The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (29 page)

Chester should know that purchasing a half dozen $1,000 to $2,500 tickets to his NBF’s charity events over the course of the year won’t cut it. A Whale who wants to get into the kind of club Chester wants to get into before he is too old to play golf will be expected to buy at least one table at charity events such as the Sloane-Kettering Spring Ball, the Robin Hood Foundation gala, the Rainforest Fund party, the Metropolitan Opera opening night, etc. What will that cost Chester? The top table at the cheapest of these events is fifty thousand dollars. The premier table at the most expensive—$250,000.

What would Chester be getting for his money? Well, if his benefit of choice were Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Fishermen’s Ball, the most environmental and most casual (“blue jeans preferred”) of New York City charity galas, purchasing a 100K “Enforcer Table” would be sure to make a more favorable impression on the head of the membership committee than less impressive and costly tables, whose descriptions make one think of cuts of meat—the 50K “Prime Table” or the 25K “Select Table.” Though the shabby $12,500 table is described as the “Great Table,” it is clearly also the worst table, particularly if Chester is trying to impress other Whales with his largesse.

By now, Chester and his family will have realized that in addition to golf, they will have to master other sports as well. If he or his family admits they didn’t grow up playing the “right” sports, they will draw attention to the fact that they are not as “right” as they appeared to be when they bought the Enforcer Table.

Having done all of the above, Chester will be relieved to know he is finally in a position to apply for membership. Unfortunately, part of the application process is being interviewed by the membership committee.

When interviewing to get into an old-money WASP country club, here are some tips that will increase the odds of your making the right impression:

1. Avoid using big words. Why? WASP Whales will not appreciate having you explain that effeminate does not mean the same thing as ephemeral, especially in regard to rumors that you or your son is gay.

2. Even though our social climber’s mantra tells you to refuse to be judged, know that you are being judged.

3. Do not wear new shoes. WASPs are suspicious of people who wear new shoes and will assume you bought them because you didn’t own appropriate footwear before the scheduling of your interview.

4. Have your wife wear enough jewelry to show you can afford to buy her jewels, but not so much bling as to make your interviewer think that if he lets you into the club his own wife will make him buy her the same expensive jewelry your wife has.

5. Do not mention the fact that you own a yacht, a Ferrari, or a house in Aspen or went to one of the right schools unless you are absolutely certain your interviewer possesses similar or commensurate status symbols—Whales do not like to be made to feel small.

Unfortunately, even if Chester gets through these interviews with flying colors, he will still not be a member of the club. How can that be?

Clubs are not democracies. Part of the fun of the admission rules at WASP golf clubs is that any member who belongs to the club can, if he or she chooses, take exception to Chester or any member of his family’s worthiness at the last minute and blackball him.

What are people blackballed for? Any and everything. It is rumored that billionaire heir to a Colombian beer fortune, Alejandro Santo Domingo, and his glamorous
Vogue
editor wife, Lauren, were recently blackballed from the ultraexclusive Southampton Bathing Corporation, aka the Beach Club. As one anonymous anti–Santo Domingo member of the Beach Club said about Lauren Santo Domingo, “She courts publicity and that is entirely what this club eschews.” Which seems to translate as Mrs. Santo Domingo’s only sin was being younger, more stylish, and more attractive than other female club members.

Given that Chester has done everything right, there is no need for him to worry about getting blackballed. Right? Wrong. Chester has committed the most unforgivable of sins in the WASP world of clubs—trying too hard.

The real price of membership to an old-money WASP club is not the $150,000 to $200,000 initiation fee, nor the $50K annual charges that a family of four is likely to incur if they take tennis and golf lessons and frequent the snack bar; it is the cost of all the status symbols they have to acquire in order to be deemed worthy—the $10 million summer house, the $20 million co-op, the millions spent on the right schools, the right vacations, the right charitable donations, etc., plus the time spent making the right friends when one could have been out making more money. Of course, for Whales like Chester, all the expenditure and humiliation involved in becoming a member are well worth it because they allow him to maintain the delusion that he didn’t buy his way into “the Club.”

Clubs That Aren’t “Clubs” but Really Are Clubs

Luckily for Whales and those who enjoy riding the largesse of their wake, there are forms of advanced social climbing that don’t involve golf or membership in an old-money WASP club.

If you’re a Whale who, like most Whales, already has his own pool, tennis courts, beach, and all the other accoutrements of
country club life at your exclusive disposal in your own backyard, or having been accepted into the golf club, have lost interest in golf, there is one club you can join that offers more rarefied, elitist, and cultured fun than the most exclusive country club in the world. Though totally lacking outdoor amenities, it does boast clubhouses in every major city in the world and holds jamborees in an international network of vast palatial edifices where club members are feted and celebrated on a weekly basis somewhere on the globe.

Better yet, at this club’s functions nouveau Whales not only get to bond with the most sophisticated and worldly Whales in the world, they get to hobnob with movie stars, supermodels, famous directors, highbrow cultural icons, celebrities from every walk of life, and the latest certified genius of the month. What’s more, this club doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation. In fact, if you’re kinky, you’ll be doubly welcome.

The best part is, there’s no membership fee, no annual dues, no formal application process, no risk of rejection, and no one can blackball you.

We call it the Art Club. And its only membership requirements are that you love to shop and have several hundred million dollars to spend on museum-quality art. Its clubhouses are ultratasteful private galleries with names like Gagosian, Pace, Matthew Marks, Acquavella, White Cube, and Ace, and the palatial settings for your jamborees are the greatest museums in the world.

Besides all the parties, openings, cocktail parties, and celebrity
friends that come with the mega spending that is a prerequisite to membership, what makes the Art Club doubly appealing to Whales is, even if you’re colorblind, if you buy enough art at the galleries mentioned above, odds are you will have made a very shrewd investment. In fact, statistics indicate the Art Club is as profitable as the best hedge funds. According to Dr. Rachel Campbell of the Finance University of Maastricht, since the 1960s, on average, the art market has gone up 11 percent a year in value. The art market outperforms everything but insider trading. Look at casino king Steve Wynn. He purchased Picasso’s
La Rêve
in 2001 for $60 million and in 2013 sold it to then-reigning hedge fund king Steven Cohen for a cool $155 million. And that’s
after
he put his elbow through it showing it off to friends.

Not only does the Art Club membership include Whales of every size and description, it existed before the birth of Jesus Christ. Emperors, tyrants, queens, kings, princes of commerce, robber barons, tycoons—their favorite pastime has always been art collecting. Why? Because it allows them to reinvent themselves, i.e., to social climb. One isn’t just buying art, one is buying culture, class, sophistication. It doesn’t matter how you made your filthy lucre—arms, exploitation of child labor, strip-mining—spend enough of it on art and your sins will be washed away and you’ll be heralded as a Whale of taste and breeding.

Keep spending money and the club will never stop throwing parties for you. Between September and June, art galleries, museums, and auction houses in New York, LA, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Basel, etc., have more openings, shows, cocktail
parties, art fairs, dinners, and museum benefits than you will have time to attend. Plus there are the parties that all the other Whales in the club will invite you to to show off their collections and try to hondle you into swapping your Damien Hirst for two of their old Franz Klines.

Contemporary art has become the twenty-first-century equivalent of wampum, those strings of shells American Indians once used as money. Just as wampum was worth what the Indians decided it was worth, so it is with art—particularly modern art; its value is arbitrary and nonintrinsic. The market value of art is determined primarily by the ego of the Whale, i.e., what one Whale is willing to pay to keep another Whale from adding it to his or her collection of “wampum.”

Yes, critics, dealers, and museum curators play a role in determining what is deemed “great” art or “bad” art. But when it comes to judging what are the best Hirsts, Princes, Koonses, Hockneys,
etc., the greatest paintings or sculptures by those modern masters are those the Whale is willing to pay the most money for. Whales have the last word, not critics. Which is yet another reason that Whales love to burnish their image with art.

As long as nouveau Whales keep joining the Art Club, the already astronomical prices are guaranteed to go up—unless there’s a war or a plague or . . . Not to leave the reader with a depressing thought, know that the climbing skills that you are learning in this book will still come in handy even if you have to burn your Basquiat to stay warm.

How does one get started climbing for wampum and becoming a member of the Art Club elite? Is it just a club for sophisticated big-city Wall Street billionaires who minored in art history back in college or grew up in Whale families known for their connoisseurship? Do you have to know someone who already belongs to the club?

The simple answer is no, but to show you how the Art Club works, let’s say you’re a recently widowed forty-two-year-old housewife from the New Jersey suburbs by the name of Vicki, whose late husband was kind enough to leave you the $500 million he made in the toxic waste disposal business.

You, Vicki, know nothing about the art world except what you’ve seen in the movies and read in the
New York Post
. But you like pretty things, love to shop, and most important, know there’s a more glamorous world waiting for you on the other side of the Hudson that you’re curious about. The trouble is, you don’t have a clue how someone like yourself would ever gain access to the inner circle of that brand of fabulousness.

Believe it or not, Vicki, your personalized invitation to gallery openings, museum galas, parties, and dinners where you’ll be hobnobbing with the bold-faced names and beautiful people pictured on the pages of
Vogue
and
Vanity Fair
is just one phone call away. What’s the magic number? It’s listed in the phone book. In fact, we’ll give it to you: (212) 708-9400.

Now, when the operator answers and says “Museum of Modern Art,” ask for the acquisitions department and tell whoever answers the phone that you would like to come by tomorrow and give the museum $5 million.

When they hang up on you, have your lawyer call them back and explain that you, Mrs. Nobody from Nowhere, are indeed serious and have in excess of $500 million to cover the check. Also have your lawyer make it clear that you are not interested in making a donation that goes toward the maintenance of the museum’s existing programs, or contributing to the construction of a new wing that will have someone else’s name on it, or any of the other boring stuff involved in the running of a museum. You want your $5 million to purchase a single painting by a living artist whom they would like to add to their collection. Guaranteed, twenty-four hours later, you will be treated to lunch in the trustees’ dining room of the Museum of Modern Art.

During this lunch, you will add another stipulation to your gift. You get to go with them to the famous artist’s studio to help them pick out the painting you’re buying for the museum.

They will try to talk you out of this. Have your lawyer prepare a contract that includes your stipulations and place it and a
cashier’s check for $5 million on the table. The museum representative will tell you this is not how they do business, and that they know best how to spend a patron’s money. We guarantee, if you politely tell them that you will take the $5 million to another museum, they will snatch the contract out of your hand, sign it, and take the check.

Congratulations, Vicki: You’ve just become the newest member of the Art Club! Your membership will become official within forty-eight hours, at which point every single one of the most prestigious art dealers in New York City and beyond will have heard about you, the new Art Whale to surface on the scene.