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

by Richard Kirshenbaum

  “A little Xany will do you good,” she said, picking around in the compartments. “Let’s see, I have Valium, Xanax. Oh, those are the antidepressants. Wait, are those the Klonopin or the Zoloft … ?” she pondered.

  “A cosmo and Molly and you won’t remember a thing,” she offered. “Even if the big one comes.”

  Having grown up in the “Just Say No” generation, afflicted by fear, guilt, and propaganda, it’s strange to see so many New York parents smoking, popping, and snorting as soon as their kids are counting sheep.

  “It’s the ’80s again,” a good friend said at a recent party, inhaling a funny cigarette and passing it along.

  “Why’s that?” I said, taking in the duplex transformed into a dance party.

  She gesticulated above the din and deejay spinning electronic dance music. “Let’s say you’re at a party and it’s a five. By smoking or drinking you already elevate it to a six or a seven. Time is valuable. All I have to say is: elevate your party level for better times, baaaby.”

  “Well, they certainly are,” I said, pointing to two married women (to men) I knew who were gyrating and making out in the corner.

  “That’s my point. You don’t feel old, you feel free. You’re having a renaissance,” she said as she toked.

  “Any downside?” I said, taking a Jell-O shot.

  “I haven’t heard any bad reviews.” She shrugged in her vintage Halston halter. “Honestly, I want to go out there and have a great time. I want to be wasted, entertained. I just want to fly high and have fun. Take the edge off,” she mused.

  “The cause for all this fun?” I probed like a proctologist.

  “It’s a midlife crisis. Lots of rich girls doing coke, Mollys, and edibles behind their husbands’ backs.”

  “And your husband?” I asked, wondering what the straitlaced banker would think.

  “We don’t have that kind of relationship,” she said. “I’m honest.”

  “Honest?”

  “I said to him, you’re missing out. If you want to go out and have to deal with all these people unmedicated, that’s your issue.”

  After I got back from LA, I was catching up with a friend after his family’s ski trip to Aspen.

  “How was your trip?” I asked.

  “Half of New York was there,” he said. “It was a crazy party.”

  “How was the skiing?” I asked.

  “Everyone in Aspen was high. They were bumping off trees on the mountain like pinball machines. You cannot believe the dispensaries out there. By the end of the trip, the whole town was sold out. People were bringing back the infused gummy candies by the garbage-bag full.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “People were eating those gummies like sunflower seeds. They were whacked.”

  “What do you think about it all?”

  “Look,” he said, asking his assistant to bring him a double espresso, “it’s people trying to hang on to their youth. You can get wasted when you’re in your forties and fifties but it’s kind of sad when you see people in their sixties who are sloppy. So you might as well do it while you’ve still got it going on.”

  Our first weekend back from the left coast saw us at a dinner party in an elegant Normandy pile in Greenwich. It was a well-heeled and conservative crowd, which prompted me to ponder whether drug usage had made its way to suburbia. My dinner partner, a vivacious and convivial gal, seemed taken aback by my line of questioning.

  “No. None of my friends do drugs here,” she said with distaste. “They only drink. I think New York is just a faster crowd.” She eyed me suspiciously as she took a spoonful of crème brûlée.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you and ask if you were partaking. It’s just that I am writing an article.”

  “Yes, I’ve read some of your pieces. You seem to know the most ridiculous people.”

  “That I do.” I smiled.

  “Wait.” She turned to me in a discreet fashion, as if offering up the tidbit like a peace sign. “I think I have something for you. Do you know how all these women stay so thin?” she whispered, as if giving up the secret location to the Maltese falcon.

  “How?” I leaned in.

  “They take their children’s ADD medication. It’s all speed, suppresses the appetite.”

  “I was sober for a decade,” a fellow charity board member and fairly new acquaintance revealed over lunch at Bill’s. “My drinking was honestly the cause of my first divorce.”

  “First?”

  “I’ve also been married multiple times. Runs in the family.”

  He asked the waiter for a whiskey, neat. “My mother was an artist, a socialite, an alcoholic, and, honestly, a drug addict. I was shipped off to a different boarding school with each new husband. That said, she had great style.”

  “All those schools,” I sympathized. “That must have been difficult.”

  “It’s all a blur between the beer and the bong hits.”

  “Do you and your friends still do drugs?”

  “Well, everyone on the North Shore and in Palm Beach is friendly with the drink. Drinking is part of the culture—cocktails before dinner, roadies at the [überexclusive North Shore golf club], bloodies at the [fortresslike Palm Beach private club].”

  “So no drugs?”

  “Let’s just say I’m trying to teach myself to do coke more. I bought a spoon.”

  “Teach yourself? Why?”

  “I’ve gained so much weight from the beer and vodka, I’m starting to resemble a keg.”

  The next week, I met a golf buddy at Sant Ambroeus for a fluffy egg white omelette and espresso. As we were catching up, he said that his twelve-year-old son had walked into the apartment unannounced and smelled the marijuana.

  “That’s not cigarette smoke. Is that what I think it is? That’s illegal, Dad!!!”

  My friend tried to explain that adults sometimes relax in other ways.

  “Who are you buying this from?” the son lectured. “These are bad people. Dad, do you want to go to JAIL?” he pleaded.

  A similar story was relayed to me as well when a friend’s daughter came home early and caught my friend, a conservative Madison Avenue private equity guy, smoking weed. The daughter shrieked, “Dad, what are you doing?” The father turned white and said—and I quote: “It’s not mine, I’m just holding it for a friend.”

  The digital landscape has transformed everything, from book and food delivery to drug delivery.

  “In college I used to have to go to some grungy park and meet ‘the guy,’” said one of New York’s high fliers. “Now it’s just a text away. It’s like when I first moved to New York and I could order in moo shu chicken. I thought having a doorman and ordering in takeout was the ultimate luxury. Now I’m getting the weed delivered to my doorstep. It’s the next level of delivery!”

  “I felt that way about Fresh Direct a few years back,” the wife interjected, “and our dealer is very stylish. You should see, he’s all in Dolce. In fact, I asked him where he got his blazer and told him to pick one up for Mark (not his real name) in a size forty-two.”

  “Oh, I love that blazer. I didn’t realize it was from Yves (not his real name).”

  “Now he’s adding personal shopping as an extra service,” she said admiringly.

  “I have a different theory,” Respected Uptown Therapist revealed in his office. Why do they all love Danish Modern furniture with nubby fabric? I wondered.

  “There’s an enormous amount of social pressure in New York City. To be thin, to be beautiful, to be rich and successful.” He stroked his Freudian goatee. “There’s a term, ‘relative deprivation.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “You may have it all but you are relatively deprived compared to someone who has much more than you have. And then it’s about appearances.”r />
  “I call it the press release,” I offered. “Don’t forget everyone has perfect children as well who are all geniuses and savants.”

  “With all this pressure, the drugs, drinking, and partying are the pressure valves. The more pressure, the more need for release.”

  “Perhaps that’s why it’s happening more in New York City?”

  “It is undeniable that it is more stressful in the city. When you’re doing drugs, you forget your problems. I see a lot of wives doing drugs to escape their husbands’ reduced bonuses.”

  “Sounds like high school all over again.”

  “Yes. Even down to the rich popular kids. Only now they’re parents.”

  Just this week I woke up in wrenching pain and headed to the dentist.

  “You have a fractured tooth and it needs to come out. Most likely you’ll need an implant.”

  I always say toothache is as bad as heartache, but not nearly as romantic.

  “Give me every painkiller you have,” I begged. “I also have a business function at six I have to attend.” First came the Novocain, then the crushed Triazolam, then the gas. Two hours later I awoke, numb and swollen and still flying.

  “I have one question,” I asked the staff as they helped me to the waiting room. “Do you think it’s OK if I make the cocktails? I have a few people I want to see.”

  “I think it’s OK but don’t overdo it,” they stressed.

  Dana was in the waiting room and steadied me to the car.

  “I really think we need to go home,” she said.

  “Absolutely not,” I protested, even though I was a bit unsteady. “I feel great.”

  When we got to the Lever House, we entered the party, Dana holding me by the elbow.

  “Hi, Richard. So good to see you,” the socialite said. “You look amazing. So relaxed.”

  “It’s true,” the editor agreed. “He looks ten years younger. No frown lines.”

  What would have been a nice but obligatory cocktail party seemed to pass in a flash with laughs and effervescent conversation. Indeed, I had elevated my party level.

  That is, of course, until I woke up bleary-eyed, the next morning.

  “Daaaad.” My teenage son tugged at my blanket, as I lay supine in bed. “I really think you need to stay in this evening and get some rest. Enough is enough.”

  10. PAID FRIENDS

  Weary of Genuine Relationships, Rich New Yorkers Hire Stand-Ins

  LAST MAY, AS THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS transformed Central Park into a confectioner’s dream, Dana and I accepted an invitation to a charity gala from an international couple who maintain a residence in New York. While we see them only occasionally, our interaction, though intermittent, has been consistent, and we have become acquainted with their close circle of friends.

  Museum galas can be as dusty as medieval tapestries, but this particular evening the great room sparkled. As we made our way to their table, we saw an eclectic mix of the usual suspects: their obsequious decorator, a silent banker from Monaco, and the wife’s LA-based stylist and couturier. Noticeably absent was the couple’s omnipresent and soigné art consultant, who always seemed to be the chatty third wheel.

  As I turned to the hostess over the tuna tartare and avocado and complimented her acorn-size emerald earrings, I asked where the advisor was, having seen him cohost virtually every event.

  “We had a falling-out,” she said, misty-eyed.

  “That must be upsetting,” I offered. “I know how close you were.”

  “Yes. I considered him to be one of my dearest friends.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was a billing issue,” she said, sniffling.

  “Billing?”

  “He usually charges fifteen percent on the art he brought us,” she whispered in near grief, “but we found he was also charging us on things we found at auction, and my husband had to let him go.”

  Early in September, Dana and I saw those friends at their Park Avenue maisonette for a postsummer catch-up cocktail party. As I navigated my way through the gilt, chintz, and tufted ottomans, I saw that their advisor was happily back on the scene, choreographing the tuxedoed waitstaff and mingling with the guests.

  I air-kissed the wife. “I see he’s back,” I said. “You must be happy.”

  “Yes, I realized it was all a misunderstanding.”

  “Misunderstanding?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. In her clipped European accent, she explained that she and her husband had worked out a new arrangement with the art advisor. “He charges a premium for his advisory services at auction. So we just created a new deal: a flat thirteen-point-seventy-five percent fee on everything including what we ask him to look at,” she said. “You know, clarity and communication are everything. After all, I wouldn’t want money to stand in the way of friendship.”

  Friend is a flimsy moniker in New York. It might apply to someone one meets at a cocktail party and two lunches later is a “great friend” based on grand commonalities like the private school admissions process or renovation dramas.

  Then there are the friends for hire, the innately personable service providers who are sought out to fulfill social obligations, provide companionship, and offer courtlike flattery masquerading as friendship to those who can afford it. Heartache, though, sometimes occurs when relationship demands and financial arrangements are at odds.

  “There is a market, a currency for paid friends in New York,” Eternally Youthful Fashion Designer revealed over pecan-crusted seitan at Candle 79. “Some people need the money, and some people need the friends. It happened just last week.”

  “What happened?” I asked, eyeing her tantalizing vegan cheese platter.

  “My staff was taking measurements, and my client’s entire posse came to the atelier—you know, the hairdresser, the publicist, the stylist, the personal assistant. The housekeeper also came with sliced apples and almonds in a plastic bag as a snack. The trainer was giving my seasoned seamstress an opinion on the length of the garment. ‘Make it shorter, make it longer. It’s too tight.’ Mostly though, everyone was, ‘You look gorgeous.’ You know, with the dramatic hand signal going to the mouth, like in an Italian operetta.”

  “That must have been aggravating,” I offered.

  “It’s part of the business; if someone needs constant companionship and compliments, paid friends are ideal,” she said, sipping her organic cola. “Honestly, it’s just another form of addiction. I do believe that some care, but for the most part, someone’s always on the make.”

  Over the next few months, I broached the topic of paid friends with a broad swath of people, and it turned out to be more taboo than sex. While the subject evoked knowing guffaws from some, others froze in their tracks, acting like I had stumbled upon a clandestine affair. (Guilty, obviously.) Others shrugged it off as something that clearly existed but not in their own backyard. No one I spoke to was willing to cop to possessing or being a paid friend. (Having a dominatrix seemed more acceptable.)

  But one evening, I found myself at a dinner party seated next to the glamorous ex-wife of one of New York’s most enigmatic commodities traders, noted for his custom suits and contraband supply of Cubans. Having received a lucrative divorce settlement, she was more than willing to open up about her ex-husband’s assortment of paid friends. In fact, after I artfully plied her with Avión and an orange twist, she couldn’t seem to talk about anything else.

  “Everyone, and I mean everyone, was on the payroll.” She played with her chestnut-size South Sea pearls. “When we first started dating, I was annoyed that so many people were always around. But I learned that powerful men all have posses.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I think many really successful men don’t actually have time for real friends. Their old friends are either resentful or bitter or ask for money, an
d the new friends are often competitive. In my opinion, very rich men have paid friends as an expensive filter, because they can control them. They love to manipulate everyone.”

  “Was that difficult?”

  “It was actually more boring than anything, but I did see an ugly side to it—the laughing too hard at the bad jokes, the constant flattery, the jockeying for position, the tennis pro throwing the game.”

  “Did he view them as real friends?” I asked.

  “The way he spoke to them was quite abusive actually, especially the good-looking ones. And they all took it.”

  “Did you keep up with any of them after the divorce?”

  “Please! They couldn’t wait to see me go,” she said, toying with her endive and walnut salad. “The division of assets was a lot more complicated than the division of friends.”

  “How so?”

  “There were a lot of assets and virtually no real friends. The people who pay get to keep the paid friends. No one was going to side with me when he was picking up the check,” she said, nibbling on a singular endive, then pushing the plate away as if she had consumed an entire plate of lasagna.

  “I am so full!” she exclaimed. “Look, let’s be real. If he didn’t have any money, he’d be sitting all alone in his apartment with a container of Häagen-Dazs and a bottle of vodka.”

  Sometimes, just being fun to be around is a currency that translates into social invitations, as it has for a bicoastal producer I know.

  Sitting in the afternoon sun on the terrace of the Downtown outpost of Sant Ambroeus, a few glasses of prosecco clearly provided the proper amount of social lubrication to get him talking.

  “In Hollywood, you’re either in the starring role or in the supporting cast. I always said I was a paid extra.” He laughed, his stylish frames glinting in the sun.

  “Did you know any paid friends in LA?”

  “Know any? My partner and I always joke we’re America’s houseguests. We’re always being invited to fun, fabulous places, and it’s always a seaplane, a private jet, five-star villas. Wheels up, baby!”

  “Any downside?” I asked.