by Plum Sykes
To be fair to Mom, she had tried to stick to her principles and not marry for love. Before she was a Professional Mom, she was a Professional Brown Signer.
A Brown Signer is a woman who is interested exclusively in British men with houses that have brown signs outside. I’ll explain: The only way the British aristocracy can afford to go on living in their huge beautiful houses is if they open them to the public. A sign that is generally brown with white lettering is placed on the closest highway to direct the public to the house. The brown signs often have a cute little icon of a stately home on them. Only very large houses have brown signs, because if your house is small, you can afford the repairs and upkeep yourself, but if your roof is sixteen square acres, financial aid is required every time a tile comes loose. So quite ironically, although a brown sign is an indication of too little money to mend a roof, it is also a reverse status symbol. Because if you don’t have enough money to mend your roof that means you must have a vast roof and we all know what’s underneath a vast roof: a vast house.
You’d be surprised how many girls want a man with a brown sign. Brown Signers are cunning, leggy, international beauties from Manhattan, Paris, and London, who pose as uncunning things like handbag designers, actresses, and artists. It’s perfect cover because no one would ever imagine that a fabulous girl with a modern career would swap it for something as retro as a brown sign. It makes no sense at all—I mean, it would be the moral equivalent of swapping the new Prada shoe for last season’s.
Before a date, Brown Signers do their homework. They look up the man in Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage, a British guidebook that lists Brits of high birth, plus their addresses. If the house has a “The” in front of it—e.g., “The Priory” or “The Manor”—it is more than likely to have over twenty rooms and a brown sign. Regardless of his looks, mind, hair quantity, or neck measurement, the Brown Signer is in love with the proprietor of the brown sign before she has closed her Debrett’s and curled her eyelashes.
Mom was an American Brown Signer posing as a student. It was the seventies and she couldn’t get out of the Upper East Side quick enough. Her destination: London’s Chelsea College of Art, the perfect hunting ground.
Mom thought she was getting The Manor-at-Ashby-Under-Little-Sleightholmdale by marrying Dad, which she did practically the day after he’d taken her to dinner at Annabel’s in Berkeley Square and driven her home in his Jaguar XJS (which was apparently a very cool car back then). After the wedding she discovered that although he has aristocratic roots, Dad was about thirteenth in line for The Manor-at-Ashby-Under-Little-Sleightholmdale. The Jaguar was borrowed. Mom blamed the confusion on her being an American, because Americans trust guidebooks like Debrett’s as much as they trust the Michelin Blue Guide.
That’s when the migraines started. Mom realized that not only was she married to a not very rich man, she was in love with him, too. It wasn’t what she wanted.
I say, complain not when you’ve saved yourself a life sentence like writing out The Manor-at-Ashby-Under-Little-Sleightholmdale every time you want to send a letter. I don’t think Mom agrees. She renamed our house, which was originally called Vicarage Cottage, The Old Rectory at Stibbly-on-the-Wold, which is a very grand title for a four-bedroom house that isn’t exactly old. Whenever I ask Mom why everyone else calls the village just “Stibbly” she says its because no one in the village knows their correct address.
Speaking of long names, this reminds me:
2. Toffs
The main reason to avoid a brown sign is because it comes with an aristocrat, known fondly as a “toff” in Britain. Toffs call their palaces “dumps,” wear sweaters with holes in them darned by their ancient nannies whom they love more than any other women in their lives, and really do call sex “shagging” à la Austin Powers. Amazingly a lot of English girls tolerate The toff in return for The House and The Title. Personally I think it would be beyond exhausting to have a title like The Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, or Alice, Duchess of Drumllan-drig. It’s bad enough signing checks with a name with two parts, let alone five or six. But to some women, a six-part name and a toff are worth all the sacrifices—like absolutely no central heating allowed, ever.
Seriously, the British aristocracy actually think heating is low class. I have always thought this is unfair to people like me who just get cold easily. Mom often said when I was a kid that she’d be happier if I died of pneumonia in a historic four-poster bed at twenty-nine than if I lived to be eighty-five in a centrally heated house. That’s one of the reasons I was allergic to Mom’s idea of the Boy Next Door: I just didn’t know if, being an American designed to thrive in balmy, artificial heat, my fragile constitution would survive the low temperatures associated with a toff marriage.
3. Dad
Dad describes himself as an “antiques entrepreneur,” but he’s so entrepreneurial that he’s totally gullible about any bargain, including those fake Chippendales he sold to the Earl. He was so cross about the whole affair that we could never mention it. In fact, no one in the house really spoke about chairs of any type when they were around Dad.
4. Brazilians
When I first moved to New York after college, this cute guy, a twenty-seven-year-old movie director (who’d never actually directed a movie) told me I “needed a Brazilian here.” Considering the position of his head at the time, which I’m way too polite to reveal, I thought it was très peculiar that he was proposing that a man of Latin origin should put his head in the same place.
“Chad!” I said. “Why would you want a Brazilian here as well as you?” (I mean, not to be racist or anything, but one foreigner at a time.)
“There’s too much hair down here for a New Yorker like me.”
“Would a Brazilian be more suited to this than you?” I asked.
“You don’t know what a Brazilian is, do you?”
“It’s a person like Ricky Martin.”
“Duh! Ricky Martin’s French. A Brazilian’s a wax. You need one real bad.”
Chad insisted I visit the J. Sisters the next morning at 35 West Fifty-seventh Street, which is where I discovered the true meaning of the word Brazilian. It’s a bikini wax that involves waxing virtually everything off the place where Chad had had his head. On the pain scale, it’s right up there with unfriendly things like cervical biopsies, so entre nous, next time I will get an epidural first.
Chad was thrilled with the new Brazilian. Most men are, I’ve subsequently discovered. Ironically it was to be the cause of our breakup. He wanted his head to be near it constantly, which got a bit much after a while. Then he started doing creepola things like spontaneously booking appointments for me with the J. Sisters and getting overly upset if I cancelled. (No one has the pain threshold to tolerate a Brazilian every week. No one.) That’s when I started to suspect that I don’t have quite as good taste in men as I do in shoes. A man whose affections are swayed by the shallow charms of a bikini wax wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I had to end it.
“Only a really superficial person would break up over a fuckin’ fifty-five-dollar wax,” said Chad when I told him.
“Chad, its fuckin-g,” I said. Chad was totally not into Received Pronunciation, which is the one British habit this American girl never kicked. I thought the way he spoke was cute actually, but I couldn’t help correcting him.
“There’s fuckin’ nothin’ more fuckin’ annoyin’ than goin’ out with ya.”
“Well then you must be happy I’m leaving you,” I said, trying not to get upset. “A girl’s more than the sum of her parts, Chad.”
Even though there were things I missed about Chad (the Brazilian was the start of many useful beauty tips), I was relieved it was over. I mean, he wasn’t exactly an honest person. Ricky Martin is actually from Puerto Rico, not France as Chad insisted he was, and if you look at the globe you’ll see Puerto Rico is much closer to Brazil than to France. Still, the one gift Chad gave me was the Brazilian. I couldn’t survive without it now. Apparently
it’s the secret weapon of the most glamorous women in the world. And I would never tell Chad this, after everything that happened, but if I were a man I probably wouldn’t want to date a woman who hadn’t had a Brazilian either. So, although I didn’t know about Brazilians until after I had left the English countryside, had I known about them before I decided to leave, it would definitely have made me go. Therefore, retrospectively, I can add Brazilians to my list of reasons to move to Manhattan.
* * *
Manhattan Shorthand: A Translation
1. Chip’s—Harry Cipriani on Fifth and Fifty-ninth Street.
2. Ana—to the Park Avenue Princesses, ana = anorexic = thin = perfection.
3. Beyond—not somewhere far away. It’s a substitute superlative replacing words like fabulous/ stunning/gorgeous. E.g., “That eyebrow wax is beyond.”
4. A Wollman—diamond the size of an ice rink.
5. A.T.M.—rich boyfriend.
6. M.I.T.—Mogul in Training (more desirable than an A.T.M.).
7. M.T.M.—Married to Mogul (better than both of previous).
8. Llamas on Madison—insanely glamorous South American girls who gallop up Madison in ponchos and pearls.
9. Fake Bake—tan acquired at Portofino Sun Soho Spa on West Broadway.
10. Eew!—mini-scream designed to show surprise/horror, as in “Eew! She got the new Bottega boots before me?” Used exclusively by Manhattan girls under twenty-seven and female stars of NBC sitcoms.
11. On the d-l—on the down low, from the low down, which means same as on the q-t.
12. Clinical—depressed, as in clinical depression.
13. The Fritz—abbreviation for “the fucking Ritz,” as in The Ritz Hotel, Paris.
* * *
3
“The only sexually transmitted disease I wanna contract,” said Julie, “is fiancé fever.”
I could see why Julie wanted a Prospective Husband. American men are wonderful, buff creatures with unique talents. I mean, if you squint enough, they all look like JFK Jr., I swear it. For someone with attention deficit disorder, which has afflicted Julie and most of the other Park Avenue Princesses since childhood (although it doesn’t seem to afflict them when shopping), her new ability to focus was miraculous. She had this crazy idea that if she selected exactly the right party, one that was the equivalent of attending six gallery openings, four museum benefits, three dinners, and two major movie premieres all in one night, she would be guaranteed to leave at the end of the evening with a Prospective Husband on her arm for sure. Julie said this was a project she didn’t want to waste too much time on when, as she puts it, “I could waste my time doing other things, like getting eyebrow waxes.”
Julie’s attitude toward her imminent engagement was a little disturbing. She honestly believed that when she got the perfect fiancé, if she hadn’t had time to get her eyebrows shaped—which is, in her opinion, the most important facial procedure performed by the doctors at the Bergdorf Goodman salon—she would be so gutted, there would be no point in the fiancé anyway.
When Julie puts her mind to something, she can be surprisingly efficient. She selected the New York Conservatory Ball, a charity benefit, as the most promising hunting ground. Having bought a table, she called the honorary chairwoman, Mrs. E. Henry Steinway Zigler III, to “discuss strategy.” Julie wanted to check the seating plan in advance. Mrs. Zigler invited us to tea at her marble mansion overlooking Central Park on Fifth Avenue and Eighty-second Street. She loves to play cupid.
“Call me Muffy, girls,” she said warmly when we arrived.
Muffy was wearing a fringed Oscar de la Renta poncho, lime green cigarette pants, and enough jewels to empty a diamond mine. She said she was channeling Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper. Everyone in New York is always channeling someone else. Her poncho swinging dramatically from side to side as she trotted ahead, she led us through the echoing atrium and into the drawing room. Grander than Versailles, it’s hung with huge gilt mirrors and Italian oil paintings, and dotted with elegant antique sofas and chairs that Muffy bulk buys whenever she’s close to a Sotheby’s. Muffy tells people her home is decorated, “to look exactly like Oscar’s. I went there, I saw his place, I couldn’t stand it. I had to have it. I cloned his apartment!”
Muffy always says that “being rich is a life sentence that is mainly enjoyable, and I should know.” Almost every Upper East Side wife I have met is called Muffy. Apparently it was once a very popular name in Connecticut, where most Muffys were born, roughly in the middle of the last century. This Muffy, like all her neighborhood Muffys, says, “Ralph Lauren is my drug of choice.” She’s addicted to Botox injections and tells everyone she’s “thirty-eight.” She’s an F.O.G.—Friend of George—and when Bill Clinton was in power, she was an F.O.B. She donates millions to the Republicans and millions more to the Democrats, because she still has a “special relationship” with Bill. All the other Muffys have special relationships with Bill too, but I don’t think she knows that.
We sat in a little group on Muffy’s matching Victorian Knole sofas. (Knole sofas are very, very in on the Upper East Side right now, especially if you can get one upholstered in seventeenth-century verdure tapestry, which of course is almost impossible.) A uniformed maid brought tea on a silver tray. With her party imminent, Muffy was as hyperactive as a Japanese tourist in a Louis Vuitton outlet store. She couldn’t stop tugging at the tassels on the sofa cushions.
“Oh Lord! The party’s tomorrow! I’ve secured super-duper princes, millionaires, movie producers, heirs, architects, politicians! Bill might be coming!” she exclaimed. “Everyone in New York will be here tomorrow night.”
“Which charity is this party in aid of, Muffy?” I asked.
“Oh, Save Something or Other. Save Venice, Save the Met, Save the Ballet! Who knows? I’m on so many committees—Mr. Zigler just adores those tax breaks—that I just call them all the same thing, ‘Save Whatever.’ Isn’t that brilliant! If only someone would save me from the ladies on the committees. If you don’t donate a mil it’s death by stiletto. I think this one is saving flowers of some kind. Charity is a glorious American institution because ultimately someone or other who needs it gets pots of money, and we all get to dress up in super-duper Michael Kors frocks. Now, business,” she said, more seriously. “A little birdie tells me you want a fiancé, Julie. How marvelous! Do tell! What sort of man do you want?”
“Someone smart, and fun, who’s going to make me laugh. And who I can moan and whine at for hours and they’ll still adore me. Just don’t hook me up with a creative type. I got those out of my system in high school. No actors, artists, or musicians for me, thank you,” said Julie.
I hadn’t realized Julie was so mature. Mind you, when you’ve had fifty-four boyfriends you should know what you want.
“There’s no fear of that on the Upper East Side, dear,” said Muffy. “There are no creative types up here, oh no! The mayor doesn’t let them past Union Square.”
“Oh, and I know this is going to sound totally spoiled and superficial, but I do like it if my boyfriends believe in drivers. I blame Dad. He ruined me for life by having me chauffeured to school every day in a Jaguar. That’s just the way I am. I can’t change myself, can I?” said Julie, blushing a little.
“No, dear,” cooed Muffy soothingly. “If you don’t like walking, you don’t like walking and that’s it. Look at me, I have three drivers! We have one at the house in Palm Beach, one in Aspen, and one here. There’s nothing wrong with expressing your needs, Julie.”
There’s extravagant and there’s extravagant. Even among her own set Muffy takes the word to new heights.
“I just want to fall in love, Muffy, like all the other girls, and have radiant skin without having to get Vitamin C injections,” said Julie, her eyes looking watery. “I get really lonesome sometimes.”
Muffy is an exceptionally mathematical socialite whose placement equations are as complex as chess. She has a system she uses whenever her “m
erging” services are required. She always makes sure she has one table of thirteen, with one too many men. Every guest has a number in the seating plan. Julie was number four and her seat would be second from the end of the rectangular table, which had the advantage of being accessible for conversation by four men. To Julie’s left and right would be an Italian prince and a record producer, opposite would be a real estate mogul, and at the head of the table would be the thirteenth, the “extra” man, who would be told by the hostess she was terribly sorry she had to sit him next to two other men, “but there’s just too many of you boys tonight!”
I don’t know anyone else in New York who could avail a girl of four eligible dinner partners at one sitting. The only time Muffy’s math fails her is when it comes to budgeting for the florist(s).
The next night Julie’s smile was bigger than Africa. So were her diamond earrings. Sometimes, even someone as happy for her friend’s good fortune as me goes a bit off-yellow with envy when I see Julie’s Cartier “loot” as she calls it. Still, the nice thing about Julie is she shares everything and had loaned me her diamond hoops for the night. She’d also enlisted the Bergdorf beauty team to do our hair and makeup at her apartment.
When I arrived Julie was sitting on the chaise longue in her drawing room. It’s a very elegant salon, painted duck-egg blue, with tall windows, thick cornicing, and an outrageous Guy Bourdin nude hanging over the fireplace just to mix things up. All Julie’s furniture is that wonderful thirties Hollywood stuff she adores, reupholstered in pale velvet to match the walls. Still, I couldn’t see much of anything wonderful because every surface was covered in some kind of cosmetic instrument. Davide, the makeup artist, had literally turned the room into his personal makeup studio. He was dabbing blush on Julie’s cheeks, Raquel was ironing Julie’s hair, and Irinia, the Polish pedicurist, was buffing Julie’s toenails. This is nothing. I’ve heard that some girls in New York don’t leave their apartment before a party without their dermatologist checking their epidermis for blemishes first.
