Etiquette: How To Be A Guest In A Home You Couldn't Afford

There is an Emily Flake comic affixed to my fridge showing a husband and wife getting dressed. The wife says to her husband, “Can you look up what their house cost, so I know what to wear for this party?”

It’s not just what to wear but how to behave that is helpful to think about if you want to pretend to belong in an enviroment that everyone knows you do not.

As it happens, I sit as I type in Southampton, New York, a community resplendent with guest cottages, hydrangeas, hedged-in pools, horse pastures, and of course, buckets full of Whispering Angel.

It’s a quaint hometown for people whose financial advisors help them avoid taxes (legally, of course!) and whose ancestors invented oxygen.

However, for the rest of us mere mortals, there must be a code of conduct.

If you’re ever at a dinner table and hear your host self-describe as a “fiscal conservative” who thinks the capital-gains tax is hurting poor people or mention how difficult posthumous irrevocable trusts are to set up, you might hear Meg Stalter’s voice in your head: Get me out of here!

For those of us who live in that uncomfortable medium where we’re too rich for the middle class and too middle class for the rich, we’ve been on both sides of the equation. This gives us empathy and perspective.

I’ve spent much time as of late thinking about how to behave in these scenarios: I had friends up to our home in Tuxedo Park a few weeks ago, and I am spending July between getting yelled at by my mom to make my bed there and interloping in Southampton, Amagansett, and Nantucket.

I ran into a friend and her family in Sag Harbor this week on my way to BuddhaBerry, where I shared the idea of this piece. Her parents remarked they ought to put this in their guest bedrooms in Southampton; I would like to make it very clear that force-feeding this piece to your guests will have them running like it’s a hydrangea-drenched scene of Get Out.

Here are Gaytiquette’s Three Laws of Houseguesting: (as my mother advised me that continuing to use Emily Post’s name is a sure path to a lawsuit, and my debit card currently has $44.52 in it, so I can’t really risk that right now.)

1. Never Seem Too Impressed or Unimpressed. You’d be just as gauche to do a photoshoot in front of the Marilyn Minter as you would be to strew about your dirty clothes on the guest room floor. Also, if you are photographing every artwork, eclectic chair, and taking a selfie in every mirror, your host might find you a bit voyeuristic and more than just a little bit thirsty to show off their money to your followers. I never claim to have any semblance of privacy in my personal life, so I personally don’t mind when friends embark on such Slim Aarons-esque expeditions in my home, but as a guest of those who prefer to keep their home and life private, you might find yourself with the chauffeur offering to drop you off for the earlier train. This can feel like 9th grade when the dean of my boarding school asked me if I needed any help packing up my dorm (a perfect euphemism for “we just called your mom to say we are throwing you out”), and you may feel as though your host is banishing you from Meadow Lane to public housing in Hauppauge.

   

   June 2023. Pictured: Me posing in front of one of the most expensive homes in America, a house in which I was never invited to enter. This photograph itself is in violation of every rule in this essay, both written and not.

   However, there is a flipside to this, and you should always be mindful of the ways you are made to feel welcome. As I elaborated on in my previous piece, there is an art to hosting. Your guest bed is made for you in advance. Dinner reservations are made based on what food the host thinks you like. Plans are changed, made, or even canceled in consideration of your company. If you walk up to a house called something like The Dunes and owned by an intergenerational trust, you should not act like you’ve checked in for the evening at the Budget B&B in Hampton Bays. You must graciously thank your host and gladly accept whatever odd array of fruit is presented to you. Keep your bedroom clean, tell your hostess that her long hours at Tracy Anderson have been paying off as evidenced by her thigh gap, and make your bed at the end of your trip. Be sure to leave behind a Dear Annabelle Gratitude notecard — I may no longer be gainfully employed by DA, but I live and die by the mission.

2. Embrace Taboo. The common advice that I received from birth growing up in a WASPy enclave was to avoid any and all discussion of: politics, religion, sex, and money. (“Avoid the Big Four,” my mom would say when driving me to Ramapo Country Day Camp.”)

   Problem is, I find that nowadays there’s little else to talk about. But there are ways to do it. While in

   Amagansett, my friend argued with her mother about whether her mother was too mean to her. When I shared that my mother enjoys telling her children that they (we) are entitled ingrates, my friend, her mother, and I were able to have a humorous conversation about Jewish mothers and life in the shtetl. Of course, if I were a houseguest and asked a friend if her boyfriend’s manhood was aptly sized, she might have asked me to check the next-departing westbound Jitney. And if you ask your host their adjusted gross income, you might be strip-searched on your way out. I once had a guest in Tuxedo Park who utilized my WhitePages subscription to estimate her boyfriend’s father’s net worth. Let me tell you: it wasn’t comfortable. But if your friend’s mother thinks a girl from your high school was a tramp and you decide to share a funny story about her pregnancy scare, of course! That is fair game. You need to find something to discuss. If everything is always above-board, why even choose to be a weekend guest? Go to a convent or intern at the National Weather Service.
   

3. Be Gracious Without Fan-Girling. Gratitude is the universal language and is widely applicable to any scenario. Say “thank you” to the barista at Sagaponack General Store who gives you your matcha. Say “thank you” to the housekeeper who brings you fresh towels. Say “thank you” to your host at the beginning and end of your stay. But if you spend half the trip prostrating at the dinner table because someone who has 10 houses has provided a guest room for two nights, you may be overdoing it. Rich people like being rich, but they also like to pretend that their lifestyle is normal. Part of being a houseguest is blending into the lifestyle of the home for the period of your residence. You are temporarily a member of the household and acting the part, in both ways aforementioned and not, is a huge part of being successful. However, constantly reminding your hosts that your presence is an act of non-tax-deductible philanthropy on their part, and that you are merely a brief occupant of a spare bedroom could leave your hosts wishing they had put you up in the gardener’s cottage.

   

   A truly atrocious way that my Tuxedo Park guest room was left; the guest in question indeed was put on the earlier bus. This was the only time that I ever brought the trash down to the basement myself; my mother would’ve panicked had she seen that this Godless filth had penetrated the walls of her home.
   

If one follows these rules, they are sure to find an invite to the summer house come next year. You want to leave your hosts wanting more, not thanking the Heavens that it’s over. It’s a delicate line that is easy to shatter; like Benjamin Franklin said: Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

The only kind of seafood you want to be is caviar, or, if having spent a bit too long on the beach, perhaps a lobster.

Best of luck to you all, and I hope your summer is filled with things your accountant loses sleep over come the winter.

Love,

Ari

P.S. — I am now accepting Dear Abby-style etiquette questions/requests via email (ehrlichariel@gmail.com) and Instagram.