In High Idle

Thanks, Barbara

How do you become the "It" boy of Manhattan? For Basabe, it was a process. He arrived in New York in 2000, not long after he was "dismissed" from Pepperdine University in Malibu during his senior year. (He says, a little sheepishly, that he was busted for submitting a paper he'd purchased on the Internet.) He reconnected with some friends, and instead of working or job hunting, he caroused nearly every night, often until dawn. A hot bachelor with money and fashionable friends and no visible means of income -- Basabe was bound to get noticed, if only as a source of fascination. Who is this guy? And doesn't he have, you know, a job?

He did, though very briefly. Basabe in late 2000 was tired of the quizzical looks his lack of employment inspired, so one day he dialed 411 and asked for the nearest Morgan Stanley branch. Then he walked in, introduced himself to the branch manager and didn't stop talking until he was hired. It was a job they created for him, he says, and the salary barely covered the cost of his lunch and his cab rides to and from work. His role was to bring in the money of his wealthy friends, hobnob with clients and, occasionally, run errands.

"I was looking for somebody to help me in a marketing capacity," says David Drucker, formerly of Morgan Stanley, who hired Basabe. "He brought me a $10 million account for a publicly traded company and he handed the account to me on a silver platter. He's very street-smart, this kid, and knows a lot more about what he's doing than people give him credit for. I'll never say a bad word about him."

The errand part, it turned out, was the deal-breaker. His bosses wanted important documents hand-delivered by an employee, but heading downtown in heavy traffic didn't appeal. "So basically, I'd have my personal messenger just take it and it would create this chaos in the office," he recalls, shaking his head a little. "But I'm not going to sit in traffic for two hours in a taxi back and forth when I can just send a messenger to do it on a bike or a scooter because he's going to probably get there sooner." His tone of voice suggests that this is obvious.

"And because I would save myself those two hours, I would basically leave and go to lunch. That didn't go over too well."

Eventually, he says, his job was eliminated in a downsizing, and instead of accepting a position offered in another department, he quit. That left him plenty of time for night-crawling, which he did at least five times a week. He turned up in an E! channel documentary called "Young, Rich & Famous," along with Nicole Richie and others. The Learning Channel came calling, asking him to squire around a Nebraska farm girl and educate her in the ways of Manhattan society for a show called "Faking It," which aired in March of last year. The premise was to see if, after a couple weeks of training, a hayseed could blend in with the swells.

"There were a series of tests at the end that she ultimately failed," Basabe says of his Nebraskan ward. "I told her the best way to make it through one of these lunches is to stay quiet and cute. But she brought up religion and politics and went on for a solid seven minutes in a way that didn't make sense."

Then came The Photograph. Basabe went national after one night in February 2004, when he and Barbara Bush were snapped dancing at a Fashion Week bash. The president's daughter is seen straddling Basabe's leg as she tilts back a little in his arms. Everything about the image says "margaritas!" and when it ran the next day in the Daily News, it caused a good three-day ruckus.

The media sifted through Basabe's past, and suddenly some mildly embarrassing details were printed all over -- that Basabe had been bounced from a few prep schools, that his driving license was suspended because of an assortment of speeding tickets. It was nasty enough for him to leave town. He sort of hid out in Malibu for a while.

"I don't like speaking about it," he says. "The press was tearing me down to get to them," the Bush family. "It upset my family, it upset my friends. It was totally unnecessary."

A Never-Ending Party?

Tag along with Basabe on a night on the town and you realize that It-dom is kind of tiring. First stop is a benefit in a spacious West Side converted warehouse for Operation Smile, which raises money to operate on children with cleft palates. Dinner costs $1,000 per plate, and a ticket to the bar is $200. The place is crammed with tall and stunning women and immaculately dressed men. With the exception of Basabe and his wife, nearly everyone appears to be on the make.

Which is the point. Events like this are a New York institution -- how many other places are there with enough young rich people to fill charity events that double as meat markets. A couple dozen are thrown every week. To stand out from the pack you need bait in the form of socialites such as Basabe and Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka and Amanda Hearst, who all happen to be on the executive committee of Operation Smile. They assure the masses that a good-looking, well-heeled crowd will be on hand.