The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (27 page)

Equally important, when getting to know the Whale family member you hope will introduce you to his/her pod, it is best to show no interest in discussing or meeting his/her esteemed family. The more unimpressed you seem, the more the solitary Whale who is adrift in the real world will reveal about the other members of his/her pod. Because your ultimate goal is to seduce the entire pod, this information will be of vital importance.

What you read on the Internet or glean from the research sources that have been so invaluable in getting the lowdown on Big Fish will already have been heavily edited by the pod’s lawyers and PR firms and be of little or no value. A drug bust and time spent in a Turkish jail will appear in Wikipedia as a cross-cultural philanthropic field trip. The good news for the climber is that Whale family members who have been temporarily banished from the pod for bad behavior or are on sabbatical in a funky part of the Big City to gain “life experience” will be homesick and therefore indiscreet. If you pretend
not
to be interested in talking about the pod, they will tell you all of their Whale family secrets.

Why are lonely Whales so indiscreet?

a) They know everybody likes to hear sordid details about Whale family life.

b) Trashing their relatives for being greedy, decadent, and abusive of power is a polite way of bragging.

c) They want to be the center of attention and do all of the talking.

d) They will want to make sure you won’t believe all the bad/embarrassing things the other pod members will tell you about them.

Given that they were born Whales and have more disposable income than they can spend and more entrée than they can use, what do born Whales have to complain about? Basically, in Whale families the angst boils down to: Who was Grandpa or Grandma’s favorite, i.e., who got the most money or voting shares of stock or the all-important seat on the family’s foundation? Whereas a normal family would argue about who took recently deceased Uncle Billy’s Jumbotron TV while the rest of the clan was at the funeral home, Whales have art collections, heirloom jewelry, attics full of priceless antique furniture, yachts, private jets, etc., to borrow but not return. Infighting and backbiting among the pod is exacerbated by staggeringly high stakes and the complexity of tax laws governing the distribution of multigenerational wealth.

Because you don’t know any of the other pod members yet, the Whale family scion you have befriended will be more forthcoming about his/her relatives than he/she would be if he were speaking to a fellow Whale. As with the Unicorn, you will suffer through long and boring monologues about the hardships and heartaches that go hand in hand with having been born with having so much. Take notes: This is recon time. When you finally do wangle an invitation to spend the night with the extended Whale family at their compound, it will be important for you to know whether it was their cousin Bobo or Coco whose aversion to the color purple caused her to set fire to the guest room containing an unlucky Mountaineer who made the mistake of wearing a lavender dress.

Once you have acquired a clear understanding of the family dynamics at work, grudges, pet hates, prejudices, intergenerational feuds, and rarefied interests of the whole clan, you will have a tactical edge. But to make the most of that advantage, it is essential that you do not accept an invitation to accompany the Whale back to his/her family’s watering hole unless you are absolutely sure the whole pod will be present.

Members of a Whale family, like all humans, are innately aggressive and competitive. However, due to their obvious advantages—money, connections, and power that come with their last name—and disadvantages, such as emotional damage done by governesses with harsh toilet-training techniques, lack of love, and learning disabilities due to inbreeding, playing games with outsiders is not fun for Whales. They prefer to release their aggression by being viciously competitive with the other members of the pod, all of whom they have good reasons not to trust, due to the simple fact that wills can always be changed. In other words, the Whale family will compete for what you can offer, and they are clearly in short supply of—human warmth.

If the Whale family contains, say, twenty-five members, it will be obviously impossible for you to charm and ingratiate yourself with every member of the pod simultaneously. However, if you get your Whale to invite you for a “family weekend,” the clever and disciplined climber can give every single member of the pod the illusion that you like him or her best.

Also know that even in the most benign Whale family, the visiting Mountaineer should be friendly but never too friendly. Ms. Johnson remembers being a guest at a Whale compound when a daughter who had spent the year studying art in Florence returned home with an Italian boyfriend. He was charming, witty, and knew just enough English to sound sincere. When the daughter mentioned the fact that he was an
idràulico
, the Whale family immediately assumed he was a hydraulic engineer. It was only when a toilet became clogged that the Whales realized that
idràulico
is an Italian plumber.

Curiously enough, the Whales weren’t put off by the fact that this Italian Mountaineer was a plumber; what they took offense at was that fact that he fixed their clogged toilet not with a plunger but by creating a vacuum with a hand-embroidered face towel.

Not all the advice we gave you in the Secrets of Being a Great Guest chapter applies to sleepovers with the Whale pod. Whereas Big Fish invite a small fish to their second home and fill your days with activities to make you envy them and their lifestyle, Whale families have so much more of everything, they don’t need to be reassured. They already know you envy them, and they assume you, like everyone else, wish you were part of their family. They will feel no obligation and make no special effort to entertain you—they know you are lucky to be in their midst. There will be no need for you to feign being religious or pretend to have to attend your house of worship, head off to cemeteries in search of nonexistent relatives, or retreat to your room to pray to Mecca to gain time for yourself. You can count on the fact that you will be ignored for long stretches of the day.

The trick for you, the climber/houseguest, is to engage the family in a way that does not make it seem as if you are pursuing them. Whales do not feel obliged to entertain their guests. Do not be surprised if the pod member who brought you home immediately deserts you and retreats to their childhood bedroom to see if anyone has taken any of their old toys. To avoid being mistaken for a prowler we recommend that immediately upon
arrival you announce that you are tired and ask to be shown to your room so you can take a nap. Whales don’t feel guilty about sleeping during the day.

When all the family members are present downstairs, join them . . . carefully. Do not make a grand entrance. Slip into the room as though you had come to steal the silver and look for an imperious woman over the age of seventy whose coiffure indicates someone has been paid to wash her hair every day for over a half century. Why? Because nearly all Whale pods are ruled by a matriarch. If the Whale who has invited you has not identified her by name and/or physical characteristics, she will invariably be the one who has the most dogs around her.

If you don’t like dogs, get over it. How do you introduce yourself to a dog? Just the way you would to anyone else you wanted to like you. Say, “Hello, good boy!” . . . “Aren’t you the smartest dog in the world?!” Rub their stomach and don’t wipe your fingers if they slobber on your hand.

If the matriarch has, for example, corgis, when she introduces herself the first words out of your mouth should not be, “Hello,” or “Pleased to meet you,” but “I grew up with corgis.” Bond over corgi love. Tell the boss lady Whale the names of each of the corgis you never had, and make up a sad story about how heartbroken you were when one of them died. Be careful not to say your imaginary dog died of distemper or was run over by a car. Dog-loving Whales will blame you for letting them run off the leash, or for not taking them to the vet when they were sick. Instead, tell the matriarch your Corgi died happily chasing rabbits in its sleep at the age of eighteen—126 in dog years, which is almost as long as the matriarch expects to live.

Now if the member of the pod who brought you for the weekend knows that you are not a dog lover and interjects, “You told me you’re a cat person,” smile and say, “You’re just saying that so your mother/grandmother/great-aunt won’t like me.” Though this might sound childish, old-money Whales are childish, and most important, you have now set the stage for the competition for your friendship.

After winning over the matriarch by allowing her dogs to hump your leg, the order in which you befriend the other members of the pod does not particularly matter. Because you have a
great many Whales to charm and a limited amount of time to do it in, do not waste time ingratiating yourself with members of the family whose opinion does not matter to the rest of the pod, i.e., don’t waste words with those who have married into the pod, unless of course they are the family’s financial advisor, attorney, psychic advisor, or they themselves are members of a separate Whale family. This is where your recon research will come in handy.

In each of your subsequent conversations, with the right siblings, cousins, and extended family members, they will inevitably try to trick you into saying something negative about the member of the pod who has brought you. If the family member who brought you has a stutter, an obvious weakness—say, a history of drug abuse—or is out on bail for a felony, do not get duped into giving your opinion of his or her past misbehavior, culpability, or weaknesses. Simply say the truth: “It must be hard, being a Rockefeller/Kennedy/Rothschild”; if pushed to explain what you mean, know they will find you irresistible if you say, “The world holds you to a higher standard than it does the rest of us.” Also know that if you say this they will take advantage of this opportunity to tell you why being a member of their Whale family was harder for them than it was for any of the other members of the pod.

Give each member of the pod thirty minutes of one-on-one in the pity pot, and don’t forget to include the corgis in all conversations. If the Whale who brought you complains that you are not spending enough time with him or her, explain that you are just being polite. Do not under any circumstances say anything
favorable about your Whale’s brothers/cousins/sisters/parents. If pushed to give an opinion on any of the above, simply repeat the phrase you’ve been uttering all day, “It must be hard being a Rockefeller/Kennedy/Rothschild.”

Remember, Whale families have feelings. And though they will be insensitive to your feelings, you must never be insensitive to theirs. Immense privileges come to those who succeed in seducing the pod. But there are responsibilities. When you travel abroad with the family in their jet to enjoy a private tour of the Louvre, know that when a member of the pod refuses to take your advice to throw away the drugs you told them not to bring in the first place and gets busted in French Customs, you, not the corgi, will be asked to take the blame.

Do not listen to them or their lawyers’ promises of eternal gratitude or lifetime employment. Know that once you’re in the slammer, the Whale matriarch will tell her dogs, “We never liked that one, did we, poochies?” Worse, years later, when the family member you took the fall for runs for Senate, he or she will reference the incident as a character-defining moment in their lives and say something such as, “It wasn’t easy turning my friend in to the police for what they did. But the one thing my family’s taught me is that hard decisions are the ones that make us who we are.”