Who can fix it. Who has the private room. Who will answer when I call. Who will send over champagne without making it strange. Who needs to meet whom—and who absolutely should not be seated together.

I know how to get them to say yes.

The relationships have accumulated across cities, companies and entire versions of me.

Then Addie came to town. Winnie and I went exploring. Zita began pulling the brunches together.

Michael throws the parties.

Cinco de Mayo this year became fifty people. I have never run out of food.

Next year will be even better.

Will the shirtless bartender be there?

I think so.

From the outside, these things might look unrelated: a shopping trip, a fragrance consultation, a brunch that gets out of hand, a friend visiting Las Vegas, a party that somehow doubles in size.

To me, they are all part of the same system.

Someone arrives. I think about who they are, what they would enjoy and what they would never find by searching “best places in Las Vegas.”

Then I begin pulling threads.

A store. A table. A scent. A person. A room. A story.

One connection leads naturally to the next.

I think of it as MichaelWorld—as complex as the tunnels beneath Disney World, except the only map is the web in my brain.

It has been under construction my entire life.

Now I’m simply making an entrance to it.