FYI: This page contains emergency funeral plans in the case of my unexpected demise. MAKE SURE MY WISHES COME TRUE or I shall HAUNT YOU for ETERNITY.

I have no intention of dying. It’s too common. I believe that modern medicine will continue to develop at an alarmingly quick rate, which has convinced me that in my lifetime of about ninety years, there will be some kind of scientifically born immortality. I don’t know what this will look like; will I have robotic parts to compliment my handsome six foot frame? Will my brain somehow be put on a disk? I’m hoping for the former, I’d like to be more than a sentient cube of data. I want to move and explore and enhance myself.

I can’t think of anything more important than choosing what happens to me should I leap from this mortal coil. I absolutely do not want to be buried in the nearest cemetery. Maybe that’s what you want, but not MOI. When I’m gone, I certainly don’t want to find myself in the plain, unremarkable graveyard down the road, so on my frequent travels, I make sure to visit the local resting grounds.

If I die, I fully intend to do it gracefully in Paris, hopefully dapper in something tasteful by Saint Laurent. The only place to die (and live, for that matter) is Paris. I can hardly stand to think of my ashes being interred anywhere else but a moldering sepulcher in Père Lachaise. There are other places I’m willing to end up if I must, but when I think of my bones and charred flesh rotting away, I’m awfully charmed at the thought of it being in my beloved city from now until eternity.

So, in the off chance that I’m smashed by a train or drown, gloriously, in a yachting accident whilst holidaying on the Mediterranean, I have put this page together for your convenience.

Before being cremated, I would like my body put on display wearing something very now, very young, and very fashionable by Saint Laurent. See if Hedi Slimane will design some kind of funereal bier. My hair must be coiffed to high heaven, and should I be balding — and Beyoncé forbid — get me a wig. Consult Wendy Williams if you must. My funeral will be held out of doors and there will be no religious nonsense whatsoever. Instead, on a summer day, in a gorgeous space (something on the level of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco), invite all my friends and family and acquaintances to a picnic composed of the finest vegetarian nibbles. I ask that all attendees dress completely in black and wear sunglasses (unless they can’t due to glasses). The black attire, however,  is nonnegotiable.

Make a few speeches about me, please. You can be as sarcastic as you like. Serve many cocktails: sidecars, gin and tonics, whiskey sours, anything you like as long as it’s served in real glass with top shelf liquor. I don’t want my guests dropping dead from the cheap shit. Loads of champagne, of course. Dance. Put on a musical. Have massive pictures of me printed up. Weep before them.

Following the eulogies and the weeping, please invite a troupe of drag queens to the forefront to put on a medley of all my favorite songs. “Party In The USA” must be played repeatedly. I’m not opposed to fireworks.

Take half of my ashes and put them in a beautiful urn made of Limoges porcelain with gold accents. On the front, have the hieroglyphs from Tutankhamen’s wishing chalice painted.

It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read in ancient Egyptian: “May your ka live, and may you achieve millions of years, you who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, and your eyes seeing happiness.”

On the back of my urn, have an impressionistic portrait done of me in my prime done in the style of Jean Cocteau’s chapel in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Install this urn on a gorgeous piece of white marble engraved with my name, and inter me at Père Lachaise. This will be tricky, but make it work. If it proves to be impossible, I will accept other antiquated Parisian cemeteries. I am Parisian after all, where else should my ashes go? Sprinkle a few at Père Lachaise, though, please? (Behind the tomb of a Madame Brochard. I have my reasons why.) If Paris fails, the cemetery in Villefranche-sur-Mer is also dear to my heart. Wherever you find me a sepulcher, please install a brass bust of my head and shoulders by a fine artist displaying me at my best. Feel free to make me look more handsome. I heartily believed in filters during my life, I surely want them in my death. Use the following image as inspiration:

I’ll rest happily in my beloved city with Oscar Wilde and Édith Piaf and my cat, Tiger. (Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.) Thousands of tourists and weeping fans troop past the monuments each year, as I did in life, and I love to think that somebody might photograph my tomb and think of me even when nothing remains of me but a bunch of ruined marble. I won’t haunt you if my body winds up in Paris. And I suppose I won’t linger menacingly after death if I’m in Villefranche, either. I love that village desperately. (Should I wind up in the south of France, though, please raise a glass of rosé to my memory at Chez Betty.)

Now, anybody who wants to keep a bit of me is more than welcome to a pinch, as long as you know I don’t hate them or that they aren’t going to sell my burnt up foot on eBay. Have a few gorgeous little pieces of Limoges porcelain made up for this specially with golden rims and my initials emblazoned on top. Look to the china used at the Winter Palace hotel in Luxor, Egypt, for inspiration.

The remainder of my ashes and bone chunks are to be taken to Egypt, the land of all my daydreams and reveries and sprinkled in the Valley of the Kings so that I can slumber eternally in the sand that fascinated me all my life. I’d like that very much.

And then that’s that. I’m dead and gone. Too bad, really.

Oh, here’s a picture of me taken at the Chateau Marmont.

My modesty is barely preserved, but it’s a great picture, really shows off my thighs. I’ve always been proud of them. Put it on the front of the funeral invitation. Cheers, thanks a lot. I enjoyed life, so keep it light, keep it fun.