Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent

by Richard Kirshenbaum

  “I will never wax again with a part that’s movable.”

  “Why do you manscape?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said, “the younger ones like it. After the divorce, I went out with many women, and the ones I liked all requested shaving or waxing.”

  “And?”

  “Well, you’re in the advertising business. You need to give the consumers what they want. If you were on the market, you’d be marketing it in different packaging, I can assure you. And the grooming does make one appear, well, more virile,” he offered.

  “How’s your sausage?” I asked, changing the subject.

  The next week, I met a famous ’70s party girl who maintains her style-icon status for breakfast at the Crosby Street Hotel, where she ordered grilled figs with honey and nuts and retrieved a bagful of vitamins while rummaging around in her bag, exposing an aromatic bag of weed. The dark sunglasses, bedhead hair, and African jewelry were all amiss, suggesting she was still recovering from a night at Studio 54.

  “No one had a landing strip back then, in the ’70s,” she said with a yawn. “Everyone had big bushes. The men had ’fros and hairy chests and wore poly bellbottoms. It was sooo sexy.”

  “Do you think it has changed?”

  “Back then, we did it for sport. Everyone did. The wrap dress came on and came off.”

  I was intrigued. “What do you think of all these men waxing and grooming?” I asked.

  “I’m informed by a different era.” She looked at me in the sunlight. “The idea of a man who has no body hair is actually repulsive to me. Your industry ruined it for everyone, darling. The million-foot-high billboards with all these adolescents with six-packs look like Leni Riefenstahl propaganda.”

  “What about women?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do you see women with women as a trend?”

  “This is your problem. You’re in the advertising business, and everyone wants to be defined, a brand; everything is a trend. Let’s be clear: I’ve been with women off and on my whole life. I think women are sooo damn boring. Give me a man any day—either a young one who wants some experience or an old one,” she said, fingering a bag of weed from her YSL purse as if she wanted to roll one right then and there but knew it was still too early.

  As the breakfast came to a close, a young, buff woman approached the style icon. She introduced us.

  “This is Alicia (not her real name),” the icon said. “She’s my trainer.”

  “Where’s your studio?”

  “I live in Williamsburg, but I do privates in the city,” Alicia said.

  I asked her about the preponderance of beards in her neighborhood.

  “I don’t go out with any of those guys,” she said instantly. “They don’t like me, and I don’t like them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m too strong for them. I think they’re all feminine trying to act masculine. And they like girls who look like them. Tall, skinny, with tattoos and partially shaved heads. Not my thing.

  “Plus,” she continued, “they all go to these barbershops. It takes hours to get those beards looking like Mumford and Sons.”

  The following weekend, the sun broke through, offering up the promise of walks around the reservoir without a winter coat and the possibility of alfresco dining. Dana and I decided to pay our old friend Hassan a visit at Orsay and roll the dice for an outside table on the terrace.

  “Hi, ladies. What will you be having today for lunch?” The waiter approached us from the back. He reddened when he realized I was a man.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought, well, it’s just from the back you have long hair, and I thought you were a woman.”

  “No worries. It happens a lot,” I said, shrugging and laughing it off as I ordered my salmon burger and frites.

  After taking the order and departing for the kitchen, I turned to Dana.

  “Do you think my hair is too long?”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said. “You keep your Bon Jovi locks for as long as you have them. Although if I want to start a rumor, all I have to do is kiss you from behind.”

  “It’s not too much?” I asked, suddenly feeling insecure.

  “Do you know what men would give to have your hair and be mistaken for a woman?” she asked innocently.

  Clearly, they’re spending real money trying.

  V.

  THE RICH ARE IN-DIFFERENT

  16. SOCIAL CLIMB-OVERS

  The Ultimate Workout

  IT WAS AN UNSEASONABLY WARM October Thursday and despite the heat, the Fifth Avenue outpost of Harry Cipriani was filled with more ciaos and bonjours than one could possibly count. Dapper Sergio showed my guest and me to my regular table, and it didn’t take Greenwich Banker and I more than two Bellinis to realize we might have been the only two English-speaking patrons en vue. When did Fifth and Park Avenues turn into the Via Montenapoleone or the Avenue Montaigne? Why was New York now filled with so many fleeing Europeans? Was it wartime or just economic wartime in the Eurozone? I asked myself.

  I wondered, that is, until a familiar figure barreled his way through the crowd in his slick custom suit and anachronistic Brilliantine slicking his hair, making a beeline to yours truly.

  “Richard, so good to see you. It’s been ages.” He oozed saccharine flattery.

  Not long enough! I thought to myself as I smiled politely and felt both obligated and somewhat put out to introduce him to my lunch companion—which I knew was one of the reasons he descended on me so quickly. Peter Poseur (not his real name) was always one to sniff out a new acquaintance when he saw a glint of a peeking Patek or thought there was a hint of social possibility in the air. He had a sort of social radar that was uncanny.

  “Listen,” he said, adjusting his orange silk cravat, “Sage (his second wife, not her real name) and I are hosting a dinner party at [awful trendy restaurant where I know he is not paying for his meals, but has a deal with management to bring in guests] and we would looove to have you and Dana come.” He surveyed my friend’s suit to determine if the sleeves had workable buttons, therefore ensuring Greenwich Banker was worthy of poaching. Confirming his answer, he immediately went in for the kill and issued my guest an invitation as well.

  “We’re having it for our dearest friends, the so-and-sos (a magazine-worthy couple).You will just adore them, I can assure you. They’re just marvelous.” He beamed at the association. “I won’t hear of you not coming. Who knows, you might get a new account out of it for that new agency of yours.” He smiled, the points of his teeth comically looking like fake Halloween wax fangs. “In fact, I’ll put in a good word for you,” he offered like an oncoming bullet train of tactless superlatives.

  “Are you OK?” he said suddenly, noticing my profound silence. “You look a bit pale.”

  “Is the Heimlich maneuver in order?” My friend surveyed me.

  “I’m fine. It’s just I already know them,” I said, rolling my eyes (which I should not have done).

  “You do?” he said, crestfallen.

  “Yes, Peter,” I said, plucking a breadstick and indicating my desire to end the conversation. “If you recall, I introduced them to you. You called me and asked me to make the introduction when you were on the committee of that charity event.”

  “Oh,” he stuttered blankly, “that’s right.” He paused. “Well, I hope you can come anyway,” he said, slinking away into a sea of arrivedercis.

  “I hate when that happens,” Greenwich Banker sympathized.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “You just witnessed one of New York’s greatest workouts.” I shrugged.

  “Workouts?” He looked confused.

  “Yes, like spinning or boxing. I call it friend jumping or the social climb-over.”

  “You mean like social climbing?”

  “No, climb over. Whe
n someone climbs over you to get to a friend or a business associate. It also has nothing to do with a comb-over, but it’s equally unattractive.”

  One can read the annals of Plato or Plutarch and come across ancient reports of social climbers, as human nature hasn’t changed much in thousands of years. That said, since the recent financial crisis, there seems to be a level of naked ambition that continues to have a shock-and-awe effect on people of reasonable manners. While many gossip about the climbers, fewer give any attention to those climbed over, those who have been left behind and have to deal with hurt feelings and the emotional wreckage of feeling and being used.

  “My friend actually knew her when she first arrived in New York.” Our Lady of the East River sniffed, and I knew the story would come tumbling out. Remember that Our Lady, my friend’s blue-blood aunt, is one of the guardians of Old New York Society. I happen to be a fellow board member with Our Lady and we have become unlikely friends.

  “I met her years ago, when she was married to her first husband. Poor young man. He married her against his mother’s wishes, given that she was a”—she lowered her voice and punctuated the word in a scandalous tone—“nanny. Not that there’s any shame in it, but no mother—especially a European—in my circle wants her son to marry the help.”

  “Was she a beauty?” I asked, thinking of TV shows I had grown up with like Upstairs Downstairs or the current Downton Abbey.

  “Healthy in that blond sort of way that young men find attractive. Glowing cheeks, right off the farm in the Midwest. No social background to speak of.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Doesn’t sound out of the ordinary.” I lifted my Limoges teacup of Earl Grey as she declined the tapenade on the peppered cracker from the liveried servant.

  “It wouldn’t have been … if she stayed with him. It was a standard-issue Pygmalion story: the manners, the clothes, the family name. In less than a year she was another person. He launched her but isn’t given the credit.”

  “I have to hand it to her. She had ambition.”

  “She certainly did.”

  “And what happened to her?”

  “Well, you know who she is.” Our Lady mentioned a name I indeed had heard of. In fact, I knew her socially.

  “I had no idea it was her.” I shook my head as I marveled at her self-creation.

  “Of course, she was still a newlywed, but she climbed right over her first husband to marry the richest financier she could. And sealed the deal with children and an immense stock portfolio.” She shook her head.

  “I daresay she is one very smart woman.” I nodded.

  “And now affects that she comes from a well-to-do family that has lineage.” Our Lady paused. Then she went on, “Well, it would have all worked out perfectly, given her social climb-over, as you say.”

  “Yes.” I knew the story intimately.

  “Except that the second husband fell in love and she discovered the tryst. It’s a story as old as time,” Our Lady explained.

  “Although I like her, I think it’s just deserts,” I said, offering Our Lady the dessert plate. “Tart tatin?”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” F. F. Grace declared. (F. F. Grace as in “fall from grace” … Not his real name but he knows I use that as his nickname since he was a victim of an insider trading scandal, leaving him penniless after having lived in enormous wealth for a few decades.) We were breakfasting at the Crosby Hotel, feasting on sublime grilled figs and a plate of carefully arranged orange segments, dried cranberries, and a drizzle of honey.

  “When I had boatloads of money, people were tripping over themselves to get to me. Now, of course, only old friends like yourself who really care for me want to see me.”

  “That must be difficult,” I acknowledged.

  “Actually, it isn’t. It’s been very free-ing. When you’re in the game, the game takes over. When you leave it, you start over with a new game and new rules.”

  He explained his social theory over the beautiful jasmine flower expanding effortlessly in the glass teapot.

  “Now that you mention it, I did see the social climb-over, and I understood it was all part of the game. Even though I didn’t really want to acknowledge it at the time,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “The type of people who climb over their friends when they want something are playing the game. Most, though, do have good personalities and charisma. That’s why they’re good at it. If they lived in France during the reign of Louis XIV, they would have been courtiers. They know how to flatter, how to maneuver. They make you feel good about yourself, always laughing at your jokes, always interested in what you have to say. They key in on you and make you feel important and special.”

  “And?”

  “They manipulate the circumstances so they can create their own crowd out of their friends’ friends and keep the introducers at arm’s length. They are smart enough, though, to charm and flatter the old friends, to stay on their good side so they keep being invited to their parties to keep meeting new people. When it comes to protocol, they know that when they are going to entertain the new acquaintance, they should also invite the couple who introduced them in the first place. Instead, they roll the dice and try to distance the new acquaintance—let’s say that’s you—from their old friends. They erase the introduction because it complicates their plan to invade your life. And the next thing you know, they’re right into your inner circle. Before you know it, you walk into your pantry and they’re helping themselves to your stock of 1942, or uncorking the Petrus in your kitchen, like it was their own.”

  “They maneuver everyone out of the way.” I nodded knowingly.

  “Yes. And go in for the kill.”

  “Stash and I are climb-over victims many times over,” Billionaire Mistress declared over dinner at Via Quadronno. “One of the most difficult ones involved a very close couple we were friendly with, with whom we no longer speak,” she said, her stack of pavé diamond Love bracelets jangling.

  The conversation proved as delicious as the delicately fried sole and aerated, whipped mashed potatoes.

  “What happened?” I pried shamelessly.

  “We introduced our long-term friends to another couple at one of our dinner parties, and they requested a dinner for six. We obliged, trustingly, as we actually enjoy introducing friends to friends.”

  “When did the alleged climb-over occur?” I took notes like a police officer on the scene of a crime.

  “To make a long, drawn-out story palatable: our friends became enamored NOT with the other couple, but with the other couple’s ultra-rich parents.”

  “Wow, that’s a climb-over story extraordinaire. What happened?”

  “My real friend called me on the phone clearly upset, saying he went to his parents’ house in the Hamptons and this couple and their children were staying there for the weekend.”

  “Wow, that’s crazy. They’re not your average climb-overs. They’re mountain climb-overs.”

  “I was mortified. I had no idea that these so-called friends would turn out to be leapfroggers.” She sniffed, still smarting from the scandal.

  “How did you and Ken (not her husband’s real name) handle it?”

  “After weeks of anger and disappointment, on our end at least, they begged us to meet them at the hotel bar of the Peninsula since hotel bars are businesslike and fairly anonymous.”

  “Exactly,” I concurred. “Did you tell them you were mortified?”

  “Of course. They tried to explain that they had met the couple’s parents at a family dinner and had become friendly; they said how charismatic they were. But let’s be honest … why would a couple in their thirties be hanging out with people in their seventies unless they wanted to mooch the summer house or an investment in their business?” She shook her head and ate a sliver of garlic toast.

  “We
shall never know, but only can surmise.” I nodded my head in agreement.

  “I do relish what we said to them, though,” Billionaire Mistress shared. “I said, ‘To make an introduction to dear friends and have you become friends was our intent. But to hear that you are hanging out with our daughter’s best friend’s grandparents is more than odd—it’s inappropriate. You embarrassed us socially.’”

  “Have you ever seen them again?” I inquired.

  “She tried to approach me when I was having my hair done at Valery Joseph, but I just waved her away. No one climbs over me and gets away with it.”

  “And what happened to them?” I asked.

  “All I can say is they moved to the West Side.”

  Two weeks ago Dana and I decided to host a holiday at our home in the Hamptons. What was meant to be a small gathering of ten or twelve eventually turned into a guest list of fifty. Since it was meant to be a buffet and not a seated dinner, we were flexible and as Hemingway once said about Paris being a “moveable feast,” I just accepted we were having “an expandable buffet.” That said, days leading up to the holiday were filled with an inordinate amount of requests, cancellations, and rebookings.

  A number of couples called with regrets and then when their logistics changed again, they called to ask if they could still come. Darla Van Heusen (my sister) asked to bring three houseguests of hers. My friend’s wife’s two sisters were in town, not to mention people showing up as tagalong guests the night of. Then, out of the blue, another invited couple brought along two notorious friend jumpers. At first I was taken aback, but then thought it might make for good material so let them come.

  Since we have a mixed bag of friends, it was interesting to see people the night of the event socializing and meeting new people, some gravitating to the unexpected (i.e., charming and poor with boring and rich).

  The day after the event, I received a number of e-mails and texts, most thanking us for the party with gracious accolades. One or two people sent e-mails asking for one of the guests’ numbers. Then, as if on cue, Dana and I received an e-mail from the Notorious Friend Jumper, who oozed compliments about the evening (a bit too over-the-top since he was not officially invited) and suggested a dinner for six, indicating he and his wife enjoyed meeting a wealthy and prestigious couple whom we are close with.