Can we talk about how I just spent ten days pretending to be a rich person? (I’m actually asking – can I talk about that? It feels a little shameful, like maybe I should be keeping it a secret?)
Through exactly zero merit of my own, I found myself invited to spend ten days (the length of a rich-person week) at the Villa Las Palmas in Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Baja California Sur. I know someone who knows someone who is actually rich, you see, and who is also incredibly generous with his friends. When the person I know found herself in dire need of a vacation, he offered his luxury villa free of (regular nightly) charge. For some reason, she invited her family to come with her.
A world of add-on perks was available to us. Would we like to hire the on-site chef? Bring in masseuses? Yogis? Lion cubs? Book a yacht to go marlin hunting?
Yes to the chef. Yes to one massage. No to everything else – we can’t fake being rich that well.
… or CAN we?
(No, we can’t.)
I know lots of people I would consider “rich.” I have acquired for myself a very comfortable life (having, admittedly, started from a position of privilege). I’d always imagined my parents to be rich. Through my various occupations, I have known many doctors and lawyers and bankers I would have called rich. I know lots of people who own second homes, take fancy vacations, or own stupid-expensive cars.
But there is well-off, and there is rich.
The Villa Las Palmas boasts six bedrooms and eleven bathrooms, not counting staff quarters. (Staff quarters.) It has an infinity pool with an elevated hot tub that waterfalls down into the pool. Both the pool and a gazebo the size of my entire house overlook downtown Cabo and the Gulf of California. There is a six-hole putting green and a gym that would be the envy of your local city rec center. Every surface is drenched in marble tile. Every piece of décor appears to be hand-made locally. The garage hosts an SUV, a Jeep, and a side-by-side UTV.
On staff is a full-time butler, responsible for overseeing breakfasts, lunches, a thousand daily cocktails, and every other momentary whim of one’s heart (most of my heart’s whims have turned out to be guacamole); a chef who arrives nightly to prepare feasts of ingredients so fresh sometimes they were still swimming this morning; a fleet of maids who are almost invisible but leave doubt in my heart regarding the existence of dust or disorder; and a vacation manager who oversees the whole circus of staff and guests. If we’d wanted a lion cub, she’d have been the one to make that happen. (Yes, she’s really done that for someone.)
I spent the first four days of this trip torn in two. On the one hand, I felt like the pauper who trades place with the princess and has to impersonate her so no one will discover the switch. I felt sure that at any moment, I would betray myself as a fraud and the staff would throw me out because I don’t belong here.
On the other hand, every bone in my body yearns to be frugal and efficient and not cause anyone else any trouble. I tried to hide my once-used tissues from the maids because there were at least three good honks left in those tissues, but rich people don’t reuse their tissues, so mine kept disappearing. I tried to refold my bath towels so they didn’t look used because I was clean when I got out of the shower and that definitely doesn’t need to be washed yet. I think they fell for it once. I saved a doggy bag from a restaurant because the food was so good and so expensive and would have made an excellent lunch the next day (two meals for the price of six!), but rich people don’t reuse their meals, so that, too, disappeared.
By day five, I gave up trying to fight the forces of unnecessary small-scale wastefulness. I and the maids were probably all happier for it. I did manage to make one small stand with my morning tea, though: by the end of the week, no one was trying to stop me from microwaving my own mug of water or from using my tea bag TWO TIMES.
A snapshot, then, of the days I spent walking around in a rich guy’s shoes and hoping no one would notice:
The sun rising earlier here than at home, I wake up at 7:30 and creep slowly out of bed, then get dressed in a closet bigger than my kitchen. I lurch down several flights of marble stairs until I arrive at the exercise room, located underneath the pool, where I conduct a half-hearted morning workout which consists mostly of staring out the giant picture window. Next stop is the top-most balcony (there are three levels of balconies, discounting balconies off individual rooms) for a hot breakfast provided by the butler, Gio, and the kitchen assistant, Fanny.
Stopping back at my room, I contemplate the empty hamper (there were only two pairs of socks and underwear in there – they’re not really going to wash a whole load for just that??), collect my computer and paperback novel, then head out to the wedge of the gazebo I’ve staked out as my personal reclining space. I work on a blog, write a book review, read some beach fiction, and text my friends. Sometimes I dip my toes in the pool, but the sun and I are not friends right now, so I’ve mostly stayed dry.
A quick stop back in my room, where the bed has been made with military precision and adorned with today’s towel animal. My socks and underwear have also been returned, beautifully folded. I imagine that folding my tatty cotton underwear must have been a novel experience for the maid. I’m absolutely sure rich people don’t let their underwear get tatty, even the cotton pairs. I shake my head and vow to find a hiding place for tomorrow’s laundry.
On my way to the pool balcony for lunch, I stop by the aviary to say hello to Darwin, the pet turtle. He’s happily munching on his own lunch, a tray of fresh berries. My lunch is likely to be quesadillas, sandwiches made to order, fresh salad, or carne asada. There is always guacamole and fresh-made salsa (serrano-garlic is the absolute best). Fancy drinks flow at all hours of the day. I’ve counted no fewer than four bars in this house, one of which is in the pool. We lounge, read, or nap until it’s time for more drinks (cocktails are optional through most of the day but mandatory at 5:00), and then we are served a gorgeous, fresh-cooked, three-course dinner at 6:00 while we watch the sun set.
By 7:30, the public spaces of the house are deserted as everyone is exhausted from all this leisure, and have taken themselves to bed. Dustin and I treat ourselves to an evening dip in the hot tub to soak in the nighttime city views, then I return to my novel or play computer games until my eyes get droopy.
A little different, maybe, from the all-inclusive resort where you have to fight for a lounge chair by the pool, wait in line for cocktails, get splashed by screeching children in the hot tub, climb halfway up the palapa to find a data signal for your phone, and come to an agreement with the gecko living in the shower about whose turn it is to use the soap.
Here, the wifi always works and the air conditioning is always on. Here, the geckos wear tiny top hats and always let you have first dibs on the soap.
(Nah, just kidding. The weather is way too hot for top hats. The geckos just wear tiny monocles.)
One night early on, we went out to dinner at a rich-person restaurant because we hadn’t yet realized that having our own personal chef was the absolute pinnacle. It turns out rich people go to restaurants where the steak costs $100 (it’s a 40-oz porterhouse so I guess that isn’t completely unheard of – the ribeye was only $38) but then you also have to spend an extra $12 for potatoes and $12 more if you want a vegetable because THE $100 DOES NOT INCLUDE SIDE DISHES. Forget salad or soup.
After that, we never left the Villa again. Chef Renaldo was basically worth his weight in gold.
I was telling Dustin the other night, while we sat in the hot tub contemplating the custom tile work: until this week, I thought being rich was having a five-car garage (four-car is so last-decade-rich) and really believing that a $50 bottle of wine tastes better than a $10 bottle. Sure, you hear stories on TV about really rich people on bad behavior, you read novels about Hollywood galas with their three-million-dollar dresses or Russian oligarchs and their sixty-million-dollar yachts, but it turns out I had believed such affluence was only a fantasy concocted by the media and for our entertainment.
I’d like to have more money. If some tech-startup CEO doesn’t know what to do with a couple spare million, I could take it off her hands and upgrade my life a little. I would live in a house with enormous windows and the best kitchen you’ve ever seen. I’d own some real art. I might even stop using my tea bags more than once. But it’s hard to imagine living with a full staff full time, letting other people do my shopping, laundry, and cooking every day.
It’s been a magnificent vacation, living this life that isn’t really mine for a week, but I’ll be happy enough to return to my version of reality, even with all its chores and responsibilities. And if I do unexpectedly come by a couple million dollars? It’s going into a savings account so that I can pretend to be a rich person on vacation again some day.
Thither & Yon 