Invisible Tension

I spent a few hours Sunday at the house of a relative in Salem. Some folks from back east were there, along with with my immediate family and the kids and grandkids of the host.

The host is in his late 70s or early 80s, and his grandkids are between 8th grade and 20 or so years old. The host - let's call him 'M' - had two kids there, a son and a daughter. The son, M Jr., is a very, very successful consultant. He has three daughters of his own - M, M, and M - and a wife, M. (I am not making this up. Their names all start with the same letter. It would be hilarious except of how friggin' pretentious it is.) They live in the greater Portland area, and the kids attend a private school. The wife/mother M is very, very used to being rich. The husband drives a Ford Excursion, which is second in size only to a Hummer.

The daughter of the original M, S (making the kids S & M), has two children, a son (A) and a daughter (B), one of whom is 18 and the other 20 or so. The daughter, who is the oldest, works at one location of a chain of Shari's-like restaurants in the greater Portland area. A and B, and their mother, S, are pretty damn working class. The mother works at a retirement home, the daughter, B, lives with her Mexican boyfriend, J. The father is in and out of prison and hasn't lived with them as long as I can remember.

There were lots of other people, including some of my dad's cousins, but the ones mentioned are the ones relevant at this point. Oh, and the other people are almost all either working class or lower-middle class. Most are conservative, some very much so, and pretty much everyone else is well over 40 or even 50.

In other words, there is a strong family history with being working class or identifying with working class behaviors and desires, even if it's not a conscious one; the one son, M, has broken the chain by being pretty wealthy.

When I got there, a bit late and sunburnt due to the Kinetic Challenge (I was an offishul), I grabbed some food ham, potato salad, deviled eggs, bread, and too-sugary lemonade, avoided the crowd, and found a chair. As I sat and ate, I tuned into the conversation happening between - sort of - one of my cousins, B, and the three M's, who are all sisters. The mother of the M's was also sitting in. When I say 'sort of', what I really mean is that one cousin, B, was talking at the M's at a very rapid pace (A had disappeared with my brother).

As I listened, I noticed that B was talking about her everyday life - her very, very dramatic life. I would say she used some sort of bubblegum/pop/slight Valley Girl speaking style (quick, lots of filler words, injections of perceived drama). She talked about pretty normal stuff: Babysitting a Mexican child (who I think is related to her boyfriend) and how much the child likes her (and how much she likes the child), working at the restaurant (and how much the milkshake machine sucks), hitting her regular customers, a few stories about how people she knew had been really drunk (but, of course, B thinks alcohol is gross) and various other pretty typical adventures she's had while working and living on her own at age 20. It seemed like a pretty typical retelling of her life, made hyper-dramatic.

However, according to the faces of all the female M's - mother and all three daughters - it was anything but normal. No, I think the three rich daughters had barely heard anything like what she was saying before (though I could be wrong, of course). To the best of my knowledge, the three sisters have never had jobs, all go to church, vacation in Italy, etc, etc...they are practically living caricatures of rich people for how much they have been trained to emote in public. The mother was also listening, I suspect for two reasons: First, because those were stories she had never heard before (I've never actually met anyone this bourgeoisie in the flesh before - it's awkward and crazy-intense), and half because she didn't want her daughters hearing anything "inappropriate."

It seemed to me that what other people were seeing was four teenage girls talking, even gossiping. What I saw was a living, breathing collision between two very, very different social classes. I don't think B really understood that one of the reasons her audience wasn't talking back was because they were in the midst of being exposed to a bunch of stuff they'd never really heard before due to their sheltered, private-school, upper-class upbringing, nor do I think the M's really understood that as far as I saw them, they might as well have been staring and drooling (that pretty much includes the mother).

The whole thing was made funnier by the fact that B would ask for the time every 15 minutes and, upon hearing it, shriek that she was going to be late for work, only to resume her story without moving an inch. I honestly don't think the M sisters had ever seen this before, even though I would consider it almost normal behavior for someone who doesn't want to go to work.

So yeah - I was sitting there, my sociologist tri-fold hat glued to my head (with a philosophical feather attached), trying not to laugh at how wrapped up each participant was in their part of the interaction. I was almost afraid to open my mouth because I wasn't sure what would come out.

Was this mean on my part? Maybe. Hilarious? I thought so. Infuriating? Only because the family of rich M's either isn't fully aware of the class difference or, far more likely, is doing their best to bury it to avoid feelings of guilt, because it's written all over their faces that they are slumming whenever they visit the rest of the family and no one ever talks about it.

Addendum: Despite the fact that my immediate family is probably the only real middle-class family that attends these gatherings (in terms of cultural values), I identify far more with the working-class side of things (given the choice between the two present), even though I abhor their politics and occasional outbursts of racism and sexism. Life is some complicated shit, let me tell you, and as the dude said, you don't get to choose your community.

QUICK UPDATE: I don't mean to imply that the M's were malicious or anything towards the rest of the family (with the possible exception of the mother, yikes), but more that their privilege came across in the way they acted.

UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention about this little family reunion was something the rich lady M said. She was, I think, talking about either a person who was going to rent a room in her mother's house or maybe be employed by here mother. In either case, her mother is undoubtedly into her 70s, so I can understand her paranoia about wanting to find someone trustworthy.

Turns out, though, that she gets their Social Security with their application and then proceeds to run the name and information through all sorts of online private-eye sites. She was bragging about how detailed they were ("they even found a ticket she got for wearing earphones in the car!") with absolutely no idea that what she was doing was weird, or wrong, or even creepy. She was elated that she got to run her own background checks on people and spy into their private lives (all known addresses, all schooling, names of relatives, credit ratings, basically any time one has an encounter with the law or anything "official").

Am I the only one who finds that behavior repulsive?