Banal Confessions of a Nepo Baby

 SHORT SHORT FICTION BY JANE GENOVA

Those loser types who had it way too hard assume there is more going on in us than there is. Yeah, like a Rosebud moment that drove us to a drug death at age 19 or being carried in a job, no talent. Internally, we must be all torn up.

It’s nothing like that. It’s just life. Mostly ordinary stuff and a bad decision.

On Episode 5 of “Feud: Capote vs The Swans” James Baldwin puts it plain: We are all in pain. Mine wasn’t the big shit they feel compelled to post on social media, like losing a four-year-old brother to cancer or having an alcoholic mother who shares that she almost aborted you.

Actually, my own sad story worked out for me. After the parents divorced my father married a lot and had lots of children so he didn’t mind that the stepfather adopted me. Since I took the step’s name few even know I am a nepo babe.

You bet when I made equity partner at age 32 in a large law firm those losers, along with the gunners with no pedigree, went through the websites at Cravath, at Paul, Weiss, at Gibson Dunn, and even at Jones Day and many many more. They were convinced they would find the point of connection. That is, brass with my last name. Then they would sleuth further. No dice.

See, my biological father was a client of those firms. Not a partner or chair. That was double the cover. Remember I didn’t have his name. The step wasn’t a mover and shaker. Mom? Very there and loving, not career ambitious.

I asked Success Dad to funnel deals my way. He did. In addition, I knew how to get credit for that new business. Every other Saturday I would join Success Dad and bunches of his other children. He would explain how things get done. Also, the edge women could have. Coincidence? One half-brother became trans. It’s the joke among us “members of the lucky sperm club” about how the all-so-earnest file lawsuits for not getting recognition for new business and other ways they get roughed up.

The boy/girl scouts would like to Disney our sagas with hope that we matured into mentoring those “less fortunate.” Yeah, walk them through how the game gets played. 

Hell, the scout troops missed out on that research about how mentoring relationships blow up. What mentee is truly grateful – and not resentful – to have been “helped.” A colleague who came up the hard way and made it all the way up shared with me the rage: Good-doers in Newark, New Jersey sent her and her brother to a fresh-air camp, three years in a row. The "they" wanted her to write a piece for the Star-Ledger about it. Still, she burns with shame that she went along.

My daughter will be nepo baby of a nepo baby. Her father and I won’t have to do much. Most of the goodies will flow to her through just being in that force field.

That gets me back to pain. It comes from being a parent. Anything my daughter gets done will be written off as poisoned fruit from the nepo tree. I confess extreme regret for the decision to become a mother.

One hat Jane Genova wears is novelist. Her dark comedy “The Fat Guy from Greenwich” was #30 on Amazon for a while. Another hat is intuitive coach. The non-fiction career guide “The First Critical Years of Your Professional Life” remains in print.