An important person should be treated exactly like anyone else holding a gun at your head.
Fortunately there aren’t many important people. To be important a person must be able to have an effect on your life. But the anarchy, entropy, and confusion in what’s left of Western civilization make it difficult for anyone to have any effect on anything. Therefore this section is about people who are called important rather than people who are important. The headwaiter at Ma Maison, IRS auditors, and your immediate superior at work are important enough to be treated under separate headings.
Some people who are called important are the “to me” kind of important, as in, “My parents are important to me.” If it is necessary to explain that someone is important to you, that explanation is all you are socially obligated to do for him. He isn’t that important.
Other people who are called important are actually famous. Of course, they aren’t important, either. And it would be hard to think of anything less important than some of them. A lamprey is more important than Bianca Jagger. But it is not a lie to call famous people important, because it isn’t they to whom we are referring. It’s their fame. Fame is very important. Modern society is without any concept of dignity, worth, or regard. Today the only thing which sets one person apart from another is his or her degree of fame.
Social obligations to the modern or famous type of important people are enormous and complex. We must be as obsequious as possible to famous people and do everything in our power to make them like us. Fame is a communicable disease. And if you kiss the ass of someone who’s got it, you may catch it yourself.
In order to meet famous people and give them the opportunity to take advantage of you, an introduction is necessary. Asking for their autograph or running up to their restaurant table and gushing over their latest cause for notoriety (“I loved your divorce!”) won’t do.
The perfectly correct and most formal introduction is: “Mr. Awfulpics, may I present Mr. Climby” or “Mr. Grosspoints, may I present you to Miss Bedable.” Or use the word “introduce” instead of “present.” It’s almost as correct and not as stupid sounding. The less famous person is presented to the more famous person. But men are always presented to women no matter how many times the man has appeared on the cover of Time and no matter how obvious it is that the woman wants to sleep with him just because he has. The only circumstance in which a woman is presented to a man is if that man is president of the United States—and who’d want to sleep with him?
Children are never introduced at all unless the famous person has a thing for them and you have one paid for and ready at the time.
Of course, the very formal method of introduction is never used by sophisticated people because sophisticated people have never had occasion to read a book of etiquette. Besides, most of them know each other already. But it is wise to use the most ceremonious forms with people such as game-show hosts, rock-star wives, daytime television personalities, Cher’s boyfriends, and others who might be insecure about their social status because they have none.
Otherwise, introductions are tailored to the circumstances and to the amount of fame involved. If there is no fame involved and you’re just introducing one worthless friend of yours to another, you can say simply, “Don’t you guys know each other?” and walk away.
When you want to introduce an insignificant friend to a famous person, you probably don’t really want to at all. It’s hard to do what you really want all the time but, like every difficult task, it results in a feeling of great accomplishment and satisfaction. Just leave your friend standing there like furniture while you chat happily with the MTV veejay, mafia hit man, or elected official.
If you owe money to the friend or are married to him or her and taking this tack will get you in trouble, you can say, “Oh, by the way, Mr. Panflash, this is Alice. We went to the same child psychiatrist back in Lake Forest.” If you have an ancient acquaintance with someone not worth knowing, most people will at least pretend to forgive you—the way they would pretend to forgive you for a birth defect or the wrong racial background. Of course, your spouse—whom you met two weeks ago in a health club—may be perplexed by this explanation, but that’s what your spouse gets for trying to marry up.
Introducing an ambitious friend to a famous person is more tricky. It’s not done unless the friend is so ambitious that he might be of use to you someday. Ambitious people are a lot more annoying than worthless people. Strategically, you don’t want to alienate the friend but, tactically, you don’t want to be remembered for foisting that friend on your famous acquaintance. Say, “Mrs. Greedagent, this is my friend Mark. He’s involved in a lot of really interesting cable TV projects.” You’ve used the phrase “cable TV projects”—international code words for “unemployed and on the make”—so the celebrity cannot claim she wasn’t warned. Change “cable TV projects” to “video art” if you think it will be a really long, long time before your friend is famous himself.
Introducing important people to each other is much more satisfying than introducing them to video artists. One approach is to do everything you can to make them attractive to each other and hope that you will receive a sort of social “finder’s fee” if they hit it off. They won’t. The social habits of famous people are like the sexual practices of porcupines, which urinate on each other to soften the quills. A more interesting thing to do is to make sure the two important people loathe each other right from the start: “Ana Plotless, this is Bret Leadpart. Bret thinks your novels are very good—of their kind … Bret, Ana has told me that she’s heard you’re very famous—in Japan.” This way you’ll become the conduit for all sorts of wonderful maliciousness between these two august souls.
The most delightful introduction you can make is to introduce an important person to someone he or she is going to find sexually interesting. This introduction is made in two parts. First you prep the sex object: “Kiki, save the drugs for later. I’m going to introduce you to Antonio. Antonio is a famous photographer … Yes, he does lots of fashion—Paris Vogue.” Then you march Kiki over to your well-known friend. “Antonio, you’re going to love this girl. She once made Warren Beatty bleed out the ears.” Kiki’s name is not a necessary part of the transaction.
There is only one person you can never introduce to the famous and that is yourself. Therefore it’s good to cultivate the affections of professional sycophants such as publicists, movie agents, and freelance writers for Vanity Fair magazine. These people are understandably short of friends, and, if you are kind to them, they’ll let you get the benefit of celebrity acquaintance while they do the fawning and toadying necessary for such acquaintance to be achieved.
Once you’ve met a famous person, say something that will make you remembered: “Cornelia Guest! Oh, my gosh, Miss Guest, I know it’s polite for a gentleman to remove his hat when he meets a lady, but for you, I feel I should do something more, like take off my pants!!!”
Then shut up. Famous people think they want to be treated like regular people. This is not true. Famous people also think they are special and wonderful. This is even less true. The best course of action is to go ahead and treat them as if they are ordinary (because, boy, are they ever) but now and then throw something into the conversation to show that you share their completely wrongheaded opinion of their own wonderfulness: “Gosh, Cornelia, you make liposuction come alive!”
When the famous person you’ve met is not in your immediate company, ignore him or her completely. This is the modern use of the “cut direct” mentioned above. Whereas, in former times, the cut direct was used on enemies, it has now evolved into a polite way to show respect for famous friends. It is an article of faith among celebrities that they are constantly pestered by the public. Of course there are so many celebrities, and so few of them are celebrated for anything, that most of the time the public can’t be bothered. But it’s only common courtesy to act as though the famous people you know are so famous that the public is very bothered indeed. You don’t want to be seen as part of that public. Wait for the celebrities to pester you. They will soon enough. If they weren’t infantile self-obsessed hogs for attention, then our kind of society never would have thought they were important in the first place.