by Parvenu

Created on: March 20, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

I wanted to call this article: "New York Society As I Have Found It - Or Club Life in Manhattan" or "How I became a member of a private social club - and you can too!" But honestly this is just a simple article on how I managed to get into the private club set - the Old money, the patrician class -..and how you could quite possibly too.

I often thought I should write a guidebook for Clublife the way Lisa Birnbaum did for "The Official Preppie Handbook" -so that we poor slobs somewhere in the middle might get an even break. While I haven't gotten around to donning the pen on this particular how-to book, I hope this article helps all of you out there who have a penchant for the good life, but a pocket for the simple.

Alone in a big city I found the experience daunting. With only F. Scott Fitzgerald to guide me, I soon found my way into a club life I only dreamed about.

What is club life and how does one get there? This is an interesting question, and probably not one that too many people out there in the general populous ponder. But, for those of you in the world that dare, have no fear as I spell it out for you.

I was always one of those precocious kids growing up on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks who found himself intrigued by those melodramatic films of the forties. There were always dashing men in double breasted suits with handkerchiefs folded with the quintessential three points who starred in them. They said the right things, never lost their cool, and always had a beautiful woman draped on their arms, and if all else failed in the world about them, they could always retreat to "the club," that staid old haven where, "nothing bad could ever happen to a person," their sanctuary.

When I first moved into Manhattan, it was to experience life. I had always wanted to be a novelist and this seemed like the best place to do it. I'd gotten a temporary job at a law firm and was eager to make friends in this strange city and meet the characters that would one day help to populate my books.

The city, at the start, was not the friendly venue I imagined it would be and my foray into society would prove to be a little more challenging than the movies (I had all but memorized) had predicted. I was that small town boy or girl you see in the opening scene of the film getting off the Greyhound bus. But there wasn't any fanfare when I left my town and no boarding house full of actors in New York to greet me, or ready made friends waiting. I was alone and New York can

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