Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent
Page 11
“Well, certainly that’s not something I have to worry about,” I said, taking a healthy-size forkful of the melanzane alla parmigiana. “I like a proper lunch with wine, of course.”
“That’s why we’ll always be best friends,” she said. “Because you love food, and so do I, and I feel thin around you.” She peered at me. “Although you have lost weight recently.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s been a battle.”
“Wait, do I look fat?”
“No, you look thin,” I said. “Do I look fat?”
“No, I just told you that you look thin, which made me think I was fat.”
“What does one thing have to do with the other?”
“Because no women wants to sit next to man who’s thinner than she is.”
“Fine, tell Silvano to bring on the pasta with truffles.”
Since so many people have replaced solid food with juice, it was only natural to pay a visit to the founder of one of the hottest juiceterias in the city, Juice Press.
“Vanity is a great impetus for change,” he said, driving his BMW along Sixth Avenue with the authority of a race car driver. “Whatever your path, it leads to the highest road. I’m forty-five, but I’m buying time like I’m twenty-five.”
“Don’t you ever miss the steak?” I asked.
“I’m long past the crave stage,” he said, making a getaway-style turn onto Sixth Avenue. “No, I don’t eat inflammatory, processed foods. I’m also less at risk for diabetes, stroke, etc. I have detoxed myself to get that poison out of my system.”
I took him in. “And you look pretty fierce with all those tattoos. So no chocolate cake?”
“I had a European friend who also tried to get me to be more balanced like him … but with his way, cigarettes and foie gras, he couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs. Balance to me is being fit and exercising with twenty-five-year-olds.”
“But don’t you miss food?” I asked as he veered the car onto Madison Avenue.
“I view juice as a meal, not a replacement of a meal. It is food unto itself. I keep myself very close to fruit and vegetables,” he revealed.
“And what would you do if I invited you to a dinner party?”
“I don’t get caught up in the shark feeding tank of a buffet. If it was a sit-down dinner, I would just have a salad or some fruit.”
After visiting a juice bar full of private school girls (“They are always ahead of the curve”), Marcus drove me home with green juice. “You and your girlfriend must come for dinner,” I offered. “I’ll serve you juice in a Limoges bowl.”
“I have a better idea,” he offered. “Why not have a juice-a-cue, like a barbecue? We’ll bring the machines in and start juicing.”
Although I had been fairly certain the idea of competitive longevity and its attending regimens were an NYC phenomenon, the next day I flew to Las Vegas for the famed Consumer Electronics Show, where a client was launching LYVE, a personal media solution. With 150,000 visitors descending upon the city, I took refuge in the glamorous Wynn Hotel and Casino.
After a night flight, I had a late dinner at the marvelous Red 8. I discovered that every restaurant at Wynn has a vegan menu. Over the next two days, I sampled a breakfast of vegan blueberry pancakes and vegan sausage at Tableau and vegan chicken dumplings so realistic I would fly to Vegas just to have them.
While the vegan chicken dumplings were the most exciting thing to happen to me in Vegas, I do still have erotic dreams of a strip steak, in a strip club on the Strip.
That’s why people cheat—on their diets.
14. FROZEN
The High Cost of High Maintenance
“I CAN’T IMAGINE HAVING a full-time job, children, and being able to get it all done,” the Auburn Heiress declared as we stood in line at a buffet dinner hosted by one of New York’s most beneficent financial geniuses. Not everyone in finance knows how to entertain these days, but at Chez Hedge Fund, the wine is always flowing, top drawer and Petrus, and it’s never the usual suspects or entrées.
“Well, you look marvelous,” I said, surveying her Chanel-clad physique, suddenly realizing I may have overdone the pronunciation and sounded like a bad imitation of Ricardo Montalbán. “How much time and money does it take to look this good?” I asked, realizing her looks appeared frozen in time since I first met her, having nothing to do with the nineteen-degree weather outside.
“I would say twenty to thirty hours a week,” she said, playing with the stack of pavé Love bracelets. “As for the cost? Whatever it costs. Anyone who tells you anything different is lying.”
“Do you even have time to see your friends?”
“Oh, I see them at all the appointments.”
“As in?”
“Well, let’s see,” she said, spooning the avocado, ruby grapefruit, and fennel salad onto her plate. “After spin class, I get my coffee, and then I go to Valery [Joseph] for my blowout. Then I might have a dermatologist appointment for Botox, a filler, a laser, or a peel. I think derms are the new plastic surgeons, although I’m not against a snip snip when duty calls. Ça va! Then it’s time for lunch, you know, somewhere casual like Fred’s or Sant Ambroeus. Then I’ll make a few important calls.”
“And then?”
“Well, you know, the mani-pedi, waxing, acupuncture, lasering, not to mention the ultimate appointment.”
“Ultimate?”
“Yes, the eyebrow lady. Booking an appointment with her is like getting an audience with the pope. One has to maintain or suffer the consequences,” she whispered in an ominous tone.
“Which are?”
“We all know what they are, Richard. Why dwell on the negative?” she said, her clipped tone expressing a slight froideur before drifting off, leaving a trail of Jo Malone’s orange blossom in her wake.
“It’s either a kiss or a curse,” one of New York’s most successful women offered over a recent lunch at the Lambs Club. “Maintenance is like an addiction. The more you do, the better you look, the better you feel. If you don’t do it, well …” She paused with a dramatic flair that suggested a butter-cookie-and-pound-cake-fueled descent into slothdom.
“You can say that because you’re as skinny as a sixteen-year-old and look twenty-five,” I said, admiring her Studio 54–worthy vintage DVF wrap dress.
“Thanks, darling. Although I have found there is a real cost; the skinnier you are, the better you look, the meaner some of the girls are to you,” she said over perfectly grilled Brussels sprouts. “They want nothing to do with you if you’re a size two or less. But I always say, ‘Be high maintenance but maintain yourself.’”
“That’s because you’re so smart about everything you do,” I said, referencing her imprint on New York’s fashion landscape.
“Let’s get one thing straight about smart,” she said, smiling innocently. “No man looks at a woman and says, ‘I want to go to bed with her because she looks smart.’”
“Hair is the biggest expense: six days a week,” the Social Powerhouse declared at an eight-course dinner she was cohosting at Le Bernardin.
“Six days a week is quite a commitment. Must cost a bundle,” I said, tasting exquisite Dover sole while being hip-checked by a cool blonde in sable and diamonds who was table lingering, having an in-depth conversation about lip threading.
“Actually, getting my hair blown daily saves time and money,” the Powerhouse declared to a few carefully groomed nodding heads.
“How so?” I inquired.
“Well, they do a better job than me, and the more you do, the bigger the discount. I also get to make dinner reservations and catch up on texting.”
As I looked around at the immaculately turned-out group, no one was without a professional-level blowout.
They clearly shared the self-maintenance ethos of our Social Powerhouse, reputedly one of the bigger spenders
and high fliers in NYC. “My husband’s grandmother always said, ‘Women should be like well-manicured lawns: don’t wait until the weeds pop up,’” she said.
“Grandma was a very sage woman,” I agreed. “She wasn’t European, was she?”
“No. A well-manicured New York lawn. European women are meadows and wildflowers.”
Having spoken to a series of Uptown girls, I knew it was serendipity when my assistant, Carol, told me I was having lunch later that week with a soigné British socialite at EN Japanese Brasserie on Hudson Street.
“It’s totally not a myth,” she said over tasty black cod and hijiki salad. “I mean, just look at this hair. Do you think I ever have it blown?” She gave her bedhead-style hair a finger comb. “It’s sexy not to have blowouts.”
She turned to see the famous and iconic Japanese wife of a member of one of the greatest bands in history enter the restaurant dressed entirely in black in a severe suit, sunglasses, and a jaunty chapeau. My black cod tasted all the more authentic because of her presence.
“I don’t ever want to look like a generic American,” she said, sipping her Sancerre. “Less maintenance is more.”
“I think you’re incredibly chic and original, but you don’t do hair, makeup, maintenance?”
“I’m not that woman. I don’t want to look perfect. I just use French oils and go to the gym for a run or get a manicure. It’s all too sanitized here. In Europe, natural confidence is sexy.”
“And your friends—do they do nothing and feel the same way?”
“My girls, the ladies so-and-so, just wash their hair, put on their Wellies, and off they go in their Range Rovers.”
“So they’re not blow-drying for their lordships?”
She leaned in. “Do you know what the European secret is?”
“No. Do tell,” I said, leaning over my bento box.
“I only spend on beautiful, sexy, and elegant underwear!”
“Don’t they have that here?”
“No. It’s all colored, cheap, vulgar, and tacky. American girls wear the worst underwear. I see it at the gym. I’m talking about showing up at a man’s apartment in trench coat, heels …”
“And?” I gulped.
“And underneath is a divine corset, garters, stockings. Ding dong, he’ll never get over it,” she said, looking over at the former Rolling Stone cover story.
To complete my very own maintenance program, early that Friday morning I made the pilgrimage (a few doors down) to see my dermatologist for my quarterly skin check, which I advise all to do.
After I stripped down to my skivvies, the doctor, an eternally youthful and ageless practitioner to socialites and stars, had this to say.
“One can look good at any age,” she said. “You just have to know when to stop. I really think my patients look good and young. They take their maintenance seriously. We can do so much today.”
“Is there ever a time when you advise cutting the skin?”
“Of course,” she said. “There comes a time when it’s time for that, and then we recommend plastic surgeons. But there is a cost to doing too much.”
“What do you think is over the line?”
“When people come in with magnifying mirrors. They’ll point out a line or look at themselves in direct sunlight with a magnifier. That’s a bit much. No one looks at someone else they meet through a magnifying lens.”
It was yet another Alaskan evening as we once again made our way through the frozen tundra, with Dana wrapped in a J. Mendel white powder puff.
At a dear friend’s birthday celebration, at which half-naked models were posed as Greek sculptures, all the toasts to the birthday girl included references to her looking exactly like her daughter.
On the dance floor, I once again ran into the Social Powerhouse, this time turned out in a form-hugging Hervé Léger (that revealed not an ounce of body fat nor a hint of panty line) and studded Louboutins.
“How is your article coming?” she asked. “On my favorite subject, maintenance?”
“Fabulous. Look around,” I said. “It’s perfect. One can’t tell the parents from the children.”
“That’s why my friends and I love your pieces—they’re all so true!”
“Well, let me ask you,” I said, as we danced to “I Will Survive.” “Did you learn all your beauty and maintenance secrets from your mother or do you have a sister?”
“Not at all.”
“How do they look?”
“Terrible. They’re both overweight and dumpy with wrinkles.”
“Do they like clothes?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “They wear black leggings and nurses’ shoes. They do nothing.”
“What do the men in their lives think?”
“There aren’t any.”
“Do you think there’s a correlation?”
“Anyone who I ever met who said they don’t do anything and that ‘a man should love me for me’ was single,” she said dryly. “I just wish they maintained or I could help them. They really should be dating.”
“Can I get you a drink at the bar?” I offered.
“I’ll have a margarita, no salt,” she said.
“Frozen or regular?”
“Frozen,” she said, dancing off with a group of private school girls who looked so similar I couldn’t tell who was who.
15. THEY’RE SHAVING A BUNDLE
Uptown Manscapers Struggle to Keep Up with the Ladies
AS I AM AN ADMAN, a Monday morning in April found me in a TV recording session in the heart of Williamsburg for my client the New York Knicks. Once we turned onto Bedford Avenue, every adult male resembled a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Man Mountain Dean: beards, tattoos, checkered flannel shirts, and a distinct lack of grooming. Equally interesting were the array of creative hairdos from ponytails to topknots. While I thought the Brooklyn grooming aesthetic was distinct, it only seemed odder after a dinner I had later that week.
I am not usually a fan of group dinners, but by the time Dana and I arrived at the Mark, there was a boisterous and fun group of people I call the twenty-carat crowd (“One carat for each year I’ve had to put up with him”). The assorted group took their seats at the round table, catching up on spring break itineraries, while depleting the wine cellar and bar in one fell swoop.
“He looked ten years younger on the beach,” the Social Powerhouse declared as her husband suddenly exposed his tanned and now hairless chest for all to see.
“You should do it too, Richard,” he pleaded, as he discussed his waxing and laser treatments. (This was not the first time someone tried to recruit me into hairlessness.)
“It’s really not an issue for me.” I shrugged. “I have lots of hair, but it’s all on my head.”
“You’re lucky,” said my close friend I jokingly refer to as Second Wife. “There’s nothing worse than back hair.”
“Gross,” said another wife at the table, plucking an olive from her husband’s martini. “Men have to take care of themselves or face the consequences.”
“You’d rather be with a younger guy?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said, twirling her gold, man-size Rolex. “If he kicked the bucket”—she pointed to the poor guy—“I’d rather go with a girl.”
Several of the women nodded in agreement.
“That’s what happened to [an Uptown girl]. She just took off with [a molten successful businesswoman].”
“She’s so hot.” A few of the women nodded, seemingly impressed.
Two days later, I was walking down West Broadway after a lunch of black cod and miso at Nobu when I ran into two members of a well-regarded financial family.
I air-kissed the sisters in the street.
“We loved your column on parents who take drugs. It’s so true,” one sister declared.
“I’m trying to decide if I think there is a story about women who prefer women and how their husbands are now waxing and lasering to keep up with their wives’ desires. Are Uptown men turning into the new lesbians?”
“Yes, I was just going to say your next piece should be about girl-on-girl,” said the second. “It’s such a trend.”
Sister Number One nodded in agreement. “The husbands are all into it,” she said.
“Why’s that?” I started taking notes in the street on my iPhone.
“Because it’s not a threat, and it’s a turn-on,” Number One continued.
Two added, “All these women are making out at social events, and the husbands stand around and watch.”
“Do you think men are waxing to keep up?” I asked.
“Definitely,” she confirmed. “If your wife were interested in a landing strip, either you buy one …”
“Or get one,” Number One added.
When my assistant, Carol, and I went over the week’s schedule, I was pleased to see that she had arranged a breakfast at the [exclusive private club that doesn’t like press mentions] with an old client who I’d kept up with, post the account and his divorce. He just so happens to be one of New York’s most conservative fellows (think Andrew Carnegie) and at face level I have no business being friends with him. He had been at a white-shoe banking firm I used to handle, and I always assumed he slept in a bow tie or an ascot.
The years have been kind, I thought as we sat down to a breakfast.
“Of course I shave my privates,” he stated matter-of-factly as I choked on my watermelon slice.
“You actually manscape?” I said, realizing I had hit the jackpot.
“Ever since the divorce, I shave, and I must tell you, the feeling is quite piquant, a bit sensitive and tingly,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but I would never have assumed,” I said, wide-eyed. “A bit TMI but sooo interesting. You shave? You don’t wax?”