Rich Kids

The Beverly pursuit is the path to success.... If a student does not have the right moves, he will go hungry.... --Watchtower (The Beverly Hills High School Yearbook), 1985 Edition

Summer has come to an end. The calendar next to his Apple Computer poster says summer actually lasts for a few more days, but Steven knows better. Summer is fucking dead. Steven [not an actual person; this and other characters are composites drawn by the author from his year of interviews at Beverly Hills High] has realized it since early this afternoon, when he walked into a drugstore on Cañon Drive in search of a candy bar, only to hear a shrill, unseen voice in the next aisle moaning, "Calculus is going to be a bitch." Pleasantly tired after a morning of surfing, he suddenly felt a jolt of adrenaline run through him. He rushed home, took his surfboard off the racks on his car roof for the first time all summer, placed it against the garage wall, bounded upstairs and sat limply on his bed.

Pressure did that to him, he thinks now, lying down, closing his eyes. Deep-breathing exercises have been prescribed by his good friend Laura to help relax him. He hasn't seen her for a week. Where is she now when he needs her? Probably getting laid by what's-his-name--Adrian, Abel? Sometimes his own annoyance leaves him wondering, Is he jealous? No, no; she can have sex with whomever she's hot on, but you'd think she'd want to return his calls, see how her good friend was doing. Psych up, psych up. What classes can he take this semester without jeopardizing his class standing? No, no: Wrong approach. Think aggressively.

The only thing (continued on page 139) Rich Kids (continued from page 92) worth losing sleep over, in the end, Steven philosophizes, is your grade-point average. His near-straight-A average of 3.85 has not come easily, not with so much competition in his honors classes; and since sophomore year, he has studied diligently until about 12:30 a.m., Sunday through Thursday. He has always been superstitious. During sophomore year, he came upon the Rodeo Drive route. Reciting geometry postulates to himself, he missed a turn on the way to school one day and found his car snarled in Rodeo's slow tourist traffic. Steven cursed at the top of his lungs, furious at having allowed exam pressure to put his brain in a fog. He had to drive four blocks out of his way before he finally got to the school's gate, ten minutes tardy to his first class. He received a 96 on his geometry test that morning, his highest mathematics mark ever at Beverly and a sure sign to him that his new route was fated. He has kept the route a secret from everyone, even Laura, who might decide he was a geek if she knew. Hell, everybody has something to hide, he's discovering. A friend from seventh grade whom he had never seen do anything more hedonistic than swim naked in his pool checked into Coke-Enders this summer, Laura told him.

"Six hundred and seven are escaping in June," he muses, which is to say that he has counted 607 classmates' names in last year's yearbook. "I wish I really knew, like, ten people in my class. That would be a freak--to know what they are feeling."

•

Tension over the bullshit--his grades, S.A.T. and Achievement Test scores--tension over his lack of college prospects. Tension over the big black void in front of him. Worse, Andy must meet his not so amicably divorced parents for lunch at Spago. His parents have come together over a pizza to get advice from a private counselor about college admissions. Andy arrives 15 minutes late. The counselor, devouring a salad, tells his parents that having Andy apply to an Ivy League school would be "like shooting for Jupiter when we should be satisfied with a nice trip to San Diego."

"I'm hoping for something fairly prestigious," says his mother.

"Aren't we all?" the counselor says blithely, shrugging. "But San Diego State and Arizona State will take him. Then there is graduate school to think of. There is no reason why, at a place like Arizona State, Andrew couldn't graduate with a three-point-nine or a four-0 and go to medical school or law school wherever he would like."

"I think a three-point-nine at Harvard or Yale, though, would take Andy a lot further," his father interjects.

"Am I correct in saying that we're all friends here?" The man has spread his hands and placed them on the center of the table, palms up, ready to sell. "I think that Andrew is as fine a young man as anyone could hope to meet, but what is working against us here is figures--norms, averages, high ends and low ends. I am advising you to consider seriously Arizona State, San Diego State, a couple of the UCs on the bottom end, the state colleges, Claremont--which, incidentally, I see as a top-end school for Andrew--along with the University of Colorado, the University of San Francisco and the College of the Pacific. And this is my reasoning...."

Andy doesn't hear any of the reasoning, his mind having been numbed by the crushing disappointment of what he has heard, head down, teeth absently working on the pizza in front of him--chew, chew, chew--a dumb animal reduced to grazing.

"Andy, do you have anything that you want to add?" he hears his father saying.

"Uh, no." His mother is frowning. What has he done wrong? "I mean, I understand," Andy says. "Maybe I'll get a miracle on the S.A.T. Maybe Harvard will suddenly want to take a lazy and shiftless white kid."

"That's not the positive kind of attitude that you want to have going in," the counselor says amiably. His business is finished here. "You're a wonderful candidate, Andrew, and we're going to find you a wonderful school."

His father stands to leave with the counselor, murmuring "Nice to see you again" in the direction of his ex-wife while looking over her shoulder for the exit.

"Never embarrass me again with that faraway stuff," his mother says to Andy after the two men have gone.

•

On Wednesday, another discussion in Steven's history class is going nowhere, and somehow, they're talking about college admissions, particularly how the admissions of minorities with lower test scores may affect their own chances. "I don't see how that is fair," says a blonde girl in the back of the room. "I want everybody to save equal rights, but I don't want to be screwed because some black kid lives in a poor area."

"I don't know why everybody is so down on blacks," says a red-haired girl. "They don't have it as good, and things should be better for them. I'm not saying that they should get every college spot, but you have to give them some because they don't get the same kind of good education. It is bizarre what black people had to go through in the Forties and Fifties. They couldn't even eat in the same restaurants in some places."

"Bullshit," says a boy in the back. "That was just a few places in the South. They did some marches, and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson gave them their equal rights. They didn't have to go to war or anything. They got what they wanted. It didn't take them so long."

"I don't know about that," says the redhead.

"It took just a few years after Martin Luther King started marching," says the boy. "Nobody fought them real hard about it. I saw this television thing where they went to Washington and spoke and then they got their rights. It was pretty easy. And now they want a lot more. They have everything already. I don't see why they have to get a better advantage than white people in going to colleges and stuff. I don't think that is fair."

"When did Mexicans get equal rights?" someone asks.

"Same time as blacks," someone else answers, "or maybe just a little after."

"I just don't think that is very smart," says the redhead. "Since everybody is American, I think everybody should have more feelings for people who haven't had it easy. We can't always be thinking about ourselves."

"Well, you give up your spot at UCLA," says the blonde girl.

Steven is ambivalent about the issue of special minority admissions. Nonetheless, he gets angry. "You guys are so bogus," he says. "You don't know anything that went on in the Sixties, do you?"

"You're so sarcastic," says the blonde girl.

"Lighten up, Steven," says the boy.

"OK, hold it down," admonishes the teacher.

"How much of this will be on the test?" demands the blonde girl.

It disgusts him, thinking about it. He doesn't agree with most of what the Sixties kids wanted, but at least a few of them demonstrated some social commitment. Making a flurry of phone calls to college and high school acquaintances whom he had met during fund raising for the Ethiopian famine victims, Steven tried to entice them into working for Republican Senatorial candidate Bobbi Fiedler. Nearly all begged off. Most people never have time for anything other than school, except when a trendy cause such as the Live Aid concert comes along, something hip, designer relief. In his 17 years, the prevailing causes have risen and fallen so quickly around him that they have been reduced to fads--the environment, hunger, nuclear disarmament, Central America, tax reform, South Africa, El Salvador, Nicaragua.... Whether in politics or in business, a "cause" remains alive, believes Steven, the young Republican activist, only as long as its sponsoring politicians believe it to be "sexy." He saw the term in a People magazine article.

•

Andy has received an early Christmas present, a copy of a letter of recommendation that his uncle in New York sent to his good friend, the dean of admissions at a small but prominent Northeastern college. "Andy's imagination, ingenuity and social concern do not manifest themselves in the standard measure of grades," the recommendation reads.

He has spent, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, little time with books, preferring to be in hospital wards helping patients or in garages perfecting his bass guitar. But this year, having been told of the unfortunate reality that is the 1986 college-admissions experience, Andy has pledged to show his prowess in the classroom, too (I think, Norman, that his fall term will yield nothing but A's and B's). Andy is a renaissance man--a thinker, an artist and a young man of good character. It is my conviction that he qualifies as an outstanding candidate for admission at your institution and I hope and expect that when you review his record, you will share my judgment.

Regards, Phil

Along with his uncle's recommendation letter, Andy has received a photostat of the dean's reply:

Dear Phil,

Thank you for your most heartily appreciated letter regarding the admissions application of your nephew Andrew. How is your knee doing? Those cement courts do it every time. I think that I can say with some degree of certainty that if Andy performs as you expect this year, we will doubtless be able to grant him a spot in the class of 1990. What do you hear from Flannery? I expect to see the two of you at the reunion.

Best, Norman

And paper-clipped to the dean's reply is a brief note in his uncle's handwriting:

Andy,

Your old man told me you were thinking of applying to my alma mater, so what the hell, I took the liberty of sending a flier to an old friend with whom I did enough during the old days so that either one of us could jail the other for moral turpitude. Maybe someday I'll fill you in on the sordid details. Anyway, kiddo, I've sent something else along in a Saks box, but I expect you'll find the enclosed letters better than anything I could get you at a department store. As you might have gathered from the dean's note, a strong performance this semester should get you in. He told me in a telephone conversation that it's harder there these days to get the cream of the crop, with kids applying to so many places. That helps your chances, no offense meant. Your father has some young chickadee who's young enough to be your sister, I hear. We've always liked them young. Some genetic flaw, I suppose. Or is it a blessing? Everyone sends his love, if not his booze. The Jim Beam goes to your dad and the chickadee, though I imagine they're doing fine without it. I am, if nothing else, old and envious. Merry Christmas.

Uncle Phil

The final exams in January may mean his future, Andy tells himself. He calls the hospital to explain that he will not be able to come for his volunteer shift during the next few weeks: He has too much studying to do before finals. He gets to his bedroom desk by four o'clock every afternoon, resisting the urge to turn on his stereo. But there is only so much that can be changed. His study habits, dormant for so long, cannot possibly be reawakened and tuned in time for him to compete with Beverly's top students. So on a couple of meaningless quizzes in December, he cheats to test the system before the January finals. Nearly everyone cheats at Beverly, he tells a couple of friends. Why not us? They use crib sheets, notes on their palms, multiple-choice answers on pens and pencils. They spend, Andy notices, almost the same amount of time devising cheating systems as they do studying. The tension worsens. He finds himself studying his teachers' movements during the quizzes, looking over his shoulder between stealing glances at the letters on his pencil.

He gets A's on his English and physiology quizzes.

He is still in the running.

He is still top drawer.

His uncle and father will be so proud.

"We have to get you together again with that private college counselor we hired," his father says to him the next day over lunch, still wearing his Hawaiian shirt and a lei that he bought just before boarding the flight to Los Angeles. "Let's just get him to tell us what colleges look like possibilities, which ones look like certainties and which ones aren't realistic for you. We'll have him go down the list again."

"He's taking your money, Dad. I'll be happy at San Diego State or some place like that. I've been thinking about it. I don't need anyplace else."

"Use his expertise; that's all I'm asking. My friends have some pull at some colleges, your uncle has some pull and I have some pull. Maybe we can work something out somewhere. Use all of us in this thing. Use the counselor and anyone else you can; that's all we're asking. I know you are depressed, and your mother knows you're depressed. She called me. Which is why I thought you needed a present, though your birthday is three months away. These are yours...." He gives Andy some car keys. "It's being delivered today. Hope you like it in silver. If you don't, well, we'll fix it so you get something you like. A BMW 325i. And here's a pineapple and a lei for you." Andy feels sweaty petals around his neck. Dead flowers, laden with Hawaiian humidity. Oh, but getting a car: a Beamer. He can always count on getting hot gifts in bad times. His mother, who vowed after the divorce never to speak to his father except in the event of an emergency (a dip in the currency exchange rate or a credit shutdown at Saks), must have called him to wail that their disturbed progeny looked suicidal, homicidal or something-cidal. Mom never quite knew the right words, but her passion always got the message across. His father cannot look at him squarely in the eyes, seems to be stealing glances at the side of his face.

"Is that earring you got on new?" he finally asks.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot it. I'm just wearing it outside school, not in school, Dad. You don't hate it, do you?"

"It just surprised me when I saw it," his dad says, grinning. "But don't feel like you have to excuse it. Nobody has to excuse that kind of thing. I used to wear a bandanna and a ponytail. My bandanna was a kind of emblem, my own personal emblem, I guess. I understand what you're trying to say with your earring."

"Oh, God."

"What comes around goes around, pal."

•

Laura has come over to Steven's with some news: She has broken up with Aaron. It does not come as a surprise, and yet Steven can't think of anything to say, sensing that this breakup may be the catalyst in their own relationship.

"He was kind of an asshole," she says. "He shook me when I let him know. I should never have told him face to face. I got these bruises on my wrist."

She pulls up the sleeves of her sweater to reveal red-and-gray bumps on her olive skin. He has a fleeting image of her from the summer before, hitting a tennis ball, thin arm straightened on a follow-through. He lets his thumb and index finger light only a second on her bumps before pulling them off, furrowing his brow, trying to demonstrate that his concern is nothing more than clinical. "Shouldn't you put a bandage on those?" he says. He touches the bruises once, twice more. Her arm is as taut as ever.

"They'll be fine," she says. "But I gotta change the number on my phone, because I know he'll bother the shit out of me if I don't. Why was I so stupid? That's what I wonder. He was such an ass."

"I didn't expect to see you," he says. "I have to go over to Vickie's to take some wallpaper off her bathroom walls."

"Sounds happening," she says, laughing.

He shrugs. She pulls her sleeves down, kisses him on the forehead. "I know you have to go. I'll be fine. Don't worry."

Within 20 minutes, Steven is knee-deep in torn, gluey wallpaper that has ducks swimming on something that looks like a pond in the Florida Everglades. "This shit is awful," he says. "How could anybody have put this up in your bathroom?"

"Wait until you see the new wallpaper," says Vickie. "It's just like the paper we have in the bathrooms at our beach house, a lime green, but not loud, loud lime, just an interesting green. You'll love it. I almost forgot to tell you. My mom said we could use the house after the prom if we want."

He keeps his eyes fixed on the torn ducks. "Let's not make any definite plans until we know what we're doing, OK?"

"We're going to the prom, aren't we?"

There it is. The Question. They have been doomed from the beginning, he realizes. Only the grinds and scents of sweet sex have held them together this long. A simple no from him and it could be over in five minutes. He could be at Laura's in another ten.

"Well, aren't we?" Vickie demands.

"Sure," he says.

"God, the way you said that, I wasn't sure for a sec," she admits.

"I just want to keep the after-prom stuff open, OK?"

"OK," she says cheerfully, then shouts down the hall. "Hey, Mom, we're going to the prom, but can we let you know about the house?"

"Certainly," says a voice from down the hall.

Now there is a witness to his capitulation. Within 15 minutes of his indecision, he has signed and sealed himself over to her for prom night and, in effect, for the rest of his senior year. She squeals, hugs him. "Oh, I want to go to bed with you," she whispers in his ear.

•

"Two A's and three B's," Andy's mother reads aloud from his report card. "This is the most impressive report card I've ever seen from you. This is extraordinary."

"I hope it's worth more than dick," he says glumly.

"I wish you wouldn't talk that way," she whimpers. "I've told you that I've heard it all before. Don't tell me you talk that way all the time around your father and his girlfriend." She pauses, waiting, Andy suspects, less for confirmation or denial of this than for a story about her ex and his latest nymph. Andy doesn't bite. His mother straightens, changes tack. "Anyway, no matter who admits you to their school, the most important thing you've proved with this report card is that you can succeed, dear. I think it's just terrific. And now you have nothing to worry about the rest of the way, since the colleges don't look at the final-semester grades, right?"

"Uh-huh," he says.

"You're free, then."

Liberation, a friend called it the other day. Short of failing a course or being busted on a morals rap, nothing they could do as seniors in their second semester would matter. Months before, Andy dreamed of such freedom, believing that it would come at the precise moment that finals ended in early February; but finals have passed, and although he skips second-semester classes whenever he feels the urge, a new pressure has seized him, leaving his mouth dry when he thinks about it. He cannot get his mind off his upcoming college interviews. The season of being judged by self-satisfied Yuppies in pinstripes and blue pinpoint-oxford shirts has begun.

He sat for an interview last Saturday. He had drunk three large glasses of water at home to prevent his nervous voice from cracking, but by the time he got to the interviewer's home, he had to pee and didn't want to ask permission to go to the bathroom. The interviewer, an earnest, balding investment banker in his weekend Polo shirt and deck shoes, told him that he had been in the class of '73, explaining that he should have graduated in '72 except that he took 1968 off to work for Eugene McCarthy. Andy didn't know who Eugene McCarthy was. The interviewer glanced at a pile of books on top of his television set and asked Andy if he had ever read Moby Dick. Andy thought that he had heard of the book once and guessed that this man mentioned earlier, Eugene McCarthy, probably had written it. "Not all of it," Andy said. "I've been very busy with school and finals, of course, so I haven't gotten around to reading everything I should. So you're a big fan of Eugene McCarthy's writing, too, huh? I liked Moby Dick a lot." The interviewer's quizzical frown told Andy that he had somehow blundered into saying something either confusing or stupid or both, and, suddenly self-conscious, he became aware of the twitching of his legs, his body's involuntary reaction to his chief physical need at the moment. The interviewer shifted the discussion to the subject of nuclear holocaust, leaning back on his couch, awaiting Andy's pronouncements. Andy said something about how he thought everybody should turn in all his weapons to the UN.

"The UN has no clout," the interviewer said, absently arranging a couple of sailing books on a side table. "It can't even get people to pay their dues. Trust me on this one. Money is my sphere."

At the end, Andy was convinced that he could strike that school off his list; the interviewer's impression of him seemed clear in the way he had limply shaken his hand on the way out. Andy doesn't care. One dead application does not finish him. He has an interview this coming Sunday at the Brentwood house of an alumnus of a small New Hampshire college, and then an interview Monday afternoon in Century City.

"I don't feel exactly free from anything, Mom," he says. "I feel real nervous about this college stuff. I don't think that guy on Saturday was exactly blown away by my intellectualness or whatever."

"You should bring up a topic of your own next time," she softly suggests. "And just be yourself. Your uncle and father will get you in with some help. Don't underestimate your uncle."

"He's a dick sometimes."

"I thought you liked him."

"He always makes you feel that he's going to be responsible for the good things that happen to you when he helps."

"When has he ever helped you before?"

"Like when he helped me get into that computer summer camp after sixth grade. And I would have gotten in on my own anyways, because my teacher had ranked me number two in our class. But Uncle Phil always said, 'Andy, aren't you happy I got you into that camp? Wasn't it a great camp?' Blah blah blah. He's so conceited. He makes you feel like you are nothing. Dad tries to run my life a lot, too."

"He's just trying to help. Take whatever help your uncle or father or this counselor can give with colleges. Everybody uses all the help he can get, if he is smart. Play the game when you meet these new people."

That, actually, makes sense to Andy. For his interview with the representative from the small New Hampshire school, Andy, remembering the preppie attire of his last interviewer, arrives in a natty blue blazer, a powder-blue shirt, khaki pants and penny loafers with Argyle socks. The interviewer, a rawboned man in his early 40s, is wearing jeans with weed stains and suspenders, a faded college sweat shirt and brown boots. He pours each of them a glass of Kool-Aid from a plastic pitcher and signals Andy to follow him outside to his backyard picnic table, which has an electric chain saw on top of it.

"So what do you think?" the man asks.

"Of the college?"

"Well, sure, if that's what you think I meant. Actually, I was talking about my little outdoor workshop here. I keep all my tools on the patio. We use the picnic table as a workbench, though my wife seems to take exception to it. She says it somehow attracts flies."

"Oh."

The man raises an eyebrow. "You mean you believe that?"

"No. I just thought that was kind of funny, but I don't believe it."

"Good," says the man, "because that's kind of stupid, thinking that flies come to a workbench."

"Uh-huh."

"This fly business is absurd...."

"Sounds like it."

"When you think about it very carefully," says the man, jutting a forefinger into the air, "you realize that it is the ants of the world that have something against the professional and recreational builder."

"Ants."

"Of course. Developers and builders are always destroying their hills, correct?"

"I guess," says Andy carefully.

"So there you are. Do you follow me?" The man raises his eyebrow again.

"Sure," Andy says.

"You like crafts?"

"Well, a couple of times, I've helped this guy make surfboards."

The man wipes his mouth and spits. "That's not building, that's a sport. So you want to go to college?"

"Uh-huh. Yes, sir. Very much."

"Why?"

"Well, I'm not real good with explanations, but I'll try...."

"How's your Kool-Aid?"

"Fine, sir."

"Son, don't answer that question I just asked you. Talk to me about whatever gets your blood pumping."

"Pardon me, sir?"

"You heard me. Building things gets my heart going. What does it for you?"

"Really?"

"Yes, son."

"Playing rock and roll."

"Tell me about it."

Andy tells him about his band for the next 20 minutes. The interviewer uses the time to whittle and slap flies that land on his neck. "OK," he finally says. "Why, if you like this rock and roll so much, do you want to go to college?"

Andy figures he has nothing to lose. "I've thought about that," he says deliberately, "and kind of decided that whether I make it at rock and roll or not, a college education can only make me better."

The man studies his whittling knife. "Well, I think a school like my old one can use someone like you, son," he says. "So I'm going to recommend you, and you can save all that mumbo jumbo about your extracurricular activities at school for someone else. What do you think of that?"

Andy smiles. "Good."

•

The next afternoon, Steven skips his economics class to go surfing with a few buddies. It is his first time out since last October. His timing has altogether left him, but just falling off his board and thrashing about in the water renews him. Driving home, he feels serene for the first time in a couple of weeks. It is a good mood in which to confront the day's mail, filled with news from four of the colleges to which he has applied. If these are rejections, he tells himself, I can live with that. I have an acceptance to Berkeley. I can do well there. I have a good life. I've done my best. I wish Laura were here. Or Vickie or anybody else who could assure me that bad news would not be the end of the world. Stay calm; I can surf tomorrow if I want to. His mother, standing next to him, finally tells him to stop staring into space and open the damned things. His father, hearing her order, has come rushing out of his study. One by one, Steven opens the thick envelopes filled with papers and forms and reads the first couple of sentences of each letter. The four envelopes contain three acceptances and one waiting list, which comes from a school that he doesn't care about. His mother's eyes are brimming. His dad hugs him. "I'm in," says Steven. "It's over."

Within a couple of hours, the thrill has worn off. Will he be able to compete in an elite university? He has told Laura, Vickie and most of his buddies about the news, then suggested that they all get together to party. He picks up Vickie, and everyone meets at the house of a surfing buddy whose parents have gone out of town for the weekend. The group chips in to buy two bottles of Chablis, four six-packs of Heineken, two bags of potato chips and $300 worth of cocaine. "If you're going to have a party, you have to have the kinds of things that people party with," Steven explains later. "If my parents had a party, they wouldn't buy eight cases of' soft drinks and one little pint of Scotch. They'd get a lot of Scotch. So we get some coke. So what? We're not kids anymore. These are parties. You get what people like."

Midway through the party, Laura arrives. Vickie, who has been talking with some of Steven's surfing buddies from Palisades High School, quickly returns and puts a proprietary arm around his waist. Laura strolls over.

"Hi, Vickie," Laura says. "I like your shoes."

Vickie smiles, looks to the side. "Hi, thanks. There's stuff to drink in the kitchen."

Laura moves on to the kitchen to get a glass of wine. Vickie excuses herself and goes back to talking with a guy from Pali. Someone proposes a toast: "Here's to either the future governor of California or the next derelict surf bum." The kid raises his beer mug. "This Heinie's for you, Steven."

"He kept the route a secret from everyone, even Laura, who might decide he was a geek if she knew."