The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (14 page)

The social climber’s and the Big Fish’s weekend dreams are interdependent, particularly in the dog days of summer—just as the struggling Mountaineer with the broken AC unit is desperate to get invited out of the city, the Big Fish with the big beach houses feel an urgency to fill their guests rooms so they don’t feel like losers. Always remember, they need you as much as if not more than you need them.

The Big Fish’s reasons for wanting a guest for the weekend are twofold: Validation of their enviability plays into the equation, but much of their desire to have the pleasure of your
company simply stems from what Big Fish often refer to when talking to their shrinks as ennui, aka what a poor person would call boredom.

Know that Big Fish couples, especially those who have been married for a number of years, even those who seem glamorous and have fun on the party pages of glossy magazines, invariably and inevitably run out of both nice and not nice things to say to each other and need a guest to break the deafening silence of the weekend.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (ex-king Edward and Wallis Simpson) were so desperately bored with each other after a few years of marriage they would sit in restaurants reciting the alphabet so it would appear they still had something to say to each other. The duke and duchess were also such status guests they were able to charge American Big Fish who wanted to brag about having royal company for the weekend—according to one well-known society hostess, the guest rate was a thousand dollars a night. The check made out to that amount was to be left in the duchess’s lingerie drawer. Though you are not in the same league as the Duchess of Windsor—inarguably one of the greatest social climbers of the twentieth century—you, like the duchess, should know the value of your company.

Sometimes you will be included in the weekend not simply to entertain your host and hostess but to jolly along a particularly difficult but important guest, i.e., the Wild Boar your host and hostess can’t bear to spend time with. The specific reasons for inclusion in the weekend will vary, but as with the dinner party, the social climber’s responsibility is to make the weekend fun, even if it isn’t fun.

If the Big Fish, when offering the invitation, inquires if you play golf and/or tennis, know that if you say yes, he will get you up at dawn and drag you to on the links/court as often as he thinks it’s fun to play, not necessarily as often as you think it’s fun to play. More important, do not admit to playing golf, tennis, bridge, backgammon, badminton, or any other variety of fun where there is a winner and loser unless you not only play well enough to let the Big Fish win without making it obvious you’re throwing the match to curry favor, but also have the gamesmanship to guarantee that if teamed up with him in a game of doubles and/or in a foursome of golf, you have the skills to ensure victory.

Being a good loser and making polite conversation through three meals a day are just part of what is expected of a great guest. You also have to say yes to whatever activities or pastimes the Big Fish thinks of as de rigueur for a weekend to qualify as “great,”
i.e., touch football on the beach with the Big Fish and his son who plays middle linebacker at Stanford and likes to hurt you, the eight-mile jog through the bear-infested woods, or being forced to swim to the lighthouse through a school of jellyfish, etc., etc., etc. All of which is exhausting. And if there’s a Wild Boar in the house, it will be doubly exhausting. Think of the weekend not as a marathon but as a series of social climbing sprints.

You will need time alone between events to recharge your batteries and regain your sanity if you want to be at your best at dinner. How does a great guest escape his or her host or hostess for a few hours without seeming rude?

Here are a few excuses that have worked well for us. Announce when you first arrive on Friday that despite your reputation as a bon vivant, devil-may-care kind of guy or girl, you are in fact deeply religious, and hope that they will understand if you take an hour or two off to drive yourself to the nearest synagogue, church, or mosque. If you are in a part of the country that has no minarets, steeples, or enough fellow Jews to form a minyan, you’re still in luck if you’re a Muslim, because you can simply retreat to your bedroom five times a day and pray to Mecca.

For those social climbers who are known atheists, we suggest that when you first receive your invitation for the weekend, you reveal to your host or hostess that a relative of yours is buried in the local cemetery and that you hope they wouldn’t mind if you skipped away for a few hours to visit the grave. Big Fish rarely like to visit cemeteries for the simple reason that they don’t like to consider the possibility that the world could go on without them.

What do you do while your Big Fish host or hostess thinks
you are attending religious services or visiting the cemetery where your relative is not buried? Look for better opportunities to climb.

Slip a pair of binoculars and a bird book in your pocket. Drive/bike/walk far enough from the
Big Fish’s weekend retreat that you cannot be observed by the Big Fish or any of their equally exhausting guests or relatives. Now wander onto the property that belongs to the Big Fish your host or hostess bragged about when you Google-mapped the village where they own their second home.

If these neighboring Big Fish you’ve never met but would like to get to know ask you why you are trespassing, pull out your binoculars and bird book. Inform them that you stumbled onto their property by accident while you were “birding.” Seem excited, look up into the branches of the trees, or point to a stretch of beach grass and whisper, “I’ve just spotted an Acadian flycatcher (or a piping plover).” Whatever species you choose, just make sure it’s “endangered.” Yes, there is the small risk that the Big Fish might actually call the police or sic their rottweilers on you, but you will discover most Big Fish homeowners will be immensely pleased to learn an endangered species was spotted on their property because it will give them another thing to brag about.

A word of caution: Do not immediately volunteer the name of the Big Fish you are spending the weekend with. Chances are that they if they were friends with the Big Fish you’re staying with, your host would have mentioned the fact and invited them over for dinner, lunch, or touch football with the son who likes to hurt people. Hence, it is prudent to merely say that you first spotted the endangered species of bird over by the house of the Big Fish where you are spending the weekend. Now, if the Big Fish you’ve just introduced yourself to announces, “Those ghastly people?” it is wise not to mention the fact that you are staying with them. However, if the Big Fish says, “That’s my cousin Bill,” of course reveal that you’re Cousin Bill’s guest, but also add that you can’t stay and talk anymore about piping plovers or endangered flycatchers because you’re late for church or synagogue, or have a date with a dead relative at a local graveyard.

Every social climber, even if they are the greatest of guests, sometimes finds him- or herself trapped in a hell weekend:
Rain
and sharing a double bed with a fellow climber who snores.
Rain
and an infestation of bedbugs.
Rain
and a couple with three children under the age of four whose nanny has just quit, etc. Big Fish being Big Fish, your host will of course be offended by and suspicious of any attempt to cut a
Rain
weekend short, except of course if you give them a reason to want you to leave early.

If the nearest pharmacy is an hour’s drive away, announcing that you left your antiseizure medication back in the city will usually suffice—they will not want to drive you to the pharmacy, and, seizures often being messy due to a loss of bladder control, they will be happy to let you go home early. Feign a back injury that requires them to carry you to and from the toilet and they will not protest when you volunteer to depart ahead of schedule. If the Big Fish has small children, announce you’ve recently been exposed to dengue fever, and they will force you to leave early.

For the single social climber, it’s worth pointing out that the most difficult weekends are often those where your Big Fish host or hostess has forgotten to mention that they have invited you out to the country/beach/mountains because they want to
set you up with someone who doesn’t meet your standards in the looks/status/fame/fortune/charm/oral-hygiene department.

Because the loser will have invariably been told by your host or hostess that you like his/her type, know that he/she will insist on accompanying you if you try to escape to a religious service or visit the graveyard. If your host or hostess is too big a fish to offend and leaving early is out of the question, your best bet is to limit your unwanted suitor’s mobility early in the weekend. Volunteer to help in the kitchen, and drop a Crock-Pot full of hot beef bourguignon in his/her lap. Accidentally on purpose let your nine iron or tennis racquet collide with a part of his/her body that will not do permanent damage but will keep him/her off the beach and out of your hair until you depart on Sunday.

Last but not least, if you are a weekend guest where there is staff, always remember to tip the maid who cleans the room. Why? Because maids are usually locals. And locals gossip, i.e., there is an excellent chance he or she knows you weren’t attending church or synagogue or retreating to your room to pray to Mecca. Fifty dollars is the customary cost of purchasing domestic silence in regard to any misbehavior that does not involve the maid’s perjuring herself in a court of law.

Note: If you are a social climber who is sleeping your way to the top and you have surreptitiously bedded down with the Big Fish’s spouse and/or a guest other than the one you’ve been set up with, the maid will know and fifty dollars will not be enough.

Thank-You Notes

If you have been invited to any of the social functions previously mentioned, you will need to write a thank-you note. Or in the
case of the funeral, a letter of condolence. Which is in essence a sad thank-you note. We are old-school when it comes to written thank-yous. Not because we are slaves to outmoded social conventions, but because the handwritten thank-you posted in the mail is the most cost- and time-effective gesture a social climber can make to ensure he or she is invited back.

Younger readers who have become so dependent on keyboards and T-9 that they now point with their thumbs and find writing difficult should invest in a fountain pen and take a calligraphy course. Google Noël Coward. We don’t expect you to be able to write like him, but with a little practice, you can print like him.

In the ill-mannered age we live in, composing a handwritten thank-you note is as impressive as the composition of a sonnet was in Shakespeare’s time. It is both quaint and formal, especially if written on expensive stationery that includes a nonexistent family crest or is embossed with the silhouette of that stately home your family has, unfortunately, never owned.

Those of you who have never written or received a thank-you note, use the template below. Substitute the fawning adjectives and appropriate nouns in our all-purpose thank-you and you will seem better-mannered, more eloquent, and more grateful than you probably are.

(If you crashed the party you are thanking your host for, it is best to include your last name. Why? Because if your thank-you note is charming enough, they’ll want to invite you to their next party.)

(This will guarantee future contact regardless of whether there was a secret told and especially if drugs and/or alcohol were consumed during the event. Your host, uncertain of exactly what they said, will be inclined to solve the mystery of any possible indiscretion on their part by immediately calling you up and inadvertently revealing a secret they hadn’t actually revealed. Now they will be forced to invite you back because they know if they don’t keep sucking up to you, you will reveal the indiscretion. Knowledge is power.)