The account as dictated, preserved verbatim. Everything elsewhere on this site that derives from it is a distillation — and where the two differ, this governs.
Dictated by Jonathan Paul Hare in working sessions with Claude (Anthropic) and transcribed in-session. Lightly cleaned for typographic errors and false starts; wording, sequence and emphasis preserved. Not an audio transcript. Where the distilled page differs from the source, the source governs.
I was at the party referred to in the following article. My sister Cassidy Arkin worked for MTV, VH1, BET, ABC, etc. and knew all the supermodels, actresses, musicians, and celebrities. She invited me to the VIP section of a Moby concert in a small venue in Manhattan, where I was in a "Supermodel Sandwich" between Christy Turlington and Heidi Klum and her then husband. BTW, this Moby concert was a consolation prize for my having to miss my real late birthday present, which was backstage passes at the VH-1 Fashion Awards — the place where the models changed outfits, and lined up waiting their turns on the catwalk.
Heidi and I got to talking. She introduced me to her husband (who wasn't paying attention to us), and invited me to her annual Halloween party the same weekend at the Hudson Hotel, which happened to be where I was staying. (I only stayed in Philippe Starck-designed hotels of Ian Schrager in those days — they were in all the cool spots around the world.) It was a pimp and prostitute theme party, but I had packed light for this trip — so I just went as James Bond. Which means a dark suit that looked sort of like a tuxedo. I really stuck out, because I was about the only one other than Adam Dell (who I invited) not in a pimp or prostitute costume.
It was an amazing party — a few hundred people there, almost all famous or rich. A beautiful tall woman (which was average for the room) came up to me in a dominatrix costume with a mask and whip, and thanked me for coming. We had a nice chat, scanning the room looking for people to meet, until she said — you don't recognize me, do you? It's Heidi! We had a good laugh.
Later I was chatting to an entertainment agent I had met before, and telling him about what I did at Consilient, and all about the Santa Fe Institute, and he got bored and introduced me to a woman by the name of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was the daughter of Robert Maxwell — the original funder of the Santa Fe Institute, and therefore a friend of mine. Anyone who helps SFI is worthy of friendship, was my thinking. Plus, she knew all my favorite physicists. Ghislaine was very nice and remarkably well studied for a socialite, and she asked if I would like to meet Prince Andrew, which I did. He was also extremely well mannered and easy-going for a senior Royal, so we talked for quite awhile while Ghislaine wandered off to do what socialites do, which is to talk to everyone and take pictures with them. I invited my friend Adam Dell (Michael Dell's brother, who I met at the Santa Fe Institute at a seminar on cosmology or evolution or something), and Adam made a very mildly off-colored joke that didn't land with Andrew. I figured he was getting bored with us, so I excused myself.
Ghislaine was doing the circuit, so we chatted some more. Ghislaine and I agreed that we should meet again in Santa Fe so we could hang out with the SFI, and go relax at 10,000 Waves — a zen massage and hot-tub place with a giant communal hot tub where you could lounge for hours and watch the stars. She said she had a place outside of town, and said I could crash there for awhile if I liked.
We did pass by Donald Trump and some starlet he was dating, who I didn't recognize, but according to recent press accounts and pictures of the event — her name was Melania Trump. Real estate moguls weren't of much interest or use to me at the time, so the only thing that I noticed was that he seemed a little sad to not be the center of attention. He didn't dress up like a pimp either — just his usual suit and red tie.
Incidentally, before you leap to conclusions, no mention was made of Jeffrey Epstein, and I wouldn't have recognized the name if she had raised it. I checked, and it turns out that Ghislaine and Jeffrey had broken up earlier that year, and she was on her own that full year. I think she just liked me, and maybe was looking for a new friend. We spoke several times trying to find a time we could both be in Santa Fe, but it never worked out, and then she ghosted me in 2001. Maybe she got back together with an ex — I wouldn't know.
Corrections applied downstream are recorded here rather than made silently. The source above is unaltered.
Recorded at Hare's direction and published verbatim, with one omission: a passing remark about a third party's romantic circumstances, withheld because it concerns a living person with no stake in this record. The event is documented in contemporaneous press coverage; a Sun article carrying photographs of Maxwell, Prince Andrew and the Trumps at the party was supplied by Hare. Robert Maxwell's role as an early funder of the Santa Fe Institute is Hare's account and is the stated reason he regarded his daughter as worth knowing.
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