Текст книги "Gunn's Golden Rules"

Автор книги: Tim Gunn

Соавторы: Ada Calhoun
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

My niece and I were just talking about Thanksgiving, and she was saying there was someone she wasn’t particularly looking forward to seeing.

“But if she weren’t coming,” I told my niece, “maybe you’d be picking on me!” It’s always good to have someone in that pariah category, because they let the rest of us off the hook.

Maybe I’ll start entertaining more since I just moved into a more party-friendly apartment. For the first time in my adulthood, I have a dining room table. It’s beautiful, and I love having it. But no one’s ever sat at it. Maybe this will be the year I actually start enjoying party giving … Or maybe I’ll continue to put my gorgeous dining room table to a slightly less social use: doing crossword puzzles in my pajamas.

ALAS, UNLESS YOU ARE made of stronger stuff than I am, there is no avoiding the holiday-party circuit. From what I can tell, the holiday season is just an excuse for bad behavior. Party season is like a military gauntlet, with cocktails being flung at you instead of clubs.

I knew I had entered into a real state of Grinchdom when I was chatting with the maintenance man who was putting up a tree in the lobby of a company I was doing some work for and heard myself say: “This tree looks like a metaphor for this company: anemic, ratty, and artificial.”

Well, we bonded over our ambivalence about both our employer and the sorry state of the old plastic tree, and that was a nice moment of holiday cheer—our laughter around the tree. But, in general, I have trouble getting into the spirit.

I travel by train on the holidays. Leaving New York for Delaware one year, there was a power outage on the tracks. It was like the evacuation of postrevolutionary Russia. When power was finally restored and the first train left the station, there was a cheer at Penn Station. Then they put four Acela trains together, and everyone was sitting on suitcases. We were just lucky to get out of there. My niece and I had been talking about how we were going to have a Merry Skype-mas, whereby we would all sit around our computers and talk with one another over the Internet rather than gathering under the same roof.

Well, once we arrived at our destination, it was one thing right after the other. My mother had a high blood pressure attack. She had to go to the emergency room and stay in the hospital for three days. That night, my nephew, Mac, took his parents’ car to a party. At four a.m., the police were pounding on the door. The car was found in a ditch. Mac was in his room, covered with blood and mud.

My sister called me at a quarter to six in the morning from the emergency room to report on Mac’s condition. I drove to the ER in Mother’s car and picked them up. They didn’t volunteer details, and I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to have to tell my mother. I could honestly say that I knew nothing. Better that she should hear all about it from my sister.

Unfortunately, at a quarter to ten, my drama-queen niece called and told me the whole story before I could tell her I didn’t want to know. So then when my mother asked what had happened, I had to fill her in. I could have faked ignorance, but as you know, I am pretty much incapable of telling a lie. Alas!

Wallace told me on the way back that she’d started out feeling sorry for Mac, then she felt sad for the family, and then she just felt mad. I said, “You should feel mad. Anger is good.”

At the same time, it wasn’t such a bad holiday season over all. Nobody died!

EVEN BEFORE THE HOSPITAL visits and car crashes, family get-togethers have been fraught. One year, my sister-in-law (she’s my sister’s husband’s sister, if you like the details of convoluted relationships) used Thanksgiving dinner as an opportunity to fight with her brother about who would host their mother for Christmas.

“You led me to believe that she spent three days with you, but I happen to know she was only with you for a few hours,” my sister-in-law said accusatorily.

“What?” my brother-in-law said. “We had her for three days.”

“That’s not the information I have,” his sister said.

It’s not as if this can’t be verified one way or the other, and is Thanksgiving dinner really the time to do it?

When she behaves that way, she acts like she and the person she’s speaking to are the only people in the room. I hate it when couples do that.

Quite a few years ago, when my niece and nephew were very young, old family friends joined us for our family Thanksgiving dinner. Owing to Wallace and Mac’s young age, there were knock-knock jokes and probably some references to farting and other bodily noises.

One of the invited guests turned to her husband and stage-whispered, “Bob, would you please do something to ratchet up this conversation! I’m about to fall asleep from boredom.”

I started to stew.

My sister was talking to my niece and nephew about whatever preteens are interested in, and meanwhile this lady is huffing and puffing dramatically.

Well, someone asked my sister something, and I said, “Wait! Before you answer, make sure you properly ratchet upthe quality of your answer, because heaven forbid that our guest should be bored to such a degree that she falls into her plate of food!” With that, I threw down my napkin and stormed away from the table and upstairs to Mother’s guest room.

The stage whisper is highly problematic. It’s trying to do what you want to do without taking accountability. My grandmother was a master of it, and now my mother has taken up the torch. You criticize someone in the room without saying something to their face. It’s rude. Think they can’t hear you? They can. They’re being polite enough to pretendthat they can’t.

There are four topics that should be completely avoided at all social events, and they are: religion, politics, finances, and sex. These things are, quite frankly, nobody’s business. There is, however, an exception in New York: money is totally fair game.

I think that’s because it’s a very expensive city, and unless you find some luck, it’s very hard to get by. On my teacher’s salary, I did get a little panicky at times. Thank goodness that for the sixteen years I spent in the West Village, my landlords never once raised my rent. I paid $1,200 a month for that entire time. (Trust me: That was an absurd bargain for what I got, especially considering my neighbor was Sarah Jessica Parker, whom I adore.) I loved that apartment for the first thirteen of the sixteen years, until the disrepair spread to the point where it seemed dangerous. I thought the windows were going to fall out.

Anyway, before I even dreamed I would ever have the means to buy an apartment, Nina Garcia was complaining about the renovation of her new place. She was talking about how much it cost to redo the bathroom. I thought she said $17,000 and was aghast.

“No,” she said, “Seventy thousand dollars.”

I nearly fainted.

When I first moved to the city, I spent the first five years dumbstruck by questions about how much I’d paid for things. It’s something you would never ask in Washington. You’d be considered a heathen, raised by wolves in a trailer park. And now I ask it! How much is this apartment?

Recently I was going down the hallway to my elevator. Standing there were two women. One was a Realtor, and the other was a client. I talked about my apartment and what it was like when I’d moved in and what I’d done to it. I was this closeto asking, “How much is the apartment you’re considering?” But I restrained myself. (Also, I remembered I could just go look it up on the real estate agent’s Web site.)

Compulsively dropping the names of fabulous people you know is another New York social sport. As part of another charity auction, I was lunching with Liz Smith and the winning bidder. Liz brought with her a friend, the former head of an ad agency. The two of them did nothing but name-drop. That stuff rolls off me, but I felt bad for the winning woman and her daughter, who could never compete. They may have enjoyed the show, but I was worried they felt left out.

Now that I at last have a roomy apartment of my very own, I should really think about having guests more often. This is the first time I’ve ever had a bed bigger than a single. I’ve actually moved on up to a double bed, and I feel very decadent about it. And yet, I confess to you that I am such a hermit, it’s hard for me to open my house up to other people. I consider my home a retreat and enjoy my monastic life. I’m a bit OCD about my environment. In New York you’re up against people all day long, and when you get home you really need to recharge.

When I do have guests, it usually goes fine, but I have to remember to do a thorough home orientation when the houseguest arrives. I imagine that Martha Stewart would say that if your house were set up properly, your guest wouldn’t need an orientation. You need to look at your house through a stranger’s eyes.

My niece, Wallace, was staying with me recently and deprogrammed my TV by trying to watch cable. Mysteriously, you have to be on “Component 1” rather than “TV.” If only she’d asked. Anyway, I was sorry that she hadn’t gotten a chance to watch her shows and also that the TV had to be reset.

But Wallace is a really good houseguest. I’ve also had some bad ones. A colleague of mine would send her husband and two kids up to their country place during the summer, and since she didn’t want to go home to the suburbs during the summer by herself, for two summers she camped with me every week—Monday through Thursday—for three months.

I was living paycheck to paycheck and buying groceries for two. I would get home earlier than she would and would cook and leave her food. She would get home, collapse into a chair, and say, “Meat loaf again?” She never even bought a bottle of wine.

She was assuming a great deal about my love life. Wouldn’t it be possible that I would want to have a guest over? She was right that I didn’t have anyone in that category, but I could have.

I sat her down and explained that I couldn’t sustain these shenanigans another year. I implied that it was putting some restrictions on my own freedom. She came up with a compromise, whereby she would stay at my place for two nights and someone else’s for two nights. I was too nice back then, and I said okay. But I’m strong enough now that I wouldn’t welcome an open-ended stay anymore. My privacy is too important to me.

I’ve learned to keep my big mouth shut when someone says, “I’m coming to town for the weekend and looking for a place to stay!” or “I’d love to visit New York, but I can’t afford a hotel!” Now I stay quiet or say something along the lines of, “Oh, too bad! Guess you’ll have to stay home and save up!”

My mother’s retirement place has separate guest rooms with baths. When I’m visiting, she always says, “Would you like to stay in one of the guest rooms rather than in my apartment?” I happen to know she’s looking for affirmation that I would rather room with her. So I say, “Of course I’d rather stay with you, Mother,” when in fact the thought of getting up and having coffee alone in the morning before the day of family time starts is pretty enticing.

I know a lot of people go through this same thing with their families, where every question is loaded. The appropriate answer to every question is: “What do you mean by that?” Everything has a subtext.

To be a good houseguest, you should be as independent as possible. You should buy groceries or take your hosts out for dinner. Pick up after yourself. Pretend to have a good time even if you’re not. Say, “I’d like to make a dinner reservation tonight. What’s your favorite restaurant?” Try not to break anything. Be quiet.

I read something interesting in Martha Stewart Living:If you have a guest room, sleep in it to see what worldly needs your guest may have that aren’t accommodated. But there are limits to how far I go. I don’t have a television in my own bedroom, so I won’t put one in the guest room. Besides, everyone can watch TV on the computer now. There’s no need for guests from Denmark to use your landline to make a $60 phone call. They can Skype.

The only place I was ever a regular guest was in Hong Kong, with Suzy Moser and Chris Berrisford. Suzy and I were doing some work together for Parsons, so it was actually more convenient for her to have me close by. The house was a huge penthouse with wings, so we almost never crossed paths. I would go twice a year for two nights. I always brought Suzy and Chris a gift and took them out for dinner. I believe we all looked forward to the visits. But it’s something else if the hosts don’t have a mansion and the guests don’t limit stays to two days.

I can hear people saying, “But what if I’m on a budget?”

Then don’t go!

I was talking about this book with my family and mentioned to my niece that she should show the book to her friend, who has done some pretty appalling things, in my opinion. My niece grew hysterical, literally, with the thought that her friend might be in the book.

Finally, I said, “If you think sheis essential to this book, then this book is in trouble. Besides, why do you feel the need to defend her? How do you defend the fact that you filled the apartment with furniture from your family, and when you were away, she took half the living room furniture for her bedroom? Or that she borrowed your car and then crashed it? This is inappropriate behavior. Sorry, Wallace, she is now in the book!”

But I have the same hyperniceness Wallace has. When I lived in a studio in D.C., I would give my guests the foldout couch I usually slept on and I would sleep on the floor in the sleeping bag I kept in the closet. I didn’t want my guest to be uncomfortable. If I’m going to be a host, I’m going to be a good host. And my new mantra is: If I can’t handle it, I will just say so.

A friend from out of town e-mailed me recently and said he wanted to see my new apartment. I knew he was fishing for a place to stay, and after the initial flush of panic passed, I realized that I would actually like to see him and that I should invite him to stay. After all, I can’t continue the rest of my life in fear of houseguests. I have to get myself unstuck.

Maybe the moral is that if you’re the traveler and you don’t have the financial resources to take care of yourself and to honor the host, then don’t make the trip. But if you’re the potential host, you should be honest about what you can and can’t do, and then be as hospitable as possible—and no more.

Use Technology;

Don’t Let It Use You

RECENTLY AT THE GROCERY store, the woman behind me had a mere carton of juice, and I had a whole cart full of items, so I said, “Please, go in front of me.”

Did she even acknowledge this? She did not. Clearly she wasn’t deaf, because she did, indeed, walk in front of me. I was tempted to take back my offer.

A woman sitting next to me on an airplane asked for the in-flight magazine. I handed it over with a smile. She didn’t even look up or say anything at all. I was sorry I’d given it to her.

There should be a lot more thank-yous. I get irked every day when I hold the door for people and they don’t say thank you.

And I’m starting to think that a lot of times it has to do with people being so in their own worlds. You see people walking through the world staring at their BlackBerries or iPhones. Doors are opening for them. Change is being made. People are making way. But they don’t acknowledge it, because they’re on that thing.

On several flights I’ve been on, the flight attendants have reached a point of exasperation, saying, “We can’t leave until everything with an on/off button is turned off!” People aren’t even processing that because they’re so distracted by their gadgets. Or they’re thinking, “My BlackBerry isn’t going to take this plane down.”

How important could the messages be? Is your wife having a baby this second? And if so, why are you on the plane? If you’re on your way to her, how about just texting, “Be right there, honey,” and then turning off the phone?

This kind of technological distraction is everywhere. At Dunkin’ Donuts, the person behind the counter was saying, “Excuse me!” to the man who was first in line. He was on his phone, so he didn’t even notice. The counter person went to the second person in line, and then suddenly the first guy said, “Hey!”

“Ah, you’re out of your coma!” the person behind the counter said.

I feel like an old fart sometimes, but I wonder, Where does this take us? These sidewalks aren’t designed for zombies, nor are our highways.

I hear there is a new application for iPhones that lets you see the sidewalk behind the phone while you text. That to me seems like surrender. You can’t read e-mail while doing anything as complex as walking down a crowded sidewalk or driving on a highway.

It’s impossible for your brain to take in that much information, at least it certainly is for me. Once when I was on Todayin New York live via satellite from Los Angeles, I was looking directly into a camera that had Matt Lauer’s interview questions for me on the screen. Since the words that appeared weren’t mine, I wasn’t supposed to read them, but they were so terribly distracting that I couldn’t think straight. And all I had to do was chat. I didn’t have to navigate a crowd or traffic!

It may seem crazy to stress manners when it can be hard enough just keeping it together day to day. When I flip through old etiquette books from the fifties and sixties, I see why people think talking about manners is ridiculous. In one old book, you have proclamations like:

“Boy’s hands on wheel. Girl’s hands at her side.”

“Shorts are out of place on the street.”

“Don’t chew gum in church.”

“Follow your hostess in putting your napkin in your lap.”

“Choose congenial friends.” It’d be nice if you knew in advance!

And then there are all of the etiquette book particulars about table settings. Mrs. Post, I don’t even ownfish forks!

But real etiquette helps. Sometimes it’s practical, or it used to be. Traditionally, men walked on the outside of the sidewalk and women on the inside. I believe that goes back to the period in history when people threw their chamber pots from their windows onto the streets below. The person walking on the outside of the sidewalk would get hit, and better for it to be the man, who didn’t have petticoats to wash.

In general, when it comes to etiquette, I don’t care about all that fussy stuff regarding salad forks, but rather about the fundamentals of conscientious behavior. It’s good for you and those around you, and it’s good for preserving a social order that supports everyone. The key things are to be as thoughtful as possible of others and to pay attention to the messages you’re sending out, and the means by which you’re sending them.

When someone dies, it’s good to mail a note. Don’t send an e-mail. You have to send a card. Everyone should have cards and stamps kicking around. I have some very simple stationery, just nice card stock with my name at the top. You don’t have to write a long note. I learned something from Diana Vreeland: What you write should be pithy and memorable. All people need to know is that you’re thinking about them: “Thinking about you at this difficult time. I was so sorry to hear of your loss.” Done.

When the news is happy, e-mail is fine. You can e-mail congratulations about babies, weddings, anything. But when it’s not? If it’s a death or other bad news, you have to be more formal.

I wasn’t the only one who was a little horrified by Ashton Kutcher’s reference to his former girlfriend Brittany Murphy’s death. He wrote on Twitter: “2day the world lost a little piece of sunshine. My deepest condolences go out 2 Brittany’s family, her husband, & her amazing mother Sharon.”

People use texting and e-mail for everything, but it’s not appropriate for somber situations. If you win an Oscar, tweet away, but if you’re talking about a death or an illness, you need to use more formal channels. For example:

You can promote an employee via e-mail, but you can’t fire him.

You can ask someone out by e-mail, but you can’t break up with her.

Happy occasions can be casual. Sad or serious ones require a personal touch.

Fighting by e-mail is bad, too. I’m all for writing down the angry e-mail, but don’t send it. That carefully crafted note never has the effect you want it to have. It just inflames the situation. Print it out and then delete it. Then you have the reference for the phone call or the meeting. It will save you a lot of stress and conflict. Every time I’ve blown up in a moment of frustration I’ve regretted it.

The worst was a few years ago when I sent an angry e-mail late at night to a TV executive. He’d called to yell at me about something I’d said to the press. I took the high road at the time and was contrite on the phone. But then I stewed about it all night. I thought: How dare you?And I started thinking counterproductive things like: I could have said this much worse thing to the press!I wrote it all down in an e-mail and rather than just saving it and cooling off, I hit send.

The next morning, I woke up with one thought: I can’t believe I sent that.

I sent a new e-mail apologizing and called later and just said, “Sorry.”

It blew over, and I learned that many mistakes can be undone. But I thought, Never again.When you take into account the emotional wear and tear, you realize it’s better to let most sleeping dogs lie. I’ve learned at the age of fifty-seven that as much as I’d like to say X, Y, or Z, I must consider how I am going to feel afterward. And the answer, in the case of angry or snide remarks, is: not great.

I also learned about e-mail attachments the hard way. Someone sent me an e-mail when I was at Parsons with an attachment saying, “What kind of a jerk is this guy?” I wrote back, “He demonstrates every time he puts a word to paper that he’s a complete and total asshole.” I thought I was responding to her, but in fact I was responding to the guy. He had a good sense of humor about it, luckily, and wrote me back, saying, “I’ve been called worse.” I was mortified.

And yet, I will say a misdirected e-mail saved my fiftieth birthday. My dear friends the Banus and a colleague at Parsons were planning a surprise party for me. Meanwhile, I was having a huge falling-out with the colleague at Parsons. There was a volley of e-mails about the details of the party, and someone cc’ed me by accident. Suddenly, I see the whole sequence of correspondence and learned that my mother was coming; my sister and her family were coming; I even think that the Queen of England was coming.

Furthermore, this was during the time when tumultuous curricular and pedagogical changes were taking place in the Fashion Design Department, and I was woefully unpopular with the faculty. They were invited, too. So I responded to this unintentional “cc” and called the whole thing off. Thank you, technology!

Things do happen for a reason. As terrible as I would have felt doing this to my friends, had I arrived at the Banus and been met with this surprise, I would have walked out. They were inviting people I was all but at war with, and I really doubt I could have played nice.

I am really against surprise parties, especially if they involve people from different spheres. Assumptions that are made by either group about who should be included are almost always wrong. There are a lot of people with whom I interact because I have to; that doesn’t mean I want to eat cake with them. And then if they brought me a present, I would have to write a note.

One little technology-taming tip, If you, too, are surprised by typos: I like to print out things I’m working on to read them on paper before I send them off. You miss a lot of things on the screen that are apparent when you’re looking at them on the page. Yes, there is the environment to think of, but—to paraphrase a certain celebrity on the topic of her fur coat being dead when she got it (“I didn’t kill it!” she said)—the tree’s already been taken down.