Libby's Birthday Party

Privately, secretly, quietly hoping for a disaster.

Illustration by Sarah Clark

The invite read: “You are cordially invited to Libby Keatinge’s birthday party. Indian theme encouraged!”

It was July 28, 2011, and I was working as a stringer for Nocturnalist, the New York Times’s short-lived nightlife column. In several months on the job, I’d accidentally stepped on Aretha Franklin’s dress, looked on as Bill Cosby nearly strangled a Getty photographer, and stared at Courtney Love’s iPhone as she swiped through photos of herself and the actor Michael Pitt rummaging through Kurt Cobain’s childhood record collection. (“Here’s his old Flintstones record,” she said. “Isn’t that crazy?”)

On this night, however, no celebrities were expected to appear. Libby Keatinge, the guest of honor, is a voluptuous blonde and former gossip columnist whose LinkedIn profile in 2011 described her as a Senior Editor of Love+Sex at BettyConfidential.com. For her 31st birthday the year before, Keatinge had ridden a white horse into the Theater Bar in Tribeca. (The s…