The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile (31 page)

All told, the Whale must foot the bill for the horseflesh to keep princess at the top of her game, the horse farm, the indoor riding ring to keep princess dry when she wants to ride on a rainy day, plus the trainer and the trainer’s staff and grooms, the veterinarian bills, the fancy horse van, and a luxury mobile home so princess won’t have to use the port-o-johns at the show grounds. And then of course, there’s getting all those pricey horses, grooms, trainers, and equipment overseas when your daughter wants to compete in Europe against real princesses.

The real benefits that come from the horse world are the values competitive horse sport instills in the young rider, the sense of fair play and the importance of clean living. Ms. Johnson recalls that she obtained an unforgettable life lesson in the dangers of recreational drug use as a teenager when she discovered her favorite horse’s prize-winning ability to jump was in part due to the fact that it was addicted to cocaine.

If you don’t have a daughter but want an outdoor activity that involves horses and encourages participants to start drinking before breakfast, foxhunting is for you. Imagine the thrill of riding over hill and dale, leaping over post-and-rail fences, wearing a silk top hat and a scarlet tailcoat, atop a twelve-hundred-pound beast with a brain that tells him tree roots are snakes, all the while shouting “Tally-ho” as you gallop after a pack of forty foxhounds on the heels of a fox.

If you like the sound of all that, except that you don’t get a thrill out of witnessing a pack of hounds introduce themselves to a fox, join a foxhunt that’s a “drag pack.” Though chasing only the scent of a fox is less sporting, it does allow you to enjoy all the pleasures of a blood sport with no blood, other than your own, when you fall off.

For youngish Whales who may not be skilled at riding but want that special brand of camaraderie that comes from being on a team they can be sure of making because they own it, the horse world offers polo. Yes, the word “polo” has lost some its glamour since Ralph Lauren trademarked it, but polo is still synonymous with the kind of devil-may-care elitism that Whales love.

Always popular with masters of the universe, polo was a favorite of Genghis Khan and the British upper class, and it will make you feel like an expert horseman or -woman even when you are not. How can that be? Because the other three riders on your polo team will be paid professionals (often Argentineans) who will keep the ball away from you so your team actually has a chance of winning. The great part is, even if you’re losing, you get to ride up and down the field swinging your mallet and looking cool.

To have your own team and compete at high-end tournaments you will need to have at least eighteen ponies costing in excess of thirty-five thousand dollars a head. Of course, if you want to win, you will have to purchase souped-up ponies, which can cost as much as two hundred thousand dollars per pony. Add to that grooms, trainers, vets, estate with polo fields, and paying your professional teammates, the best of whom get as much as $150,000 per tournament, plus bonuses if you don’t want invariably good-looking and athletic Argies snogging your wife/girlfriend/daughter/son.

Here again the polo player should expect the added expense of flying his herd of ponies to the UK. Why? Because what’s the point of playing polo if you can’t have a few chukkas with Prince Harry at the Guards Polo Club?

The horse world is rife with social climbing opportunities for those readers who could not afford to purchase a bridle, much less a horse. Why? Because half the fun for the Whales is having people on hand to watch them and their princess dress up in jodhpurs, boots, etc., and jump fences, ride to the hounds, or
gallop up and down polo fields swinging a mallet at a ball their professional teammates don’t want them to hit.

Jet Etiquette

Nothing changes the trajectory and velocity of an aspiring Whale’s social climb as much as membership in the private jet club. In fact it could be argued that a Whale isn’t officially a Whale until they take the plunge and purchase a sky limo. Readers who’ve accepted the fact that they will never be able to afford even a bare-bones starter jet like the Lear 21 but still hope to hobnob at high altitude should know that Big Fish charter but
Whales own. The type of jet you get a free ride on will tell you much about where your host can take you literally and figuratively.

Lear today, G6 tomorrow. And next year, a 747. That is, unless you’re so busy flying around blowing your fortune on jet fuel that you forget to keep making money.

When you are debating what type of plane to buy consider this scenario: All other things being equal, if you and a neighboring Whale in, say, Saint Tropez have both invited Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Gore, and Taylor Swift to competing Fourth of July clambakes and you offered to fly them to Saint Tropez in your secondhand, $20 million Challenger, but your neighbor has offered to fly them in his brand-new $60 million state-of-the-art Bombardier Global 7000, Jack, Leo, Al, and Taylor will be flying in your neighbor’s plane and going to his clambake. Of course, Jack, Leo, Al, and Taylor, being Unicorns and Whales, could afford their own jets but they, just like everybody else when it comes to jets, get a special thrill from a free ride, even if it’s taking them somewhere they don’t especially want to go. There are levels to all games the various subspecies of Whales like to play.

Whales will tell you that they have a jet because their time is valuable or they hate waiting at check-in lines with little people or can’t stand taking their shoes off and risking fungal infection in public airports. What they won’t tell you is that the real thrill of private jet ownership comes from all the new friends they acquire as soon as they purchase a private jet.

Always drop the fact that you no longer fly commercial into the conversation casually. Complain about the defroster in the onboard fridge of your Challenger, or the shower on your Citation—let them know you’re a real person who encounters the same household hassles at thirty thousand feet that they do in their studio apartment back on the ground.

Also know that when you make casual reference to your private jet, if there is another high-flying Whale in the vicinity, they will challenge you. “I have a Hawker 800 XP, what kind of bird do you fly?” Now if you also have the Hawker 800 XP, you can have a bonding conversation about the relative merits of their various seat configurations and upholstery options. Which will bore the people who are sucking up to you for a free ride. You, being a Whale, will also know that any competition between Whales that ends in a draw is a loss. Because the whole reason you became a Whale is not just that you always like to be the winner, but that you enjoy the concept of those other than yourself as losers.

How do you top a Whale who has the exact same jet you do without announcing you’re trading your Hawker for an Airbus? Simply say, “What I like most about flying is my pilot.” Then reveal that your pilot was a combat ace who shot down seven MiGs in Desert Storm, or was the Captain of Air Force One. Even if your rival makes the same claims about their pilot, you will still have won because you thought of lying first.

The social climber who has multiple jet-owning friends never need wait in an immigration line, suffer an unwanted X-ray, or endure the indignity of a body-cavity search again.

Five things to remember about jet etiquette

1. When a Whale with a jet says, “Wheels up at seven a.m.,” he or she means you are onboard and the plane takes off at 7:00 a.m. Unless you are a very, very attractive guest, or the Whale with the jet wants something else from you, they will not think it rude, if you are not there on time, to take off without you. Why? Because jet fuel is expensive, it’s their plane, they make the rules, and when they arrive, they damn well want to get a swim in before lunch.

2. Always ask what kind of jet you’re flying in and how many people will be on board, before you get to the airport. Google the specs on the jet you’re riding on. If you’re heading to the Caribbean on, say, a Challenger 800, and twelve passengers will be on board, know that one of you is going to have to spend the flight sitting by themselves in the back of the plane on the toilet; this is not where you want to sit. Always
be the first to board the plane and show your host the courtesy of not occupying the two most forward front-facing seats unless you are the host’s or hostess’s date. Instead, sit directly across from them in the two seats that face backward. If the owner tells you to get up and move to the toilet seat in the back, know that you have some serious sucking up to do.

3. Always bring a present for the owner. Note: A jar of your fruit compote will not cut it as token payment for a seat on a private jet, unless of course the owner has specifically requested it, or you have been told in advance that you are going to be sitting on the Challenger’s toilet.

4. Do not admit you have never been on a private jet before. Do not fail to mention how much bigger and nicer your host’s jet is than the last private jet you flew in was, even if you are a noncommercial flight virgin.

5. If you hit turbulence, or worse, think you are about to crash, take comfort in the knowledge that your loved ones will be able to sue the Whale’s estate for more than even you ever thought you were worth.

Yachting: Why Really Big Whales Like to Climb on Water

Nothing screams “I am a Whale!” like arriving on your own megayacht. If the yacht’s mega enough, what other clubs you do or don’t belong to doesn’t matter. Drop anchor in any harbor of privilege—Saint Bart’s, Nantucket, Newport, Palm Beach,
Sag Harbor, Saint Tropez, Ibiza, the Maldives, etc., in an oceangoing multistoried palace of excess, over three hundred feet in length, and anyone who’s anyone on shore is going to know you’re someone worth getting to know. Not just because ownership of a half-billion-dollar-plus megayacht indicates that you also possess megabillions, but because you have the balls to flaunt it.

The real pleasure for those Whales fortunate enough to be able to join the megayacht club is the sense of self-confidence and social ease he or she purchases when purchasing a megayacht. When all of those Whales and Big Fish who are stuck on dry land see your crew of forty scurrying around on a deck of your megayacht unloading your toys—speedboats, jet skis, submarine, etc.—and watch you decide which of your two on-board swimming pools to take your morning dip in, they won’t simply envy you, they will want to come on board. Hoping you will invite them to your party, they will invite you to their party first, no matter how many bad things they have read about you. A megayacht isn’t just a status symbol, it’s a letter of recommendation to the world, a passport to whatever fun there is to be had in any given spot on the globe with an ocean breeze.

Yachts have long been a social climbing vehicle of choice for the
très, très, très
riche nouveau-riche Whale. Early in the last century, J. P. Morgan networked the high seas in his 343 feet of ostentatiousness called the
Corsair
. Post Toasties heiress Marjorie Merriwether Post cruised into high society on her football-field-long square rigger, the
Sea Cloud
. It’s no wonder
Jackie Kennedy couldn’t say no to Greek shipping tycoon and legendary playboy Aristotle Onassis’s invitation to come on board—his fabled yacht
Christina O
boasted bar stools upholstered with the foreskin of whales. Who wouldn’t want to say they sat on that?

Then and now, size matters to Whales and those who love them. Keeping up this tradition of excess, Microsoft’s idea man Paul Allen’s yacht,
Octopus
, features the usual swimming pool and helicopter pad, plus a sixty-three-foot tender, seven speedboats, accommodations for twenty-two guests, a recording studio, and not one but two submarines. Launched in 2003 with a length of 414 feet, it was the largest private yacht in the world.

Sadly for Mr. Allen, he lost those bragging rights a year later to Oracle’s Larry Ellison’s 453-foot
Rising Sun
. Whales being Whales,
Rising Sun
has been eclipsed as the world’s largest private yacht by forty-seven-year-old Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s 533-foot-long
Eclipse
. Which, in addition to having two swimming pools and two helicopter pads, is rumored to have an antimissile defense system and an all-important antipaparazzi shield that automatically fires lasers at intrusive cameras, thus overexposing any unwanted or unflattering snapshots of those on board. For the record, we at
The Social Climber’s Bible
are of the opinion this last feature of Abramovich’s
Eclipse
is overkill—if your yacht is big and beautiful enough, what you look like in a bathing suit doesn’t matter.

Why does size matter so much to Whales? In Mr. Abramovich’s case, one would assume he wanted a yacht big enough to house his rumored forty-man security team and to offer him
plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in if an uninvited commando team of old friends decide to crash his party. Size also matters simply because it’s a thrill to be able to boast to any and all other Whales, “Mine is bigger than yours.”