Kramen once attended the People's Choice Awards and recalls sitting at a table with Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, Jane Fonda, Raquel Welch, Edward James Olmos, and Meryl Streep. Moreover, personal assistants make a difference in this world. By getting to know the right people and by judiciously dropping the right name, they can get an Amtrak train held up, arrange a police escort out of a traffic jam, book a room at the Bel Air during the Democratic convention on two days' notice. What they give up, on the other hand, often includes a life of their own. Few personal assistants have children.
Plenty end up single.
They are on call around the clock. And if they happen to meet an attractive stranger, they often cannot say what they do for a living. The danger, of course, is that they can become subsumed in their employer's identity, like Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, and find satisfaction only in meeting the employer's needs. And the only thing I want in return is to be treated kindly and humanely. He is at work on a book for W.W. Norton about wealth and human behavior.