dirty little secrets

What are some of the best kept secrets on the Main Line? You name it, basically....

Here in Brigadoon no one knocks their spouse around, does drugs, drinks, is sexually provocative....yet they will freely tell you at cocktail parties what body part has been augmented, how much they paid for the new boobs, and how many pairs of hookerish Tory Burch slides they have, and what bells and whistles the Ferrari they never drive has...how many appliances are in the kitchen that has never even had the stove turned on in it .....you hear they shipped a kid off to boarding school, but what you don't hear about is why some of those kids get shipped off and so on....

Drug and alcohol use in particular are swept under the carpet in fine and constant tradition. Yet, without fail, when someone along the Main Line dies oddly or tragically, all you have to do is read the obituary for key words. One recently, where the deceased shall remain nameless, sent up a million warning bells:

"loved...fast....speed....thrill...larger than life"

Hmmm.... then this one obituary basically says how a relative imagined the decedent strolling along picking daisies and looking at birds in the sky. It was simply too prosaic, with too many odd buzz words strung together as if the author was having a hard time justifying the undoubtedly untimely death perhaps? Or is it easier to imagine the deceased as they wished them to be as opposed to the way they really were?

Not to make life of any family's undeniable grief, but let's get real? This one obituary of note in particular sent off warning signals and opened the door in a case where saying less would have been more...that and the fact that another member of the family ended up in police briefs in one paper all the ironic hell the same week that this flowery obituary appeared? Come on, you might as well have taken out a huge billboard on the Surekill that said "screwed up disaster family with problems".

So it makes you look into things and wonder: could some tragedy have been avoided if they had acknowledged not one, but perhaps several members of the same family had issues?

But will that happen? Probably not. All you will hear about is the tragedy of it all...and the real tragedy of course deals with the surviving family, doesn't it? Will they drown their sorrows collectively? Or deal with a dragon of an issue simmering below the surface?

But hell, that is half the fun of the Main Line. Everything is all about the public image, the public persona....have to live up to standards....can only be human behind closed doors, and even then, on odd days of the month only, right?


So death with be celebrated with pomp and circumstance, the deceased will be memorialized and feted as larger than life....and oh yes, they will "celebrate" the deceased with a memorial service undoubtedly designed to assuage the guilt of surviving family members, who have to know there WAS a problem, and if the problem had been really dealt with years ago, maybe there would be no funeral and memorial service, right?

But that is the Main Line...we hear about scandalous divorces and all seem so shocked that the wife got used as an emotional and physical punching bag, or the long suffering husband looked the other way while wifey cheated her ass off with some old geezer she met at the "club" (note: must say "club" with Locust Valley Lockjaw).

But what if people were a little more honest, eh? Would we be better off?

Seriously, wouldn't it be freeing for example to be able to say what an assh*le or bitch someone is? Wouldn't it be freeing to say they are the tackiest people alive and seriously if they have so much money why do they have such Christ awful taste? Wouldn't it be freeing to say "X, you are a total alcoholic, would you please go to rehab and NOT hang all over us at neighborhood parties?"? Wouldn't it be freeing to say "you bought that car instead of a penis extension"? Wouldn't it be freeing to say "honey, if your husband is a plastic surgeon and you are a shining example of his handiwork you should sue him and get a refund"?

But on the Main Line you can't say those things... you can only think them as you sip your martini and pop your valium....It's all so scandalous, dahhlings....and it doesn't have to be...but that is the Main Line....status, status, status...even when the house is going to foreclosure and creditors are hauling off the cars and furniture...it's all about status.

AHHH, the Main Line...ain't no place like it.