The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (23 page)

The keepers of the gate are naturally partial to young Big Fish businessmen willing to spend four hundred dollars for a twenty-eight-dollar bottle of vodka. Why are Big Fish willing to do that? In part because demonstrating that they can buy happiness makes them feel better about what they had to do to get the money they’re burning. But the real attraction for Big Fish doesn’t stem from the fact that they get pleasure from being grossly overcharged for a bottle of vodka. What excites them is that overpaying for vodka enables them to sit in the VIP section next to people who
are
officially hip because they are in the business of being cool.

Who besides Big Fish with obscene amounts of money do doormen think are officially cool? Fashion designers, magazine editors, artists, movie stars, directors, supermodels, professional athletes, etc. Given that you are probably neither a Big Fish nor genuinely hip, talented, creative, or a beautiful ingredient in the zeitgeist, how do you get the doorman to let
you
inside so you can be misperceived by the Big Fish and the officially “hip” as being a bona fide scenester?

To begin with, you have to look right to the doorman. Here’s where the hoodies, not shaving every day, and liking to wear black come in. The successful scenester’s wardrobe is never flamboyantly flashy, inventive, or overly chic. That’s for the club kids who have a genuine sense of style. What you as a social climber and would-be scenester possess is a strategy and a willingness to do whatever it takes to get to the top, i.e., to risk humiliation.

Your clothes should be utilitarian/workmanlike. As if being authentic is your job. What you wear isn’t as important as how you wear it.

So while you think about that, put on your hoodie, stand in front of the mirror, and let’s work on your look. A scenester has a seen-it-all glaze to his/her expression. Your eyes don’t twinkle, they never did, even when you were a kid. Most of all, you’re never surprised. As you breathe, try to imagine you’re exhaling all your feelings; you are unfazed, neutral about everything, including yourself and your insecurities. The effect you want is the postmodern equivalent of contentment, otherwise known as boredom.

If you are a scenester, you do not smile, you smirk. Not in a dismissive way, but as if you were the only one in the world who realizes the joke is on the universe. Model your facial expressions on David Carradine’s. Not when he accidentally strangled himself while practicing autoerotic asphyxiation in a closet in Bangkok, but back when he was on TV playing Kwai Chang Caine in
Kung Fu
.

If you, in spite of our mantra, still find yourself haunted by those shaming and judgmental spirit killers, parents, school principals, and high school guidance counselors who wrote you off as the underachiever’s underachiever, you will be glad to
know that your lack of success in the real world will give you a leg up when climbing the alternative ladder of hipness. Previous personal failures and permanent blemishes on your record that would hold you back if you were a conventional social climber will actually work to your advantage in the scene of the scenester.

As with all aspects of social climbing, the key to personal success is turning your negatives into positives simply by having the courage to “flip it.” If you were kicked out of high school, particularly if you were expelled from one of the right schools, don’t hide it; brag about it. Don’t mention that you were thrown out for cheating or eating paste in the ninth grade, say you set the gym on fire because you needed it for a scene in a film you were shooting.

Take a page from James Frey, and his best-selling quasi-bogus memoir
A Million Little Pieces
. Make stuff up about yourself, not cool good stuff but cool bad stuff, that makes you seem like a genuine, one-of-a-kind rebel without a cause as opposed to what you really are, a social climber who lives in the city and doesn’t have a regular job or own an iron. If you had a misdemeanor on your record for possessing a joint, blow it up into a story that will convince the demimonde in the VIP section that even though you have less to show for your life than they do, you have lived more.

Confabulate a bad girl/bad boy past in an exotic locale that involves smuggling heroin and/or a stint in a Third World war zone and/or prison. Even though you still haven’t gotten into the nightclub, you will have to have your badass backstory ready. Play your cards right and there is a chance that someone who’s
officially hip inside the club—a magazine publisher, movie star, or director—will buy your life rights. And then you’ll not only be officially hip but also famous for being hip.

But before any of those things can happen you have to get past the doorman. The trouble is, having a look, attitude, act, and backstory that will impress the people inside will not impress the doorman until you have been deemed officially hip by one of the trendoid Big Fish inside. Which of course can’t happen if you can’t get past the doorman.

How do you break the vicious Catch-22 of cooldom that faces every scenester when starting out? Lurk on the edge of the crowd of wannabes who are clamoring to get in. Do not make eye contact with the doorman. Stand apart from the crowd by one of the double-parked limos as if you just got out of it and are meeting some friends who need your help to get into the club/restaurant/bar. Granted, this method might require you to spend several nights in the gutter outside the club of choice, but eventually, if you’re persistent, you will see your ticket in.

What is your ticket in? At least once a week, every big-city late-night coolest place to be on the planet is approached by a posse of underage revelers who are in a position to change the course of the scenester’s social life. What gives them this power? They are the spawn of name-brand Whales. By Whale, think Trump, Rothschild, Kennedy, Bush, etc., the jailbait sons and daughters of bankable movie stars, or the offspring of hedge fund kings and nationally elected officials. If you have been following our advice and preparing for this moment by studying society pages, you will recognize them. We will go into the many
peculiarities of Whales later, but for now, what you need to know is that Whale spawn are almost always startlingly naïve about the power their last name holds over doormen. And if by chance this is the junior Whale’s first outing to the hottest place on the planet sans Mommy and Daddy Whale, and you are camped out in the gutter waiting for them, you just might be in a position to change your position on the planet. The junior Whales of mega somebodies, especially if they are nightlife virgins, will be uncertain how to get into the club. In six months, they will be jaded enough to show no restraint in flaunting their last name. But if you spot them as they take their first staggering steps in the long, elegant pub crawl that in most cases will be their life’s journey, there is a good chance they will still be under the quaint misperception that there is something unhip/not cool about dropping Daddy’s/Mommy’s name in public to get what they want. Which of course is where you come in. While the junior Whales armed with fake IDs are working up the courage to announce themselves to the doorman, step forward.

Be careful not to look as if you’re trying to jump the line, lest the doorman sic his bouncer on you.
Now
is the time to make eye contact with the doorman. Give him the smirk you’ve been practicing in the mirror and whisper, “Mr. Trump/Lord Rothschild [or whoever] was hoping his son/daughter wouldn’t have to wait too long to get in.” Nod toward the junior Whales who are huddled together at the edge of the crowd as if they are with you. Now the doorman might or might not recognize them, but he certainly won’t recognize you. And even if he can’t place the teenage faces, or see the resemblance, he will note that they are
very expensively dressed for teenagers. And the sight of a sixteen-year-old with a diamond-encrusted platinum Rolex, or an eleven-thousand-dollar Chanel purse, will tell him that inside that purse is a black AmEx, which means that even though they’re underage, they’re sure to buy a thousand dollars’ worth of drinks. Plus, the doorman will know there are perks that come from doing a solid for Mommy and Daddy Whale/Mega Somebody.

The doorman will of course wonder who you are. Do you work for Papa Whale? Are you a friend of Mama Whale? Are you Papa Whale’s scenester stepbrother? And while the doorman is wondering all that, turn your smirk on the Whale children and beckon them to follow you in a way that will make them think that it was you who got them past the doorman, rather than their own last names. As you graciously let the Whale spawn and his or her friends proceed ahead of you, give the doorman the hipster’s combo of handshake half squeeze and back pat, what we call the “I’m in the club hug,” and say, “It’s always good to see you again.”

Because all scenesters look more or less the same, the doorman will not only think that you are in some cool way connected to the Whale whose name you dropped but think that he has also let you into the club before, i.e., that you have already been deemed officially cool.

To push your advantage, catch up to the Whale’s son or daughter and their friends, and volunteer, “Sorry that took so long, that doorman can be a real dick.” Now you are not only friends with the doorman, you are friends with the Whale spawn and their friends, who are under the false impression that you have an intimate connection to the hottest club on the planet.

Repeat your story about Daddy Whale hoping their daughter/son won’t have to wait too long to get a table to the guardian of the VIP section and you will soon be sitting in a banquette next to rap stars, professional athletes, supermodels, Swans, magazine editors, etc. And as the Whale’s daughter/son begins to buy four-hundred-dollar bottles of twenty-eight-dollar vodka and you teach her/him how to table dance, you will be an official scenester.

On subsequent nights, reconnect with the Whale child and his/her posse outside the other hottest places on the planet—restaurants that require an unlisted number to make a reservation and bars that aren’t officially opened unless you are a somebody. You, of course, simply by showing up and dropping Papa Whale’s name, will make the doors open and a table magically appear. Be avuncular and protective, i.e., make out with the Whale spawn, but do not sleep with them, and their posse will become your posse. In two weeks, it will be your name that makes the doormen open the gates to opportunity.

Of course, while squiring junior Whales about town on their credit cards, there’s one possibility the scenester must be prepared for. In the unlikely event you enter a nightclub with the spawn and happen to encounter Mama or Papa Whale, do not panic. Greet them as if you’ve already met them. As always, say, “It’s good to see you again.” Tell them you came to this club specifically because you heard they were there. If their children say that’s a lie, tell Mama and Papa their child’s teasing them. Insist that the maître d’ set up a special table, tell the senior Whales what a wonderful job they’re doing raising their child,
order a round of vodka shots, and get the whole family table dancing.

No question, if all of the above happens, in a few short months you will be NBFs with junior
and
senior Whales and “officially hip” at all the super trendy nightclubs, bars, and restaurants you have been frequenting six nights a week. It will be clear to all that your evenings are spent being what you are, a scenester.

Though you realize that if you had a steady day job you would never have been able to spend your evenings waiting to befriend a pod of underage Whales and gain the entrée you deserved, ironically and unfairly those genuinely accomplished hipster Big Fish, rap stars, supermodels, etc., who you are now spending your evenings with will be inclined to think that a twenty-five-year-old who goes out every night, doesn’t have a day job, and gets rich kids to pay for his drinks is a low-life barfly. Hence it is best to establish early on a more socially acceptable explanation for your lifestyle, i.e., start telling people that you are a “conceptual artist.”

Why a “conceptual” artist? Because if you said you were a painter, they’d ask to see your paintings. Or if you told them you
were a writer, they’d want to read your work. If asked to describe or show your conceptual art, tell them you are working on a performance piece about “identity”—which is sort of true. If they ask where they can see this conceptual artwork, tell them that you’re having a one-man/-woman show at Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art in eight months and promise to invite them. Do not worry, eight months in a scenester’s life is the equivalent of eight years of an average human existence.

Now that you have a cool professional passion, i.e., a good excuse for being a barfly, it’s time for you to find a cool way to make money. Because you are now seen everywhere and know everyone, and are buds with all the Big Fish who like to spend four hundred dollars on twenty-eight-dollar bottles of vodka, as well as the Whales who are cool because they are Whales, plus those who are officially cool because they actually do something cool, and most important because you have kept track of all their email addresses and unlisted phone numbers, the owners of those clubs and restaurants and their competitors who are opening newer and hotter nightclubs, bars, and restaurants will want you to invite all your new happening best friends to their establishment. And because you are a struggling conceptual artist, you will be able to get away with charging them for that service without seeming usurious.