Extraordinary stories and men of style: the preppy (EPISODE 3)

My father told me he was going to disinherit me.

He carefully folded the New York Times he was reading, before placing his authoritative clasped hands on top and saying, “If you don't get one of the eight colleges, I'm going to disinherit you.” He didn't smile afterward. I believe he is capable of it.

I asked Gloria for the keys to the Jeep. I took Elvis, my bulldog, with me and went to the Hamptons for the summer. In Southampton to be exact. On Gin Lane, not far from Wooldon Manor.

Southampton is a tongue of land beaten by a wild wind, which tilts the trees and the houses whose tops and roofs appear on fire when the sun sets; long drifting raft on which the light ricochets and explodes everywhere in multicolored rays and, each time I arrive there, I have the impression that Southampton is the last land emerged from a world swallowed up by the waves.

As soon as I set foot in the Hamptons, my friends showed up. It's the first day of summer. There's nothing to do here but chat, drink too much, smoke and get knocked out by the sun, just enough to fall asleep at night and sleep without dreaming.

I chat with Richard Digby standing by the unlit monumental fireplace. Pierce backwards on the couch blows smoke rings. Joan observes him. Jean is upstairs. Elvis sighs. Audrey is playing on her cell phone.

- I don't know if I'll get Yale or if I'll get Harvard, Digby tells me, honestly asking himself the question.

Digby kept his street clothes on. He still wears his burgundy, gold and green striped Brooks bow tie, exactly as wide as the distance between the almond tips of his eyes. It was as if he looked at you twice. His tortoiseshell-framed Moscot glasses are tucked into the breast pocket of his gold-buttoned blazer, which he keeps closed, as usual, over his pink Gant button-down collar oxford shirt. However, he swapped his dress pants for navy blue cuffed Bermuda shorts that you might think were cut from the same fabric as the blazer. And, finally, he wears white bucks from Alden.

I love how Digby is the epitome of the term “preppy”. I mean, you definitely feel that this is a guy who was born like that. He was born preppy. No one ever becomes one anyway.

Digby never wears jeans. He has seersucker suits. He lives with his parents on the Upper East Side. He loves Barbour, Vineyard Vines, LL Bean, J.Press, Brooks Brothers and of course Ralph Lauren. In winter, he wears his grandfather's old raccoon coat. Its weaknesses: prestigious universities; the garish colors; corduroy pants embroidered with a multitude of skulls; worldly alcoholism; satisfy the wishes of his parents.

Next to him, Pierce wears a tweed jacket patched at the elbows and a whitish oxford shirt over threadbare beige chinos and dying loafers.

- Hey Pierce!, I say to provoke him, when was the last time you wore a decent jacket?

- My dearest Oliver, he begins to tell me as he adds the final three drops of tabasco to his bloody mary, you know a true preppy by his inability to tell if the clothes he is wearing are his own , those of his father or grandfather.

He bows as if he were going to be applauded and, straightening up, adds:

- And otherwise, fuck you, Oliver!

I raise my glass to his plea. Joan, dead of boredom, half lying on the chaise longue and already groggy from a few too many drinks, is exasperated:

- Pierce… for heaven's sake stop talking like that, it's infuriating! And it's so... degrading!

She draws on her cigarette and stands up a little to appreciate the effect of what she has just said.

- I wonder, he said running his hand through his curly blond hair, you mean as degrading as the time you fucked half the football team in high school? Pierce said.

Nothing in the house moves anymore. The world in freeze frames. The waves in the distance are silent. Joan, at first, widens her eyes and her eyelashes flutter prodigiously, like a moth. However, very quickly, she resumes her usual attitude which consists of treating everything that happens to her equally. With half-closed eyelids, she pouts then whistles her bloody mary before saying:

- It sounds proletarian.

- We don't have any more alcohol or cigarettes, said Pierce. I'm going to get some. Give me the keys to the Jeep Oliver, so I don't spend ages in it.

Joan, a little defeated all the same, plays with Elvis who, grateful to have a little attention, snores happily in her direction.

- You know, at our age, preppy women are quite vulnerable, Digby told me. I mean, it's crazy in this day and age, but few of them go on to truly fulfilling professional careers. In fact, and it pains me to say it, but the most favorable outcome for them is still to fall in love with a good match.

That’s when Jean Rockefeller comes down again. She dressed as a bobby-soxer and I think it's fantastic. Long blonde curls frame her face, whose nose and cheeks are dotted with small, moving brown spots. With every step she takes towards the ground, I feel a tension growing in my stomach. And her silk scarf tied tenderly around her neck... Soon I will be able to smell her perfume, if only she would come to me.

No one sees her, there is only me, poor future disinherited by my father, now on my knees before her, of the illustrious Rockefeller family, the Establishment alone, me like a knight to be knighted.

Jean's voice brings me out of my reverie:

- Digby, play us something, will you? It was so delicious what you played for us the other time.

- Please no!, said Joan. We'll listen to Mozart when we're dead! How about we go to the Watermill Center gala instead?

- Why bother, we have everything here, said Digby.

- Unless I'm mistaken, I don't see Bill Murray, Alec Baldwin or Lady Gaga here. Unless they're in the bathroom getting a makeover.

- It seems that Baron Vonderbilt will be there, said Audrey trembling.

And Joan who sighs:

-Are we just a bunch of snobs and everyone hates us?

Audrey rolls her eyes before looking up from her cell phone:

- Honey, of course we're snobs. Exactly ! Everyone hates us but everyone wants to be us.

Jean, already exhausted by this conversation, throws herself onto the soft sofa and doesn't move. She yawns with a delicate hand over her mouth. I want to kiss him.

Suddenly, Pierce breaks down the door with his shoulder because his arms are heavy with bottles of gin, vodka, champagne, packets of cigarettes and places the loot on the glass table whose grandiose copper legs sparkle in the raking light of the dying day.

And Pierce, theatrical and galvanized by the effect of his own appearance, lights a cigarette with great gestures of excitement and says, turning around:

- My dear friends, please welcome the very formidable Randy King Jr and two of his friends!

In the chiaroscuro of the moment, Pierce applauds like crazy, while three figures step forward. We first see the tallest one, who must be Randy King Jr. Dark eyes and long hair too. Randy looks like a younger Tony Caramanico but with something more exotic about his face.

He wears the Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, with a very popular elegance, like when you put a master painting on a faded wall. Everything is only embellished. This is the charm of dissonance. Damn, he wears it almost better than us who were born with it. I look down at my embroidered slippers which then seem a little ridiculous to me.

I can already see Joan and Audrey's looks. Another drink or two and they will want to save him from his social determinism. These guys know full well that preppy girls have a thing for them. They believe they see in their eyes the bleeding of their hearts. They believe they can soften their callused worker hands.

Behind Randy, his two friends are a frail teenager and an insignificant young woman.

Randy King Jr sweeps the room with his big sad eyes and sets them on Jean Rockefeller. I feel like a cosmic vibration grips his soul. Then he stretches his mouth into a broad shaman's smile which he gives to everyone. And that smile is like a secret incantation that moves us all. Then Pierce says “Music!”, and the rock'n roll stretches out in long clouds of smooth, harsh notes from the thousand speakers in my living room. And everyone gets up suddenly and we dance and we laugh and Randy moves closer to Jean. And I drink and I think about all the things I didn't tell Jean. And that I'm not some big Sioux like Randy King. That I do not have black eyes to tell mysteries and that my shoulders do not seem to carry the world and that my feet have not trodden entire mountains and that my hands have never written anything passionate.

At midnight, Audrey suggested going for a swim. In the sand that leads us to the beach, Digby reveals to me that he heard Audrey, Joan and Jean praising Randy's impeccable appearance but above all his eternal goodness as a simple and violent man of life. And since it's summer, the time for holiday lovemaking, I tell myself that I'm beaten.

Elvis looks out to sea, his butt firmly stuck in the sand. He sighs again.

The white circle of the moon is like a hole of light in the robust canvas of night. I'm trapped at the bottom of a bag. Prison of salt, sand and foam.

In the calm water, Audrey and Joan are completely naked. Their cries of joy are piercing, the vocal cords tense with excitement. Pierce howls like a wolf at the moon and grabs Audrey then throws her small body two meters away. Like a furious beast. He slaps the black water with his palms and his ribcage with his gorilla fists.

I stand next to the clothes thrown on the sand. Then, as I'm feeling blue because of my father, Jean, Randy and myself, I whistle to Elvis who doesn't move, alone scanning the horizon, then I go alone to find myself a Valium .

I stagger down the sandy driveway like I'm drunk. Immensity of the skies above me. My steps on a crumbling ground. In my drunkenness, I mumble “Randy…Randy…Randy…”. Whom I met just a few hours ago but who is already destroying my world. The hard sand crunches beneath my Weejuns. But when I arrive ten meters from my terrace and my body has not yet been caught in the spotlights outside the house, I hear foreign voices. I immediately freeze like a pointing dog.

These are the ones that accompanied Randy. They are like two specters floating in a cloud of smoke. She said to him:

- Well, it went well… The Rockefeller kid seems under the spell.

- Big Chief Randy can have them all!, declares the other.

- Do you think she suspects something?

- What ? Do you really think she could suspect that the Shinnecock tribe has hatched a plan to reclaim their once-stolen lands and that it involves Jean Rockefeller marrying Randy King Jr? He laughs loudly. How do you expect her to suspect that? I don't even think they know we exist. Even though we were there long before them.

He spits on the ground.

- Yeah, that's true. His family is so rich that Randy might want to change his own name to “Rockefeller”!

They laugh. Me? Not at all. At that point I start running towards the beach and towards Digby. Digby smoking on his back, lulled by the sound of preppy fish still playing in the water.

- Digby, where is Jean?

- I don't know, he told me. I think they went for a walk by the water.

I ran away. And behind me, I hear the brisk footsteps of Digby who follows me closely because he saw my intimate anxieties in my eyes. And I'm afraid for Jean and then for me too. I am being eaten by angry dreams. Are we doomed to fail in life when our father achieved everything before us? And there was also this other question that wouldn't leave me: what was I going to do when I found her and Randy?

       Suddenly, I see a shape on the left that looks like a boat stranded on the sand, and on it two sailors who don't want to get off. They are there before my eyes, in this beached boat and the eyes towards us are marbles that shine in the darkness.

When I see her like that, with this guy Randy, I know then that it's not the threat of my father's disinheritance that worries me. I don't really care what name she has, as long as it's mine. Deep down, it's always been her. Just her. It's Jean and his ringlets that I want.

I walk straight forward and Randy stands up to face me. Without even thinking about it, I punch him as hard as I can, with my supposedly most destructive right fist. The big Sioux doesn't move. And then I hear Jean's voice tearing the silence:

- But Oliver my word you have gone crazy!

Randy could have demolished me with just one arm but he doesn't. Instead, he returns to sit next to Jean who is agitated and I hear the hull groaning. This is where I say:

- I love you Jean!

- Yeah no but that's no reason to hit Randy.

My mouth says something grotesque:

- Randy is an Indian and he came to kidnap you Jean!

It's funny how, as I see these words evaporate into thin air, I find that it all sounds so wrong. She answers anyway:

- Yes, he told me.

There, I think my jaw tumbled into the sand. She keeps :

- But not to kidnap me… you're stupid Oliver. Did you know that the Shinnecock tribe lived there, on Long Island, long before the English settlers arrived? And then they were deprived of their land for a hundred and fifty years? It's completely astonishing, don't you think? And that because the Shinnecock are a peaceful people and their words have been censored, no justice has ever been done?

- Yes, yes, I say.

My head is spinning from the biting wind that grips my temples. And the stomach which, almost at the edge of the lips, wants to vomit with shame. I don't insist and go to bed. That's enough for tonight. The great Sioux chief watches me leave, with his sad expression and his unwavering confidence in the future.

I think it was that evening that I decided to stop wearing club ties, that I now prefer spread collars and that I swapped my Weejuns for white sneakers. I then had to live with a feeling of guilt, embarrassing, lodged in my stomach and for a long time. And the shame above all, the shame of having been born as I was born and of having done nothing but enjoy what had been unjustly given to me.

        I turned around and gave the big Sioux chief a smile that meant I got it.

The next day, Digby, Jean and I vowed to help the Shinnecock tribe as best we could. I now had a kind of mission in life, bigger than myself, bigger than waiting for the letter that would tell me which of the eight universities I was going to study at.

W hen I returned to Manhattan, I told my father the story of this tribe. To my surprise, he already knew her but brushed the subject aside with a shrug. As if these people who came before us weren't worth us or even his time.

And it was the first time in my life, then, that I knew that I was going to do better than my father.