What To Do When Your Child Cold-Calls RFK Jr

“Larry David and I were forced to go, kicking and screaming,” United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told me.

This was 2020. He was not yet Secretary Kennedy and I was barely a teenager. And I’m sure that Larry David would be eager to admit his friendship with the Secretary today.

If you’re wondering why Sec. Kennedy spoke on the phone about his daughter’s coming out (no, not that kind), let me provide a bit of background. At the age of 13, I had discovered a brand-new concept: the debutante ball. I absolutely loved the idea: a formal entry into society. I began researching the concept, as many early teenagers do, and began reaching out to people. Which perhaps is not something many teenagers do. But I had learned both on my own and from watching my mom work on her stories how to make cold calls to people I wanted to learn from.

I reached out to individuals like Margaret Stewart Hedberg, who had long been the director of the International Debutante Ball, and Ophélie Renouard of Le Bal des Débutantes. I asked to be included in future years. Both were very kind and welcoming to the idea, although they probably felt a bit confused by the way I introduced myself.

This was the era that I genuinely believed my great-grandmother, born into Jewish poverty in rural Ukraine, was somehow the lost Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia — long story, another Substack essay — so perhaps my entirely erroneous claim to be a member of the Romanov family was what enticed them.

I feel like I do need to explain my theory that I was a great-grandson of the Grand Duchess — there was so much mythos about what happened to her after the Bolshevik revolution, the beginning of communist Russia. It was discovered in the 1990s through DNA that she indeed had died, when the remains of the Romanov family were found. DNA sequencing was conducted, and I discovered the presence of the recurrent 16111T mutation, which I also carry alongside several members of my family. It was very advanced, albeit very flawed, research. A significant part of the theory was that our family resembled the Romanovs, but being light-haired and blue-eyed isn’t quite proof of royal ancestry.

This was also a time that I became interested in the Kennedy family and their mystique in American mythology. Paternally, I descend from true WASP America — I am a Son of the American Revolution, a founding member of the Schuyler Family Association (work!), and currently am applying to the Order of the First Families of Maryland, my ancestors having settled there several hundred years ago. But that’s all geneology on paper. IRL, the world of debutants is a distant one a lost world — I am Jewish and live on the Upper West Side.

And as somebody who loves genealogy and probably considers it my primary hobby — possibly tied with getting stoned — it was painful to feel so disconnected with people whose blood flows within me.

I saw that Kyra L. Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy — who now is famousish on Instagram but at the time was known to me from an article written by my mother and then a follow-up piece by a journalist who may or may not have been joking when she wrote that Kyra cyberbullied her– had debuted at Le Bal several years earlier. I was unable to reach her as she was vacationing in Mexico — likely looking at my messages with a degree of horror. When I look back at the text exchange, the sensation of extreme self-cringe is so intense, I can barely describe it; I was such a loser and I borderline harassed her. Let’s just put it this way: I sent her photos of me shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, as if to prove my legitimacy as a journalist, because everyone knows that real journalists do photoshoots at high-end department stores that they don’t actually shop at.

The time-stamp will display my getting ghosted for a month — I deserved it.

But I was able to get in touch with her father, the future presidential candidate and now a senior member of President Trump’s cabinet.

How did I get his number? A journalist never tells.

But I am not kidding that I called* Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and that we spoke for 20 minutes.

Not-Yet-Secretary Kennedy didn’t really care to discuss the ball itself and seemed fascinated with the peculiarity of the child on the other line. He told me, in a voice best described as a fork in a garbage disposal, “You seem very determined, very nice, very smart. You seem like you have an aptitude for journalism,” and then told me that I am the “total opposite” of Kyra — is that praise to me or an insult to his daughter or an insult to me and praise to his daughter? I’m sure that the cheerful and amiable White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, will be eager to answer that one.

Not-Yet-Secretary Kennedy was very kind and very open to a random phone call from a random person about something he didn’t care to discuss. Not-Yet-Secretary Kennedy, if you’re not too busy blaming non-verbal autism and severe birth defects on the flu shot to read this: thank you for your time.

*My parents learned I was intending to reach out to members of the Kennedy family and forbade me from doing so. Most parents usually do not have to deal with their children contacting members of political dynasties, but apparently my parents didn’t appreciate my resourcefulness. The byline of the story that would never see the light of day, nor would this editor’s note:

I would like to be transparent with the fact that my parents disapprove of this story and my contact with the Kennedy family, and others in relation to the story. I was hence punished.