For the social climber in danger of losing his or her Swan, the engagement party is an opportunity to regain control. Yes, you should have nipped the relationship in the bud long before it reached this point, but do not waste time berating yourself. There is still time to do what is best for you.
Swans, being fabulously beautiful and perennially sexy, often get engaged and dis-engaged twice a year (about as often as a real swan molts its feathers). Ultimately, unlike real swans, human Swans rarely mate for life, but between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, they are prone to bouts of magical thinking in which they will delude themselves into believing they are like real swans in that regard. Supplying them with grim statistics that prove that Swan marriages to mere mortals often end in the worst kind of divorce (no alimony) will not convince your average Swan to call off the engagement at the engagement party.
What the smart social climber needs to do is to get the Swan’s fiancé to call off the engagement. We are not suggesting you do anything as cruel as actually telling the Swan’s fiancé that he is making a grave error, marrying a creature as innately and incurably flighty as a Swan. Your Swan would never forgive you for that. Let someone else plant the seeds of doubt. You will simply water them.
Who could you get to do something as socially unforgivable as sabotaging a couple’s engagement at their engagement party?
Because Swans are promiscuous by nature, they can’t resist inviting old boyfriends or girlfriends to their engagement parties. Old boyfriends or girlfriends are prone to become intoxicated at the sight of a Swan they once dallied with getting engaged to someone other than themselves, which makes them your perfect accomplice.
After helping the brokenhearted ex to his third, fourth, and fifth shot of tequila, it will be easy for a silver-tongued devil like yourself to talk him into standing up and making a toast in which he will recount one of his many funny misadventures with the Swan. All Swans, being Holly Golightly creatures regardless of sex, have past life experiences they have not shared with their fiancés. The stories you want to convince the drunken ex-boyfriend (or girlfriend) to reveal in the toast might include the transmission of STDs, past drug arrests, or witty anecdotes about how the Swan got crabs in his or her eyelashes.
Remember to quiet the crowd so that not only the unsuspecting Swan’s fiancé but the hard-of-hearing parents or grandparents will catch every word. When jaws drop and the room goes quiet, you should be the first one to stand up, turn on the drunken ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend, and take offense. Better yet, help the confused and humiliated fiancé throw the offending ex out the door. Then, pull the fiancé you are actually trying to dispose of and his parents into another room and say the following magic words: “As long as you keep her [your Swan] on her medication, she’ll be fine.”
Of course, if your Swan is marrying a really Big Fish or, better yet, a Whale, the wise Mountaineer should not, under any circumstances, encourage the ex-boyfriend (or girlfriend) to make an incendiary toast. In fact, you should do any and everything to make sure the Swan actually goes through with the marriage. Yes, in the short run your Swan will desert you for the Big Fish or Whale spouse. But when the inevitable divorce happens, you will be there to make sure your Swan’s alimony settlement includes unlimited use of her ex’s private plane, and your Swan will soon be jetting you off to even better parties.
Weddings
The fantasy of the bride in white conjures up such potent and positive voodoo, everyone at the wedding begins to see the world through rose-colored glasses. However, that only works to the social climbers’ advantage if they steel themselves against contamination and do not fall victim to the spell of wedding fever themselves and waste time and attention charming guests who have even less to offer than themselves. Linger with the maiden aunts from Wisconsin who can only invite you to the opening of a can of creamed corn no longer than it takes to make you seem like a caring person to people who can help you. Stay focused on what you came to the wedding to do—climb.
While weddings offer a romantic respite from the cynicism of modern life to the civilian, to the climber they provide a hearts-and-flowers version of von Clausewitz’s fog of war, a veritable cloudbank of romantic delusion that makes even the clumsiest climber seem like an upwardly mobile Fred Astaire.
As to how to negotiate the wedding, know that most large weddings are basically dinner dances with pagan overtones and small weddings are generally for people who’ve been married before and lost most of their friends to the more successful ex, or those whose parents are too cheap to spring for a blowout. Basic cocktail party and dinner dance rules apply. In the postreligious service predinner cocktail stage of the party, it’s best to stay moving. You are a shark, not a bottom-feeder. Meet, greet, and ascertain the worth of the guests as quickly as possible. Pretend to go to the bar, but do not drink at the bar. And even if you have the good fortune to be attending a no-expense-spared nuptial, do not keep hitting on the waitress carrying the tray of glasses brimming with champagne simply because it is free.
It’s important to remember who brides and grooms and their parents invite to the wedding. Yes, there are the embarrassing family relations and lame friends from college they have to include. But invariably, brides and their family, when drawing up the guest list for a wedding, make a point of sending invitations to their most accomplished, successful, well-off, generous, and most-connected friends and relations, in part to get maximum return for their investment vis-à-vis expensive wedding presents.
And because even the most average groom’s parents will compete with the bride’s parents to show off just how many rich, successful, famous people they know, weddings are tantamount to Big Fish conventions. Not just local Big Fish, but Big Fish from other cities, different parts of the country, other nations. Most important of all, because Big Fish have seen so much ugliness while climbing their way to the top, they are particularly prone to fall under the spell of wedding witchcraft and open themselves up to becoming new best friends with you.
The simple fact that the bride’s guests don’t often know the groom’s guests gives the climber still another advantage; whereas, at a normal party, it would be gauche to point and ask, “What’s the name of that nice old man who drove up in the Rolls-Royce convertible?” or inquire bluntly, “Are those diamonds that woman’s wearing real?,” at a wedding, it’s acceptable. There’s no need to go to the bathroom and google one’s fellow wedding guests because families from both sides of the aisle will be eager to brag about the net worth, claim to fame, or ostentatious lifestyle of every Big Fish they’ve managed to corral into the tent. Though bloodied bedsheets are no longer displayed to the guests after the wedding night, the great news for climbers is that weddings are still all about showing off. And when people are showing off how rich, famous, and successful they are, it’s easy for even the visually impaired climber to see who merits chatting up.
Small weddings—intimate affairs of fewer than fifty guests—offer the added advantage of giving you the time and opportunity to meet all the Big Fish, even if you’re stuck seated between the two maiden aunts with the creamed corn. At a large wedding, those with more than 150 guests, it will be harder for you to stand out but much easier to switch place cards to a seat next to a Big Fish, Whale, Swan, Turtle, etc.
In our experience, the ideal wedding from a social climber’s point of view is a midsize destination wedding, where a hundred or so guests are flown gratis to a five-star hotel with a pink sand beach. However, when one is a guest at a wedding held in a country where one does not speak the language, it is wise to keep a list of vital party information on your person at all times. Ms. Johnson learned this painful lesson when attending a gala nuptial of close personal friends on the island of Ibiza. The after-party for the rehearsal dinner took place in the VIP section of the island’s nightclub of choice, Pasha, on a night DJ’ed by none other than David Guetta. All was fabu until Ms. Johnson made the mistake of leaving the VIP section to go to the ladies
’ room. On her return she was shocked and embarrassed to discover that the bouncer would not let her reenter due to the fact that she had forgotten the name of her host, the bridegroom. As Ms. Johnson learned the hard way, it is both bad manners and inconvenient to forget your host’s name.
Perks and free plane fare alone don’t make the difference between the great wedding and the merely good wedding. It’s the number of new best friends you make. To do that, one has to stand out without being left out, which is another way of saying you need to stand out without others thinking you are trying to show off. And the best way to do that is to offer a toast to the newlyweds. Make it seem extemporaneous, but in fact you should have been polishing it in front of the mirror in the weeks leading up to the wedding. Do not be ashamed if you lack the writing skills to come up with a great toast on your own, i.e., either plagiarize or get an ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend to help you write it, with the veiled promise you will bring them to the wedding with you, which of course you won’t.
As at the engagement party, resist the temptation to compose a toast that makes you seem clever at the bride and groom’s expense, or that makes reference to old boyfriends or girlfriends or the indiscretions that occurred at the bachelorette/bachelor party.
A word to the wise: The same feel-good feeling that makes weddings such an easy place to social climb also makes them treacherously dizzying for even the most experienced Mountaineer.
EMPOWERING THOUGHT #24
Social climbers are cynics, and cynics are disappointed romantics, i.e., even the most hard-hearted Mountaineer will be tempted to get caught up in the infectious Last Night on the Planet to Mate vibe that permeates wedding parties. Do not pass up an opportunity to make a friendship that can advance you in order to exchange bodily fluids with a total stranger . . . no matter how long it has been since you have had sex.
Those social climbers invited to take part in the rehearsal dinner are particularly vulnerable to the sexual energy that is in the air. Mountaineers enlisted as bridesmaids and groomsmen are apt to find themselves thinking about the wrong kind of prize.
If you are unable to resist the urge to spawn at a wedding and take off your dress or trousers in a sand trap on the golf course or in the parking area, make a point of remembering where you left them. If you cannot remember, ask a valet parker for help finding them. Asking the bride’s mother to help you find clothes misplaced in the heat of a quickie is one of the few forms of twenty-first-century wedding behavior that is universally deemed unacceptable.
WHAT AM I SAYING YES TO? DATING, LOVE, AND MARRIAGE
There is no question that today’s more casual approach to dating, courtship, and social intercourse of a sexual nature has provided climbing opportunities to upwardly mobile members of both sexes and all sexual orientations that were not available to previous generations of climbers.
Loosely arranged dinners and bar hangs involving groups of young climbers in their twenties, what we call Posse Dating, provides multiple climbing options. Unfettered by the commitments and obligations involved in having to go through the boring rigmarole of actually asking someone out for an old-fashioned date and having to spend the whole evening sitting next to that person, one is free to ditch the group with little or no guilt and climb solo when one runs into a superior class of person or group to get sloppy drunk with.
Better still, the Posse Date allows an individual who left the group to pursue a Big Fish but fails to land him or her the chance to rejoin the posse before the evening’s over. Most important, if you return to the posse before last call, you will still have a shot at hooking up with one of the posse members, i.e., a friend with benefits. If you can’t get a piece of the cake you really want to cut into, there’s still cake to be had; or, as we say, skilled social climbers never miss an opportunity to have their cake and eat it, too.
Whether you are out there making the most of the no-strings group dating scene, or are an old-fashioned romantic type who dates just one person at a time in order to steal their best/most helpful friends more efficiently before trading up, nearly every Mountaineer eventually experiences a Come to Jesus moment. A moment when no matter how social climbing has improved your life, no matter how many Big Fish, Whales, Swans, Turtles, friends with benefits you have on speed dial, you sense something important is missing in your life. What sort of something? No, it’s not a Ferrari or a set of identical twins who give backrubs and own a schloss in Gstaad. What you’re lacking is a partner, a soul mate to climb with.
For you this moment may come as an epiphany—a sudden realization that the fact you will never be able to love another person as much as yourself does not mean you are shallow, it means you are finally ready to have a mature relationship.
Others come to this crossroads because they hear the tick-tock of their biological clock. The sight of nannies pushing in-vitro twins who belong to a couple with matching Porsches often inspires climbers to wish they had a life partner they could have children with and share the joy of teaching the little ones how to climb. Some come to this Rubicon because their climb has leveled off. Having hit a plateau or, worse, having found themselves slipping backward, they muster up the humility to cling to someone else who is backsliding. Only as a couple pooling their address books and invites can they make it to the next level of the game.
EMPOWERING THOUGHT #25
True love for the Mountaineer comes when you meet someone you actually like, with whom you have hot sex as often as you eat, and who has so much more of everything than you do that you feel as if you’ve slept your way to the top, even if you didn’t sleep your way to the top. Which, if you think about it, is how love should always feel.
Admittedly, it’s hard to know whether you are thinking about getting serious because all of your friends with benefits have gotten married or stopped having casual sex with you, or because it actually is time for you to get serious about getting serious.
To find out if you are ready to give up climbing solo, answer the following questions:
1. Would you be more popular with the people you want to be popular with if you didn’t sleep around? Yes / No
2. Is there an extra man or woman in your social set who is smarter, more accomplished, more attractive than you are who is suddenly scooping up all the invites you used to get? Yes / No
3. Would you have more money for social climbing if you had someone to split household expenses with and provide you with a marital deduction for your income tax? Yes / No
4. Is there a club you’d like to join but can’t, because it doesn’t accept unmarried women or men, or you lack the social credentials to get in on your own? Yes / No
5. Have you recently lost your job, and/or are you about to be indicted for a felony? Yes / No
6. Do you dream of being married to someone who owns a yacht and want to climb onboard while you still look good in a bathing suit? Yes / No
7. Will you inherit more money if you get married and/or have children? Yes / No
8. Do you know a Big Fish or Whale who’s recently been ditched you think might be so heartbroken that he or she would say yes to marrying someone like yourself? Yes / No
9. Are you losing your hair or having trouble maintaining your youthful figure, or do you have a worsening medical condition that requires treatment not covered by your insurance carrier? Yes / No
If you have answered yes to any of the above, then it’s time to get serious.
To begin with, if you’re serious about getting serious, you must put your hand on The Social Climber’s Bible and swear from this moment on you will give up Posse Dating.
Yes, it will be hard to get used to actually calling someone up on a phone and asking that person out, but trust us: This modus operandi is so quaint, whoever you ask out will mistake your directness for self-confidence rather than desperation. Equally important: no more bottom-feeding, even when you’re lonely.
From this moment on, you must also swear you will only date Keepers.
&nbs
p; If you have already dated your way up the food chain and are involved with a Big Fish who laughed the last time you brought up the subject of marriage, or is already married but claims he/she can’t divorce because of the negative psychological effect on their children or because their spouse has threatened to commit suicide, do not believe them. These are lame excuses. Know that if they really valued you or your sexual favors they would be worried about you threatening to kill yourself. Regardless, it’s time to move on . . . but on your terms, not theirs.
To put yourself in the best position to find a Keeper, you will have to get rid of the Big Fish in a way that generates sympathy for you among your Big Fish’s friends, so you can keep fishing in his/her pond—i.e., you have to make it seem that Mr. or Ms. Big Fish has dumped you rather than vice versa. How do you do that? Dose him/her with a hit of X, invite over your trampiest friend, and leave the house. Come back two hours later and walk in on them en flagrante. Get upset, but make it clear that you forgive both of them and still want to be friends, i.e., still go to their parties, sleep with their friends, but not sleep with them because you can’t bear to have your heart broken again.
Fortunately, we live in a time in which interracial and interfaith unions are accepted. But as much as the world has changed, a mixed marriage between a social climber and a non–social climber poses special challenges and puts often insurmountable strains on the relationship from day one.
Will your prospective spouse convert to your faith? Will they ever care enough about you to go out and make the kind of friends that will help you get to the top of the mountain? Or will they insist on including their white trash friends and family in your social life? Can a nonpracticing social climber teach your child the commandments contained in The Social Climbers Bible?
The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile Page 11
