Teen fo cash

Marrying up. - book reviews

MARRYING UP

ALL RIGHT. Who here would marry just anyone, sight unseen, for $10 million?' No hands. "Twenty million? Well, what should I raise the ante to?'

We are 19 women who would be Becky Sharp, plus four novice Julien Sorels. Not a silver-punch-spoon group. For some of these women, I suspect, any marriage would be UP. And me, well . . . I glance down and realize that the entire tip of my left shoe sole has come loose, flapping. If I try to step up in class, I'll probably take a dry half-gainer.

Joanna Steichen, our Sherpa on this social climb, has just published a hot how-to called Marrying Up (Rawson Press). She's bright as flash-pots. And tough. "You have a lot of research to do, a lot of orientation. This is a fulltime extracurricular job.' Yet, you note, no one has sold out completely: we've still got a last love handle on romance. Marry somebody sight unseen for $20 million? Not us. (In fact, I'd like to meet the person who could be $20 million worth of unattractive. That's high-bracket ugly.) "Suppose he picks his nose at the table and is awful in bed. Would that become tolerable if he had $20 million?' The women look thoughtful. Actually, I don't mind conniving people. A good connive requires intelligence and drive at least. The Playboy centerfold is forever saying, "I hate phony men.' Yah, but there are genuine phonies, too. A full moral commitment to deceit is rather winning and, well, certainly real.

JS (she addresses a large, yellowing female fashion consultant): What sort of lifestyle do you want?

LYFFC: House in the country. Apartment in the city. Polo ponies and all that.

JS: How much can you get fo yourself?

LYFFC: I don't know. I sort of expected someone else to get it for me.

JS: Well, you better sit down and price your lifestyle. What do you need for the chauffeur and the crocodile shoes and the snow-bellied natural lynx coat? And remember there is something that we women of a certain age have to face. The prospects aren't the same for us. Unfortunately you get fussier when you can less afford to be fussy. What I'm trying to do is get you to be specific about your ideals and fantasies. Understood, the fantasy, as is, will not come true. But you have to take on some of the thought, manner, language of those people with whom you want to associate.

The moneyed, though, don't grow on trees. Try worshipping up: Eye of the Needle Unreformed Tabernacle on Madison Avenue maybe. "Choose a church with social outreach, not one with self-help programs.' Get sick in the right place; wealth prefers a private teaching hospital. And volunteer, volunteer. "They're on the boards of every museum, orchestra, ballet, and historical preservation society.' Then be indispensable. "I know a woman who can tell you where to match your ten-year-old purple towels in New Jersey. A mine of frivolous, peripheral information. It makes her enormously valuable to wealthy, fussy hostesses.' Keep an eye flayed for the glum rich: upper-class misery will more often love your company. They tend to choose a wife outside their social class from spite--either because they can't hack the competition or because mater and pater treated them like fishmeal. "And don't misjudge your talent. You may want to be valued for sparkling wit, when in fact it is dependability you have to offer.' Try to pick off the Defective Child. Perhaps some scion with a recent brain-weave or spontaneous fecula. Don't forget the old. Unregistered nursing could pay: push a wheel-chair all the way to his bank. "You mean you want money and love?'

Gold-digging requires pick-axe work and a powerful smelter. It isn't easy. Let me write the problem up personalad style: "Power, fame, and cash seeks same, matrimony in mind.' I mean, guess whom Michael Jackson has been seen dating? Right, Brooke Shields. When you attain that sort of success amplitude even the stolid prejudice against miscegenation will pack a cardboard suitcase and leave. Jackson has, in effect, sung himself white. But hard as fortune-hunting the elusive rich may be, it is somewhat more dignified than a singles-bar grope. "The atmosphere there can be so desperate. We all tend to confer our own disabilities on everyone else. Must-be-something-wrong-with-him-too.' What JS supplies is a concept we've mingled with before in this column--networking. You pearl-string together couples, other women, volunteer organizations, church altar guild. "A woman has to give five parties for each one she's invited to. Have some nerve. Call powerful man X and invite him to meet powerful man Y at your house. When you've got X, call Y and invite him to meet X.' You don't seduce a rich husband, a rich wife head-on. First you socially gang-bang their entire acquaintance.

This all may sound cynical as tent shows. I think it a positive trend. JS will remind us: "Throughout history marriage has been based on arrangements for property, establishing the rights of progeny, the joint wealth of families. Marriage for romantic love was a fantasy that--in past literature --usually ended in tragedy.' Rock "n' roll lyric love is--if not materialistic-- often more self-indulgent than some wise matching for talent, cash, temperament. The Me Decade was also a You-as-a-part-of-me Decade. Love, most frequently sensual (though environment love, peace love, income-redistribution love had their say), tended to override more mundane considerations like law, work, parental and social obligation. But marriage that has just post-teen passion for collateral is diminishing term insurance, not whole life. The sacrament was always, yes, a contract: to honor, to pool, to nurture children, to invest time and labor in shared enterprise. After some while the ground might not move underneath when you touch him. But who can stand living night and day in an earthquake, anyhow?