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Early March on the Lower East Side of New York, and it's cold—not facemask, frostbite, birds-falling-from-the-sky cold, but enough where it'd be advisable to slip on a pair of socks, which Dana Vachon hasn't. It's a strange choice, if an unremarkable one. Still, over the next few weeks, the fact that he stuffs his dogs into high-priced loafers without the benefit of sheathing will become the subject of considerable attention around New York City. As will so much else about Vachon '02—his taste for pocket squares and fancy friends, his good looks and great fortune, and depending on whom you ask, either his sparkling future or inevitable flameout. Each factoid or easily tossed off opinion a clue, inching us closer to understanding the person whose "rapid and seemingly twist-free climb," as The New York Observer put it, "makes you wonder whether some lives don't really follow a Euclidean logic after all."
As winter turned to spring this year, Vachon stood at the center of the insular and self-absorbed New York media universe undergoing the anointment rituals necessary for becoming the Next Big Thing. He was profiled in The New York Times' Sunday Styles section; boozy book parties at chichi nightspots were thrown in his honor; and Next Big Thing emeritus Jay McInerney (he of Bright Lights, Big City) consented to stand alongside, avuncular and beaming, as photogs captured a sort of torch passing. Along the way, Vachon inspired equal parts admiration and envy, and by the end, nobody who followed his rise was agnostic. Because when people talked about the decision of an instantly famous twenty-eight-year-old novelist who came of age in country clubs, summer homes, and high-powered investment firms not to wear socks when there was still frickin' snow on the ground, they were clearly talking about much more.
The Soho restaurant Felix, with its peach walls and Brazilian theming, is stuffed with people: Wall Street types, chatty publicists, uncaged bloggers, and professional book-party attendees who also happen to edit magazines. It is a Tuesday night in April, and everyone's here to celebrate the release of Vachon's satirical first novel, Mergers & Acquisitions. The original list only allowed for 100 attendees, but the publicist says word-of-mouth carried it to 176. No way there are fewer than 200. It's so crowded it's hard to raise your drink.
Much of the material for M&A is culled from Vachon's own experience working in finance—he claims there's hardly any separation between his life and that of Tommy Quinn, the book's protagonist—and a few of his characters appear to be sauntering about. There's the flesh-and-bone Roger Thorne, gleeful representative of old-money privilege and postmillennial excess, connoisseur of sparkling watches and babes. There are about twenty stand-ins for Sophie Dvornik, introduced in M&A as the type of woman confident enough to walk into the ultra-stodgy New York Racquet & Tennis Club wearing a "sheer, black lace top and matching skirt" because "the outfit was Dior, and her breasts were beautiful." Felix ain't the Racquet & Tennis Club, but the confidence, every last bit of it, is present tonight. And like everyone else, they're getting soused on house wine.
It's the kind of affair that Vachon, if he weren't the guest of honor, would love to write about, filled as it is with social signifiers. High-society debs commingle with the bookish sort, who struggle to make conversation with financial barons. It's a veritable New York stew, and as is to be expected, the networkers are out in force, hungry.
After posing for some gossip-column photographs, Vachon walks toward the center of the room, where an editor for a high-circulation women's magazine intercepts him. "We would absolutely love to have you write for us," the editor says. "There are things you can say in a women's magazine that you can't anywhere else. We'll give you that freedom. This will be your space."
Vachon smiles appreciatively, looks down at his feet for a moment, and mumbles something about knowing all about the opportunities women's magazines can provide since he'd once written a piece for Croatian Cosmo. Then he apologizes for not being able to stay and chat longer and moves on to the next group. These guys, banking friends, greet him with a hearty "Dooood!" and he melts right into conversation with them.
Her advances gracefully rebuffed, the magazine editor turns and says, "What a great guy! An amazing talent!"
And on and on Vachon goes, for hours, charming one person after the next. M&A may take wide swipes at the strange social tics that power modern-day Manhattan, but Vachon sure knows how to navigate through them. His is an understanding based on proximity. That the book can double as a compendium of high-society minutiae, littered with names of exclusive boarding schools, country clubs, fashion labels, appetizer sauces, and other collectibles of the status-phere, is hardly a surprise. He knows that world—and is in a position to skewer it—because he's of it.
He grew up in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons chose to set up camp, post-Washington. Unlike his older brother and younger sister, Vachon opted out of boarding school and went to the public institution in town. Student-body president, editor of the newspaper, straight-A student—he did pretty well there. And, in his mind this is important, public high school toughened him up. "The monks at Portsmouth Abbey told my brother and sister lots and lots about their souls," he says. "I don't think they ever really taught them how to take somebody out. The world, sadly, is not a monastery on Narragansett Bay. Oh, that it were."
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