‘Hey what’s all that crap you’ve got up there on the ceiling.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact I had first planned these frontal rooms for parade rather than for a casual guest’s use.’
‘Well you could have fooled me.’
‘Until I succeed in having the gilt fringe form a sort of stylistic parallel with the rococo which can marry to the baroque pictorial devices I am planning, I prefer to treat the room informally.’
‘Hey gee whiz I’m just plain folk, are you kidding.’
Of course this chap’s ordinariness will test your mettle, but at least you become quickly advantaged in the realisation that he will do your social improvement little good. Kick him straight out of the house.
Upon Refining Your Taste
‘Sir I understand you have made an impudent snob’s choice of dwelling. Much ersatz outer upholstery. And would you believe it, hopeless architectural attempts at the bijou.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘And well you might sir. Because you stick out like a sore thumb in a neighbourhood whose only recommendation is, at best, its tiresome display of middle class presumptions.’
This is the new kind of lip you can expect to get just as you’re enjoying the relief of being shut of the little bastard flying his vile under garments on your garden horizons. But count yourself lucky to confront such a forthright gent. Most of your folk will make their sneaky nasty references to your appalling taste behind your back. Invite the chap in for a sherry. Direct his attention away from your pornographic prints and towards your interior furnishings. Ideally your fine art and antiques should awaken his discernment.
‘Well sir, not bad. No, not bad at all.’
Give him another sherry. While he notes the commercial value of your chattels. Especially your collectors’ pieces. But even the purchase of these requires taste. And yours should be improving fast with the ruthless hypocrites you’ve been moving among. However, if you’re having a devil of a time with clashing periods, stick with the medieval. It can look good anywhere. Even in your house.
As a general rule always furnish with the overtly spectacular. Should this cause doubt concerning your overall colour decoration go for sand. If you don’t know what this is, go for white. Or if this is no good try beige. Above all avoid looking as if all you’ve got is money. The colour that makes you do this is purple.
Throughout this crucial period of sharpening your aptitude for judging the beautiful, be careful of gifts of objets d’art from friends. They like to unload the passé on you that has been unloaded on them. A gentleman with some feminine sensibilities can always be called tip toeing in to advise. And never fail to openly admit that you do not know a Regency mahogany tea-poy on a well shaped pedestal from a small rare Charles II candle stand with the base in walnut and a marquetry top.
For moments of light relief, you will find it rather fun to mark your plaster imitations ‘Don’t Touch’. When no one is looking your guests will ignore your signs and surreptitiously scratch your hardware to test for genuineness. The plaster should be soft so that a liberal amount will be caught under your victim’s fingernail. This is a sure way to expose people like yourself.
As nothing is more socially disastrous than tipping off superior folk by your chattels, keep some rooms entirely bare or furnished with orange crates to throw them off the scent. But never say you like things natural looking. Or that a piece of furniture, unless it’s an orange crate, captures the spirit of the wood. Your general attitude should be entirely carefree. Kick an antique. Lightly of course. And for the pièce de résistance, awe your opponent out of his wits with one bare room the walls of which are hung with old masters and remark as you pass between the priceless collection.
‘I know what I like.’
But beware when your guest remarks.
‘I think it’s really you.’
And avoid the riposte.
‘What do you mean by that?’
Since he will say.
‘That you are a bogus brazen impostor.’
Upon Throwing Your First Large Party
This is ill advised as it gives folk a chance to conspire against your further social advancement. But if you are consumed by a relish to be seen and adored in your new dwelling among your furnishings, have one. Give your guests the best, unless you are living in an area of old established families. Where pedigree breeding allows, not to say requires, one to foist off left overs, wine past its peak or without any peak.
As they stand around on the parquet, a good mix is to be preferred for your social image at this stage. And one or two guests who are put off by the sight of each other helps enormously. A limited infiltration by a few poverty shaken and desperate social climbers like yourself will create an immense din by listening spellbound to the crap pontificated by the socially assured.
Inviting folk of importance to your party when no one of importance comes is disheartening. It may be avoided by telling prospective guests that an international name, the talk of the hemisphere and constantly headlined in the most revered gossip columns, has always wanted to meet them. To duck embarrassment occasioned by this deception your guests should be summoned out on the lawn with their drinks to witness your fountains giving a multicoloured illuminated display. As each jet of water and the height to which it is propulsed is an indication of your riches and power, be doubly careful that sewerage is not allowed to foul your pipes.
If your victims are the kind of uneasily pleased guys who flick their eyes over each other’s shoulders looking for the big nob, further distractions may be supplied in the manner of risqué female marching bands and orgasmic firework displays. Keep looking at your watch and away at the evening horizon for the big shot’s helicopter. This should all be happening in the summer. If it isn’t and it’s snowing or storming, it is only fair to allow your guests to get back into the house. That is if you can get them out in the first place. But should your folk persist to get further shifty and shirty over the failed appearance of the big timer, show your contempt. They are now social equals.
During the remainder of the evening, and the glass breakages, spillages, immersions in fountains, the liquor, silver ware and table lighter thefts, a guest may approach you not knowing you are the host.
‘Who is the nut throwing this thing.’
‘I believe he recently left an enclosed order of religious having endured the vows of chastity, silence and poverty for many years, and he is having a bust out. He found the vow of chastity particularly cruel. So perhaps you wouldn’t mind bending over.’
Upon Not Being Socially Registered
Youthful spirits will more than make up for the mouldy rankle, demoralizing wound, spiritual maim and personality disfigurement caused by omission.
But exclusion can also be an excellent spur to your social high jumping. The worst thing being that nobody can look you up. Although it is somewhat embittering that not being listed, nobody wants to look you up. A little fair minded fraud and forgery can make the best of this situation. If the ethnic implications of your surname haven’t already hopelessly compromised you, get yourself a copy of the register. At where your name should alphabetically appear you may find, if not your name, something resembling yours enough to withstand a superficial scrutiny when the volume, to momentarily fan a flame of confidence, is quickly shoved in another unlisted’s face and you smile.
‘That’s me.’
Beware that new listees sometimes find it an advantage to change the spelling of a surname to disassociate from ne’er do well relations. Make sure you’re not thought one of these.
Although this will not help you get invitations, if you’re really desperate there are often gaps between names occasioned by folk’s numerous club listings, and a little expert home made printing might do the trick in the space provided.
But as your son of a bitch, having actually just got listed himself, takes his brand new copy out of his faded denim yachting jacket pocket and is just about
to open it, refer to it as ‘O that’. Your son of a bitch will, with a mannered coolness, hungrily page towards his name which he knows in his sleep is on page five hundred and something four names down from the top. Wait till he’s blowing his eyebrow hairs out from between the pages and then let him have it.
‘Granddad took us out. He was kind of a pioneer in moral principles and courage.’
Upon Being Excluded from Who’s Who
This is far more popular than being included. The dreadful thing about this is that it could be a permanent situation.
The excuse that there exists a conspiracy to keep you out usually provokes a widespread guttural clearing of everyone’s throat. And it really is awfully mortifying. Listees are a pretty assured lot who like to play their entries down, but who will not hesitate when an uppity old pal requires them to, to point out who they are according to Who’s Who and who the old pal is not. Most tomes of Who’s Who are large enough that few folk can avoid being conspicuous if not downright dangerous when taking their volumes out for an airing. So usually, when you are masquerading as enrolled, you can rely upon not being looked up on the spot. The tiresome exception is the bastard charging behind a small barrow rumoured recently invented for this purpose.
By fancy semantic fencing one may completely ignore or reverse enquiry as to whether you are listed. Your adversary will as usual ever so slightly rock back and forth on his polished soles attempting to blind you by flashing light from his monocle. The dangerous time is the early moments at the start of the cocktail party when folk are shopping round for the evening’s best investments in sensual and financial intercourse.
‘Sir who are you.’
Boyish innocence both playful and friendly is your man here.
‘Who’s who, you mean me.’
‘Yes, I rather think I do mean you, as no one else seems within eight feet of us, sir. And since you mention that volume, are you therein listed.’
This pontificator is showing instant signs of a military background somewhat below the rank of full colonel His dental work should, upon scrutiny, exhibit much further clues as to his presumptions.
‘Well if I am the meaning of the who of whom you enquire as to who I am, and since I was already, before you asked who are you, I would enquire as to who you are before you ask who I am.’
‘That is a riddle, sir, and why are you looking into my mouth.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, fella, riddles and dental bridgework are given as my hobbies in my listing.’
‘Do not sir, refer to me as fella and I’ll thank you to stop further looking into my mouth.’
‘I was merely, in my own exercise of discovering who is who, attempting to assure myself that you are homo sapiens, you bombast, you.’
Military people get blusteringly hot and bothered when treated in this fashion and a sudden seizure of his person could occasion you physical risk if he were to fall directly forward like a tree. Without appearing to cringe cowardly, step back the usual two paces.
Upon the Sudden Reawakening of Your Sordid Background
Things are going along quite nicely now and always, in the very best of places when you’re basking in front of a nice bunch of big timers, some son of a bitch out of the blue will suddenly turn around and say.
‘Don’t I know you. From way back when.’
Don’t panic, test the guy’s incredibility using your improved accent at its most stilted.
‘I do not, sir, think so.’
‘Sure I do, I know you.’
‘I deny it.’
‘Hey, don’t hand me that. I mean you’re getting to be somebody these days. But I knew you when you weren’t worth knowing.’
Keep steady as your man reaches for his inside breast pocket.
‘I’ve got incontrovertible proof.’
‘I reject it.’
‘You mean right in front of the facts you stand there and reject it.’
‘Quite so.’
‘Well, here’s the god damn captioned picture right out of the newspaper showing you and me being arrested for lowdown lousy turpitude. Try and refute that.’
‘I do.’
‘For Pete’s sake, it isn’t enough you have to show somebody the naked truth these days, you even have to be there in history and catch them in the flesh with their faces and appendages hanging out. Can’t I reason with you.’
‘Certainly. Instantly get out of my sight and communicate by cablegram.’
‘Hey, what is it, have you got an inability to tolerate criticism.’
‘Yes.’
‘Holy cow, fella, isn’t god damn honour part of your makeup. What are you doing, deliberately kicking ideals in the teeth and knocking the magnetics out of your ethical compass. You could fall wobbly kneed into a moral abyss. With your parents standing on the brink humiliated and your kids shedding tears of shame.’
Of course this kind of rhetoric would try anybody’s patience and one sentence of strong feeling is permissible.
‘Shut up you asinine ape.’
‘What, are you calling me an ape.’
‘Yes, I’m calling you an ape. Plus a nonny noodled beetle brained half wit.’
‘What are you looking for, a fight.’
Make sure you are not too close to large jardinieres and that your pig skin gloves are pulled tightly over your fingers in order that slack does not lessen the impact when the fist contuses your man’s jaw. Your personal left hook rising from a hip position is best followed immediately by a low right cross under the heart. Under the proper administration of these punches, your man should go down in a nicely arched forward slump reaching for his brains. Lightly brush your gloves together and sniff twice through your nose. This signifies that you have only done the minimum required to deal with this tiresome effrontery. By picking up the newspaper report with a little smile and putting it in your pocket your accompanying friends will think you a man of mystery. Rather than a trumped up no account cad.
Name Changing
The world’s richest families often have the names best suited to you and, with imaginatively selected christian names, they will not only immediately make you sound better than you look, but make people think they like you.
Provided you have chosen your new cognomen well, it can produce some delightful marvelment in everyday life and also smooth the ethnic repugnancies to which you might be exposed by your body colour or contours. From being the faint object of attention as eyes swiftly flash over, through and away from you at introduction time, one can arrest your opponent’s gaze and watch with sheer joy his ears prick up at the sound of your resounding handle. He will, however, instantly ask if you are related to the best known holder of the name. This is sad. But following the recent large population increase, folk don’t trust anybody these days. And you could do worse than to answer.
‘Naturally.’
But it’s amazing how many niggardly hair splitters there are lurking over the glass rims of their martinis wanting to get accurate over your harmless joy giving little presumption.
‘Sir, what do you mean by naturally, are you related or not.’
‘Naturally.’
It should be immediately obvious that repetition weakens one’s position. But if your opponent continues his inquisition, it at least shows that he’s taking no god damn chances in missing a social opportunity of a lifetime. He will therefore somewhat hysterically attempt to couch his frame of references.
‘Without being pedantic, frantic or semantic, I want to know exactly what you mean sir. I just happen to be a stickler for pedigrees and that kind of thing. Are you of kindred to the family or are you not.’
While you stand soulful eyed, slowly digesting your man’s utterance, it is a favourable touch to slowly extract a length of gold chain from your waist pocket upon the end of which is a large gold timepiece which at this moment is chiming the quarter hour. Hopefully a severe tropical storm is beginning to tremble the windows with heaven shattering lightning and you
r opponent is dying to escape into the cellars.
‘Tut, tut, do you dare kid around with my veracities, hombre.’
This light perfume of jocularity with the latter foreign cognomen thrown in, serves a twofold purpose. Aside from making you sound like the life of the party with your carefree admixture of words, it appears that you are unconcerned as to the implications of your name. Anyway it’s the real you that most deeply matters. And as you now lean watching your perturbed opponent cowering under the table, take a charitable attitude towards his tearful plea for clarification.
‘Hey, look buster, who the hell are you.’
‘Do you, sir, refer to my descent, ascent, recent jungle explorations, polar expeditions, bird watching activities or my abilities to seduce reluctant ladies. And before you answer that, may I suggest for both our enjoyment’s sakes that we say to hell with the facts and let’s get on with the more ebullient fiction.’
In spite of his terror in the storm, his lesson to take folk as you find them should now be well learnt. At least it shows you deserve an E for effort. And if this tiresome chap does not relent, award him right then and there an F for fuckpig.