True Prep

by Lisa Birnbach

  12. Daddy’s 1,500 closest friends.

  13. So many invitations!

  14. Leather club chairs, purchased fifteen years ago. Manly.

  15. To humidor.

  Daddy hasn’t worked this long and hard to have to spend time in a plain vanilla office space. No longer a slave to institutional furniture, his office a reflection of his likes and idiosyncrasies. The memorabilia Mummy won’t allow in the house shares shelf space with toys he can play with when he is experiencing some downtime. The furniture is antique and (some) reproduction antique. The leather club chairs have been with him forever. The message: a real man works here. And plays here.

  Daddy loves and collects cars. The real ones are in his garage at home and his garage in the country, but it’s comforting to have toy models of them in the office. (Good for breaking the ice with new clients.) Of course, he uses his computer, Black-Berry and MP3 gadget, but he still keeps his Rolodex, just because.

  The humidor is over there, next to the wet bar. His assistant mans the espresso maker.

  The floral curtains? Reminds him of his childhood house in Massachusetts. You know what Daddy always says? “My office, c’est moi.”

  Explaining what bankers and traders on Wall Street actually do all day is a bit like watching the proverbial sausage being made at the slaughterhouse: There are some things better left unexplained. But since you asked so nicely, unlike the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, here’s your answer.

  For the record, bankers and traders help allocate capital around the globe, wherever it is needed, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. For instance, for Apple to develop, manufacture, and market the iPad, the company requires access to capital around the globe (and especially in Asia, where the product is assembled). Steve Jobs long ago gave up the practice of funding Apple’s capital needs himself. So whether he wants to or not, he has to turn to a bank or to a Wall Street firm to raise the money needed for his company to make things.

  Capital can be raised in many forms—among them, loans from banks, bonds raised from public investors, or equity from private investors or people like you and me with a Merrill Lynch brokerage account—and whenever this happens, bankers and traders always manage to take a slice of the pie. This is what Wall Street is really after: fees. Fees for raising money, fees for advising on mergers and acquisitions, fees for taking companies private, fees for taking companies public, fees for allowing us to open a brokerage account and trade with our own money, and fees on the difference between the cost of borrowing money and the price they can charge for lending it out. For instance, one of the ways Goldman Sachs made a Mount Everest–sized amount of money in 2009 was by borrowing so cheaply from the Federal Reserve and then turning around and charging much more to lend it out to its clients. Nice work if you can get it.

  Off the record, though, we used to say on Wall Street that investment banking was good one day a year: the day bonuses are paid. In what other profession on the face of the earth can people make so much money for taking so little risk with their own money? The answer is “Nowhere.” Of course, bankers and traders take plenty of risks with other people’s money, and when those bets pay off they get huge bonuses, and when they don’t they—apparently—get bailed out by taxpayers.

  During the rest of the year—while bankers and traders are waiting for that special bonus day—they preen, they politick, they suck up, and they backstab, and occasionally they help their clients raise capital, invest money, or buy and sell companies.

  Community bankers don’t do what investment bankers do … They make loans in their communities for businesses and for mortgages, and yes, they want fees, but they also want the interest paid on the loans as well as the loans back themselves. Commercial banking and investment banking have been scrambled together like an egg yolk and an egg white, thanks to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Good luck unscrambling.

  All “too-big-to-fail” banks do pretty much the same thing, although Goldman Sachs doesn’t take deposits from you and me—too petty, lowbrow—but most other banks do, either in the form of deposits at ATMs or in brokerage accounts or both. The beauty of this method of collecting money is that it is an incredibly cheap form of gathering cash. (Even though you wouldn’t know it, Goldman does have a small bank in Utah.) They can lend out and get those big fees I described before. How much does your bank pay you for your savings? Like zero, right? Well, add up all those deposits, which cost close to zero, and then lend all that money out at high interest rates and—bingo—you have massive profits. That’s banking—in many different forms.

  In what other profession on earth could one imagine becoming a millionaire by your thirtieth birthday without putting any capital at risk? It’s one thing for Gates or Jobs to be a billionaire by the time they are thirty or forty—they took huge financial and career risks and became huge successes and got rich. No such personal risks exist on Wall Street, except the risk of a stupid boss who fires you because he decides you haven’t done enough sucking up. That’s the real risk on Wall Street.

  The simple truth is that investment banking became the black hole for the best and brightest preppies because it paid by far the most money to people without any particular gift. If you are Roger Federer, you play tennis and make a billion; if you are Michael Jordan, you play basketball and make a billion; if you are Oprah, you are Oprah and you make a billion. But these highly talented people are very few and far between. If you are Skip Powell IV, you go to Wall Street, work hard, do what you are told, and—bingo—you have a house in the Hamptons and a co-op on Park Avenue.

  —William D. Cohan

  Phillips Academy Andover, Duke,

  Columbia Journalism School, Columbia

  Business School

  Mummy is suddenly so busy. Wasn’t she happy in her book club, playing her weekly squash game, and taking care of us? She’s suddenly got bits of fabric and samples of wallpaper on the dining-room table (which means we eat in the kitchen, even for dinner), and she couldn’t bring our Spanish workbook to school yesterday when we forgot it, because she was “meeting a client.” She’s decorating Aunt Henny’s pool house and thinking of redoing our breakfast room. It’s kind of cool that Mummy’s working. Instead of telling us to do our homework or take our baths, she’s kind of distracted. But it was nice when we came home from school and she would be home, too. If only we could have gotten her attention.

  Any job that has a kind of mysterious benefactor is preppier than a job that has an obvious salary source.

  Any job that has a vaguely helpful purpose is preppier than a job that is just about earning money. (Earning lots of money is fine but a little bit obvious and therefore embarrassing.)

  Any job that helps people really far away (microfinancing in Africa, feeding children in Haiti, and so on) is incredibly prep.

  You need to feel you are contributing to our nation’s good, à la John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, FDR, Jane Addams.

  You are not doing it for the money.

  Writing grant proposals is in itself a thankless preppy task, like writing endless papers.

  Research in, say, a think tank is prep. Because there is no real “finish line” or “end user” for your research.

  Working in obscurity is prep. No one really knows what you do, which is perfect—your privacy is intact, as are your online Scrabble scores. Remember, in the best of situations, your kids have no idea what you do beyond going to an office.

  It means you are working for one of those earnest preppies who care so much about something arcane: You are preserving the musical rhythms of the Mayan people. You are conserving the textiles of the ancient Aborigines. You are protecting the traditions of the Lost Kingdom of Mustang, the indigenous language of Antarctica. Whatever it is, no one can really check up on you because you go far away for long periods of time and cell phones don’t work in the jungle, the brush, on the equator, at the South Pole, o
r wherever it is you go for three months at a time.

  You can do this (whatever it is) forever.

  If you are like us (and you are getting closer), you will read the social announcements in your Sunday paper or in The New York Times. (It goes without saying that you read them first—before the Front Page, before Sports.) We won’t mention it again.

  As you graze about, looking at the delightful couples, you might see a pattern amongst the young ones. Yes, many of them met at college. Except for those who met during high school. And plenty met in elementary school. And many of the brides are nursery- or lower-school teachers. Why is that?

  Several reasons.

  • Alex loves children. She adores them! She can’t wait to have some of her own. In fact, she’s planning on leaving education ASAP to get on with it and move to the suburbs and let Trevor do all the earning from now on.

  • Alex is a self-starting preppy. She didn’t grow up this way, but she has reinvented herself in the image of some of the younger mummies. She immerses herself in a milieu where she will meet preppy families who will introduce her to a preppy dreamboat.

  • Alex has a trust fund. She does not have to earn her keep. (Martinis at the Four Seasons?) Theory and Roberta Freymann clothes? Not on this salary.

  • Alex wants her summers off.

  Mummy got bored with decorating. She said she never knew how difficult and indecisive her friends really were! Bailey changed her mind every day or twice a day after she saw Ripley’s wainscoting and Ba’s moss-green silk curtains. She even thought Mummy was trying to gouge her! The nerve! So … sit down. Mummy just took her real-estate exam. And passed it the first time! Mummy says it’s easier to work with strangers than with friends, but how is anyone going to know she is a broker? Daddy says it’s a giant waste of time, but he says he will support her whatever she does. (Does that mean financially?) Mummy says she wants “her own money,” whatever that means. She can finally buy me a horse! The Masons had to visit that house on Newcomb Street three times and still can’t decide. Mummy says Jill Mason will be the death of her. But that’s better than when she said we would be the death of her … sort of.

  Well, Mummy is over real estate. This market was pretty stressful. Is Mummy really made for work? She had some kind of job when she met Daddy but quit it after they met. Now she’s a docent at the museum. She always knew her Art History major from Wellesley would come in handy one day. “Excuse me, miss. Why did van Gogh cut off his ear?” How should Mummy know? She tells them, “Listen to the song!” Except for all the tourists who make her shout (she doesn’t raise her voice) and all the people who ask her where the bathrooms are, being a docent is fulfilling. And Mummy still has time to play doubles, read her book club books, and get a manicure.

  First it was Didi, now Flossy, and it wouldn’t surprise us if Mopsy, Topsy, and Cottontail all joined in, too. No, they are not becoming sales consultants for Carlisle; they are all writing books. Or to be perfectly correct, they are all thinking of writing books. Or they are thinking about thinking about writing something booklike.

  Being a pre-writer is a preppy career choice, perhaps the choicest one of all. It has no timing, no deadline—nothing but intellectual aspirations and cachet. It’s a great save for when you socialize with “doers” who have interesting projects and jobs to report about; your life of needlepoint, book club, tennis club, dog walking, naps, and vacations doesn’t exactly garner a lot of interest at cocktail parties (though the story of the Stanfords trying to steal your caretaker was marvelous).

  Now that we’ve established you will contemplate a book project—Ooh! You sound more interesting already!—what will it be?

  You could put together a book of photographs about a theme. Let’s see: Swimming pools? (Been done.) Flowers? Everyone always loves flower pictures. You were an art history major at Wellesley—maybe you could expand your final art paper on Caillebotte? (No. You just remembered how positively ex-cru-ciating it was writing the eight pages twenty years ago.) What about a cookbook? What about a dog book? Maybe like the president’s dog, you could write a memoir in Henry’s voice? How you get it published is another matter altogether, and practically irrelevant, because you may lose interest in this particular book before you write or finish writing your proposal.

  What about your grandparents? Didn’t they have an interesting life? Wasn’t your grandfather’s uncle the mayor of Grosse Pointe? What about all that traveling you do: That could be fodder for something. The point is to announce that you are working on a book. And when you change your mind on this subject, you can start working on another. Maybe even a series of them. You have a laptop that you use for e-mail and 1stdibs. Now you can use it for your “book.”

  Many of the cute young women who used to teach in nursery schools and kindergartens have put aside their childish dreams and are now the gatekeepers at swell parties. Not prep parties but trendy catered events that are held for the benefit of the press and publicity.

  This is counterintuitive for preppies but undeniably popular in the early twenty-first century. What makes no sense is that these are the girls who want to be attending the events sans clipboard. And working at night? Ick. What is going on? For one thing, a simple phone call from Mummy (she’s on the permanent guest list) can get Bunny a short-term job at the publicist’s office. From there, Bunny knows the girls who work for the designers’ PR firms. It’s just a baby step to getting a job with the designer. Then Bunny gets photographed when she attends an opening wearing the designer’s clothing. Within a year she’s doffed her clipboard and met Tad. Soon they will put their down payment on a starter loft downtown in escrow.

  A grand prep tradition is sadly coming to an end. You may remember that son of your parents’ friends who was a perpetual student. Each time you heard about him, he was still doing “fieldwork.” Well, now due to the exigencies of living in a recession, no longer is it possible for a young(ish) man or woman to stay in graduate school forever. Universities don’t have those little stipends to hand out. Fellowships subsidized through endowment funds have dried up, and now this: Without demonstrating “satisfactory progress in the degree program as determined by both the program” and the graduate school, Columbia and other great American universities are terminating students after their eighth or ninth year. This means instead of languishing in the stacks and teaching a couple of classes, you must actually complete your dissertation and distribute it. You can petition, you can whine, and perhaps you can swing a tenth year. Cheers.

  It was while taking yoga and feeling, you know, really still and centered, that Mummy decided to be a healer. She was always amazing when we had bloody noses, and now she is helping others. Sometimes she even forgets to charge her customers. “Gandhi didn’t charge, and neither will I,” she says in this weird, dreamy way. Mummy says her “clients love and trust her.” Sometimes she tries to interpret their dreams. Other times she makes them drink wheatgrass juice. If it weren’t for her diamond watch, we’d think someone replaced Mummy with Mummy Lite—a mellower version of the woman we knew and loved. She barely touches the mojitos anymore. Where is our Mummy?

  Just because you inherited that old Stanford White house doesn’t mean you’re house-proud. Just because your unmarried great-uncle’s Hepplewhite secretary is in your library doesn’t mean you care that much about your library. You either are domestic or you are not.

  One reason we call it “house” instead of “home” is that preppies are not bred to cosset others. We have been raised as if at scout camp: cold showers, threadbare blankets, lumpy pillows, dry toast. We’re just following patterns set by our ancestors, who somehow accomplished more in their thirty-two years than we have done in our forty, so far.

  We would be remiss if we didn’t point out that “home” is a bit pushy. “Welcome to our home” is uncouth. “Welcome to the house” is unpretentious.

  As preppies love tradition, even ugly pieces are excusable if they have been inherited or have an interest
ing backstory. You can revel in their ugliness if their anecdotes are good enough.

  If you are not inclined to make your dwelling comfortable, stylish, or inviting, maybe you’ll find someone who can—a decorator, an aunt or Mummy, or a closeted gay husband. They will be the ones to choose wallpapers and backsplash tiles. The ones to cruise tag sales. The ones to refinish the bureau. They will be the ones returning to Restoration Hardware again and again, looking for the perfect brass drawer pulls. They will enjoy all this, and you won’t have to lift a finger except to write checks.

  As preppies make more money, they can’t help but be swept up in the wave of the new materialism. This is so sad; triste, really. It starts with the lower-school cocktail party in your living room—so you might reupholster your wing chairs and put some fringe on the ottoman. Then someone might want to publish a story on your herb garden. You order a new set of dishes on the DL. One thing leads to another, and you are suddenly the Nan Kempner of Wilmington. (There are worse things, Dotsie!)

  If you happen to be one of the fortunate who has so much money you might as well spend it on the house, you can expand it. Let every child have his own room! And what about a guest room for the guests you can now invite? Add the downstairs powder room! Go crazy. Put in a pool house, and while you’re at it, a pool. An allée of pleached limes leading to cutting and vegetable gardens. Have you always wanted a big 3-D TV? Build a room for it! Now you’re ready for your first Super Bowl party. By the time you’re finished, you will have one or no children left at home, but you will have a showpiece.

  1. To the eat-in kitchen. More masterpieces from Prudence and Constance’s lower-school art classes await.