The rich are a different species

The scene: a funeral parlour in New York. Doors clang as a family relative, the ‘black sheep’, saunters in halfway through his brother’s eulogy and brazenly strolls down to the front pew, ignoring the scandalised glances. He’s late, a whisper spreads, because he had a meeting with director James Toback. Wait. James Toback? Lame! The hearse leaves, and the congregants assemble on the street. An attractive brunette in her late forties weeps desolately. Did she know the deceased well? Not at all: she has discovered that someone at the service walked off with her Christian Dior trench and left her with a shabbier coat from a chainstore.

All this happened — about two weeks ago on Upper East Side, where I live, and so, apparently, for a year or two, did Wednesday Martin, PhD. Martin’s controversial ‘memoir’ Primates of Park Avenue supposedly takes us inside the author’s traumatic experience of moving uptown and trying to fit in to a neigbourhood full of razor-thin, rich, beautiful ‘mommies’ with financier husbands, second and third homes in Aspen and Southampton and children en route, whether they like it or not, to the Ivies.