“Well, you know what I always say: where there’s a will, there’s a relative,” I said.
He continued: “Imagine spending years and millions, suing each other—years of character assassination in court. For what? Because someone won’t put up with the wife’s trainer or the husband’s stripper? The Europeans have it right. When the man wants to have a bit of fun, he buys the young lady a Hermès bag and off she goes. The wife gets the earrings from Graff; the bigger the indiscretion, the bigger the stone. They’re not testifying against each other; they’re smart. Think of all the eight-figure divorces.”
“So did you say anything to your wife about the new deal?”
“Some people do and some people don’t,” he said, avoiding the question and looking at his Cartier tank. “The smartest women, in my opinion, turn a blind eye to keep the family together.” He downed his espresso and waved good-bye.
He had an appointment to keep, but didn’t mention with whom.
Part of the upper crust, fabulous interior designer Lily Whitebread and I were catching up over a scrumptious Nutella, fruit, and toast confection at the Eurosleek Artisan Boulanger. Witty, entertaining, and très intéressante, Lily lives the transatlantic lifestyle while her husband lives in and around Charleston, South Carolina.
“So do you ever see each other?” I asked.
“Hardly ever,” she said, amused.
“Did you ever consider getting a divorce?”
“Why would I?” she asked without irony. “That’s the beauty of it. He lives there, and I live all over. It’s the only way to do it, dear. I call it Marriage 3.0.”
“So you never see each other?”
“No. We do speak and collaborate over Charlotte (their grown daughter), and he sends flowers on my birthday and anniversary. Who wants to get divorced? Why disrupt your life? I see this as a new trend,” she said, munching on a flaky brioche that apparently had no effect on her rail-thin figure.
“How so?” I raised my hand for more coffee.
“In the old days,” she said, smiling, “people had the good grace to drop dead. Now everyone works out, eats well, and their cholesterol is under control. The men are living so much longer. So when the kids are grown, one is confronted with one’s spouse.”
“Did you actually sit down and work it all out?”
“There’s no need to,” she said, twirling her wedding band. “It just is.”
“Do your friends have deals?”
“Some do and some don’t. The really successful ones tend to. We don’t need a man for anything.”
“Then why be married?” I knew I was pushing Lily’s white buttons.
“It’s part of the fear that women have about not having ‘Mrs.’ in front of their names. Today, one has a choice. Marriage is a choice but not a mandate. Many women went charging into the workforce in my day and then bailed. If the husband lets them go spinning and lunching and shopping, many women would rather take that option.
“For me and my friends, speaking on the phone to our husbands and going off to the South of France or Siena for the summer couldn’t be more wonderful. Brioche, dear?”
With Memorial Day fast approaching and the pleasures of seersucker and linen beckoning, I received a call from a Southern Gentleman I know through the squash circuit. He is going through a War of the Roses–style divorce.
“Up for a game and a martini afterward?” I asked.
“I’ll take the martini but I haven’t been playing lately. Things have been extremely difficult. We’re actually going to trial next week,” he said in a shell-shocked tone.
“Why don’t you just split it down the middle and call it a day?” I asked.
“She’s getting all sorts of bad advice from people who are telling her she should be getting more than I have. It’s been disastrous. The only people who are winning are the lawyers.”
“Yes, I have heard that before,” I sympathized.
“These divorce lawyers are undertakers for the living,“ he moaned. “You lose a loved one and all your money. Not to mention I hardly see my children anymore.”
“I am so sorry to hear that. Let’s make plans for drinks at the club,” I offered.
“That would be great,” he said before hanging up. “If I could have martinis by intravenous, I would.”
6. NEVER MIND THE NANNIES, DRIVERS ARE THE NEW DADS
LIVING ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE, one gets accustomed to seeing ridiculous things, from $300 plates of truffle pasta to couture dog collars. But this one was a first. The other evening, I was walking off the leaden canapés after another deadly fund-raiser in someone’s “aerie.” As I was passing a venerable Park Avenue residential building, a black SUV came to a halt.
A Dwayne Johnson–proportioned driver got out, lifted a supine teenager from the backseat like a bag of golf clubs, and lugged him to the door. “I’ve taken away your cell phone,” he said. “You’ll get it back when your parents return.” He then deposited the drunken youth in the lobby. “Sleep next to a garbage can,” he cautioned before leaving his charge in the custody of the doormen.
The New York Post recently wrote about parents who were passing off their classroom volunteer duties to nannies, much to the dismay of their private schools, or rather, of the other moms, who didn’t fancy selling snickerdoodles alongside hired help at bake sales. The story ricocheted around the Upper East Side, a neighborhood whose privileged parents stand accused of outsourcing every child-rearing task, from cooking to etiquette training.
As someone who lives and raises kids there, I’m here to tell you that these charges are all pretty much true. (It’s actually worse.) But now drivers are stepping in as parents as well? That was something I hadn’t heard.
I don’t want to be seen as a hypocrite here; we use car services during the week and occasionally a driver on the weekend as needed. But let me be clear that these are people who merely transport our family—nothing more—and there’s always another adult in the vehicle. As my kids get older, will I be calling upon these men to mete out punishments to my children? Ground them? Attend parent-teacher conferences in my stead? Drop them off at college someday?
I’m sure it’s been done before.
The next day, I was having drinks at the kind of private club that still insists on ties, no jeans, and no technology (a port in the storm when you are surrounded by private equity guys), when I relayed the incident to a friend with older children. He explained that to a growing degree, drivers are the eyes and ears of Uptown parents: protecting, chaperoning, disciplining, and dragging teens out of clubs when they are wasted.
Crucial to these drivers’ job success is being able to finesse the tension between parents who hire them to spy on their children and teenagers who try to ditch their captors at every turn. “Ex-cops and detectives make the best drivers,” my friend said. “They are good at picking up clues, and they get right in there and pull the kids out of clubs when they’re shitfaced. Must be a Staten Island thing.”
“Aren’t the parents supposed to do that?” I asked, sipping the kind of martini that only a gentile club could make.
“Of course.” He munched on an olive. “When they’re back from St. Barths.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it was either a driver or boarding school,” said a friend the next night. My wife, Dana, and I were out with another couple who are big in real estate banking. Their kids are five years older than our own, and their driver’s job duties are as limitless as their kids’ run of the city.
“If you think I’m going to police my children after midnight, you have another thing coming. Until I got Vince, I was missing spin at seven thirty,” she said. “It was starting to affect my looks.”
This is a mom who started letting her kid drink in front of her at age fifteen. “They were coming home drunk … so now I let them have wine or beer in front of me,”
she said, knocking back a vodka and cranberry.
“At fifteen?” Dana asked.
“You’ll see when your kids get to be our kids’ ages,” she said. “Younger wives are always so idealistic until the moment comes. And then you’ll fold like the rest of us.”
The more I asked, the more the stories began to pile up, many of them of a cat-and-mouse nature. Parents hiring ex-Mossad agents with spy cams and installing tracking devices in their kids’ phones (until the kids were smart enough to disable them). Children running out the back door of a club to party down the street while the driver slept out front.
A golfing partner revealed that his family’s driver, an ex-cop, carries a Glock. “I’d rather have a driver that my kids know and like than have them take cabs from someone right off the boat. Who knows if they’re safe?” he said, swinging his sand wedge in the trap. “It’s accountability. And that matters to me.” (Also, if there’s a traffic altercation, having an ex-cop call the cops can’t be the worst thing.)
A college-age man I know—who still speaks twice a month to the driver his family hired for him when he was in high school—said that having a driver had its advantages when it came to high school romance. Except when he was dating a girl whose family had one as well.
“Her father would send her driver to follow us to see what was going on. Of course, we tried to lose the tail.”
“Did it work?”
“Sometimes, but he was good. He always managed to track us down.”
Last year, when my son wanted to take a cab with a friend to a Downtown party at nine p.m., I vetoed it, thinking twelve was a little on the young side. The other child went. I’m still surprised by other parents’ willingness to give their teenagers the run of the city and leave the drivers in charge. When it comes to going out unsupervised to parties and clubs, thirteen is the new eighteen. Why not keep it simple and put the kids on a shorter leash?
As it turns out, there is no single answer. There are the “me time” parents, who complain that family time or chaperoning their kids puts a dent in their own social lives. Then there are the divorced couples, who rely on drivers as neutral shuttle services between both homes, with the driver deployed as communicator and mediator. In my observation, divorces often breed permissiveness, because the parties can’t agree on a uniform parenting style.
The last subset—perhaps the chief offenders—is a group whose own deficiencies as teenagers fuel their kids’ social lives. They’re the formerly uncool high school students who want desperately to live vicariously through their children. The men tend to be Napoleonic, and, having conquered the world of finance, they often have unlimited cash and credit to dispense to their progeny. They populate New York campuses with incredibly indulged and well-dressed children and believe that money and power are the keys to popularity. For them, drivers are less chaperones than enablers: helping kids gain club access, bottle service, fake IDs, and, yes, romantic partners.
Of course, all this late-night surveillance comes at a cost. I was at a charity gala in the Met’s Egyptian wing when I ran into one of the Upper East Side Queens of Consumerism, noted for her outsize diamonds as well as her outsize handbag collection. “Weekend drivers all want premium pay after eight,” she lamented, clicking a crystal minaudière in the shape of a farm animal. “And pizza’s not good enough. They want spicy tuna rolls and black cod with miso takeout.” She touched up her lips and floated off like a chiffon-and-diamond nimbus cloud.
And why shouldn’t drivers want Nobu? All the better to nourish them for long nights babysitting the misbehaving offspring of the city’s elite.
Some may argue that there is a moral lapse in letting the driver take on parenting duties. My kids are still too young, so I leave it to others to judge. But would a little help with algebra be out of the question?
7. NEED AN INTERN WITH A STRONG SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT AND BAD MANNERS? HIRE A RICH KID
VERY FEW PEOPLE KNOW how to throw a good party, let alone ever host one. Or even know how to entertain.
I learned the basics when I was my fraternity’s social chairman in college and came to understand how much hard work and planning go into a memorable evening.
Social Powerhouse’s Playboy-themed party in the Hamptons was among the summer’s best.
Perhaps it was the half-naked PYTs frolicking in the custom grotto, the myriad of bunnies on high-wire trapeze-style swings, the muscled shirtless models in bow ties, the famous ’80s singer, or the convincing bathrobed Hefner look-alike. It was Gatsby style and a rarity.
I was standing under a festooned big top, conversing with Big Brother (the famous adman/TV host), with whom I have a close, long-standing relationship, when the twentysomething son of an acquaintance interrupted our conversation, as if we were peers.
“How do you two …” He made the hand motion indicating knowing each other.
“I used to work for him when I first entered the business, before starting my first firm,” I said.
“No, we worked together,” Big Brother said graciously.
“No, I worked for you, but that’s kind.” I laughed. “And before that I was a receptionist.”
The young person looked at me in wide-eyed horror.
He trailed me to the bar. “Richard, why do you let people know that you were a receptionist?”
“Working your way up is respectable,” I said. “The most successful people in Hollywood worked their way up in the CAA mailroom, as an example.”
“Maybe,” the be-Rolexed millennial said. “But I’d rather work my way up from the top.”
There is a rampant disease today that goes beyond borders. Entitlement is a contagious, insidious state of mind that has infected a whole generation of young people who feel they deserve things based on who they think they are or who their parents are. Or who they’ve been told they are.
Entitlement also afflicts adults, who feel they should have or get things based on their friends having them or just feeling worthy. It’s hard to pinpoint the derivation of where and when the disease started, but it’s an epidemic.
“Mr. Kirchenbaum, I am very disappointed that you do not have a position for me,” proclaimed the e-mail from a friend-of-a-friend’s daughter, whom I did the favor of meeting for an informational interview. Besides misspelling my name, she wrote she found it discouraging that I let her know trying to secure an internship or job is best done in December, not two weeks before college graduation … that most internships had been filled six months earlier (as was ours) and that, since masses of graduating college seniors would be seeking jobs, it was not exactly the most ideal or opportune time. She picked up her Balenciaga bag at the news and left in a huff.
The next day the imperious e-mail arrived, my friend cc’d as if to apply further pressure.
Poor, long-suffering Carol, my assistant, has put up with years of rude and demanding behavior from “the children of” … with calls like “I’m in town and can meet him this week at three,” or parents who call about an internship status grilling, “Does Richard KNOW that Bettina has not heard back yet?” “Don’t they KNOW who SHE IS?” or “who WE ARE?”
I do like helping and encouraging young people. There is often a jewel who redeems the process, along with some well-raised and respectful children. That said, the majority do not send thank-you notes, even upon securing a coveted internship or job per my recommendation.
“The parents of,” who can solve their children’s every problem, desire, and whim with a black card, often do not know that entry-level jobs are a rarity and internship programs at large agencies have been cut for budgetary reasons.
I have Carol send each parent who asks this favor a WSJ article titled “Where Did All the Entry Level Jobs Go?” to give them a sense of reality and a preliminary education.
Unless of course the parents buy an internship at a school or charity auction. I often see th
e progeny of the rich nonchalantly rattle off working for the world’s most famous movie producers and couturiers like they went to Friendly’s for a Fribble.
“Yeah”—the high school junior cracks his gum—“last summer I was an assistant director for [world-famous Academy Award–winning director].” I have seen and heard it all. I particularly enjoy it when the interns flee their posts early for Saint-Tropez, thus bailing on their final presentations.
“I have, therefore I am owed,” BFF therapist revealed over dinner at the Palm. This childhood bestie and I bemoan the sad state of affairs over creamed spinach and hash brown potatoes.
“Money and privilege are often a catalyst for this sprouting,” she noted.
“How so?” I asked, eyeing the delectable fried onion rings.
“Take the whole trophy culture,” she said. “The programs we send our children to are so expensive they all get a trophy just for being there. Kids expect ongoing trophy treatment, trophy lives.” She sliced the strip steak.
“Not to mention trophy wives. Is it an issue in your practice?” I cut the glistening chicken Milanese.
“Yes, it’s just another social ill like bullying or stealing.”
“The root?”
“It’s often a mask for insecurity, anxiety, uncertainty. It may be a Band-Aid for hopelessness, loss of control, or just a temporary elixir for fleeting happiness. The source differs from person to person but can be borne out of a parent’s need to please. No is not a part of the vernacular. This may be a result of newfound wealth or parents who resolved never to say no to their children. The idea being that the more one says yes, the better the parent is.”
“And what happens?”
“The outcome can be disastrous … Those whose needs are not met can become depressed, rageful, and often turn to substances.”
Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent Page 5
