Army Privacy, Segregation, Drunken Brilliance...

Privacy in the Army was a non starter.

Having a bowel moment with at least 10 other guys, for company, in the same bathroom took care of the delusion of even trying for privacy. Taking a shower with at least ten other bare ass naked guys was like taking a shower in your high school gym locker-room after a basket ball game or gym class. Was a great motivator for six pack abs.(Which never happened to me.)

Any retained desire for privacy went bye bye when it was time for 'short arm' inspection. Where you, with a gazillion other guys in attendance, dropped your pants and drawers and tugged on your schlong to prove to a doctor that you didn't have a venereal disease. A dripping schlong was bad news and reason for confinement and other goodies like being busted down to private.

Thank God an enlarged prostate is an older man's problem. At least we were young and didn't have to have a finger stuck up our asses by a doctor.

~

But then there was segregated privacy. A favorite story of mine originated on a troop transport ship hauling us to Okinawa with a two week stop in Hawaii at Schofield Barracks.

Aboard ship the showers were salt water showers, which guaranteed feeling fucking slimy when you finished but it was better than smelling like shit. After finishing a shower one day, the First Sergeant stopped me and ate my ass out for taking a shower on the Black side of the ship.

Whites with Whites and Blacks with Blacks and never the twain shall meet was the absolute unwritten rule which I had ignored. The First Sergeant was Regular Army, a group virulent with hate and bigotry. Being around those mothers wasn't like spending a day at the beach.

'Regular Army' guys were guys who enlisted in the thirties when civilian jobs were hard to come by. Enlisting in the Army in the thirties was a way out of unemployment and poverty.

~

Being drunk on an airplane in the sixties and early seventies always meant being loaded with creativity and feeling feeling fucking brilliant. That was a great part of being in the bag, sitting in a flying tube on a flight to somewhere, often to NY.

Ideas galore which I wrote down religiously. The bad part was that the next day, when sober, I couldn't read my drunken handwriting. So much for my brilliance under the influence.

But the flight attendants either loved me or didn't care how much booze I ingested as long as I didn't bother them, which didn't happen.Yeah, in spite of wonderful Alcoholics Anonymous my worst days sober have not been better than my best days in the bag.

I had some really great times in the bag. A lot of which, I don't remember but I'm sure they were great.

No matter how hard you try, if you close your eyes you don't disappear.

~

Walter Wriston, Joe Pevehouse, WWII

"Those were simpler times."

Walter Wriston was CEO of Citi Bank plus being a savior of NYC from bankruptcy. For whatever insane reason I sent Mr.Wriston a copy of a book, South by South East by Walter Cronkite. The book's paper cover had a picture of the steamship Rex.

Meeting Mr. Wriston at John Gardiner's Tennis Ranch in the very early 80's is a highlight of my life. He was there with General Haig, Oscar Dunn of General Electric and Mrs.Wriston. General Haig was consumed with his self importance and Oscar Dunn was kinda a smart, good ole boy. My view was that Mrs.Wriston was the smartest of the group.

Mr. Wriston sent me a thank you note in which he said that he had, with his parents, taken the Rex on his first trip to Europe. He ended the note by saying, "Those were simpler times."

Some parts, of just being a civilian during WW II were toxic. Being young and a civilian wasn't all peaches and cream. The social pressure to be in the service was enormous. Being a young, healthy looking male and working as a civilian, on warships in the Brooklyn Navy Yard drew no kudos.You were a fucking draft dodger.

And when the war ended and we came home if you didn't wear a pin, we called The Ruptured Duck, on the lapel of your suit coat people kinda stared at you. The pin was formally known as the Honorable Service Pin and issued when discharged. Where the name Ruptured Duck came from God only knows.The Pins are currently for sale on eBay.

Jew's in uniform looked down at the civilian Jews who wouldn't fight Hitler and Tojo.We didn't bother to ask why they were still civilians. They just had to be fuck offs. Talk about discrimination.

But the war changed a lot of attitudes in NY. A Jew with a yarmulke could walk through German Yorktown in Manhattan without worrying about getting his fucking brains beat out by American Firster's, Third Reich lovers or a combination of the above.

Farewell parties for guys leaving for the Service were the order of the day. They always ended up being big time drunk scenes and they happened with great, almost weekly, regularity. Sometimes I wonder if that is when I started down the slippery slope of alcoholism.

Reminds me of our hospital ship stopping in Honolulu going home back to the States, getting a few hours shore leave and spending those hours drinking shots and beer. We were sure, having survived Okinawa, that we were indestructible. But I don't harbor Woody Allen's wish of becoming immortal by living forever. Just the thought of taking a fucking diuretic and constantly needing to pee for an eternity sounds awful.

Before we got to Honolulu we stopped in Yokohama. A bunch of us went directly, didn't pass GO, to a whorehouse.Once there, the thought of getting a dose and being forced to stay in the Army for another 60-90 days made my erection go away. Despite having paid my money I left. Jackin' off was a great dose preventative. Better than a med but not as good as getting laid.

Around 1980 sitting on a transcontinental DC 10 going to NYC, I was sitting next to gal. By definition a Jew like me can't sit next to someone for almost 5 hours without knowing what the hell that person does for a living. So I asked her. Turns out that this gal was a huge big shot in the consumer credit part of Citi Bank.

She in turn asked me what I did for a living.

"I'm a promoter."

"Really.", she says, "Tell me really what you do".

Out comes my business card which says 'Investment Banker'.

"Wow.", she says, "How did you become an investment banker?".

"I don't know how anyone else became an investment banker but I went to a printing shop and for $3.50 worth of business cards I became an investment banker. Pretty simple."

The woman looked at me like I was a bull with a bastard calf and never spoke to me again.

Those Investment Banker business cards were magic. My self invented title did help get me into a lot of places. But once inside, the interviewer knew, right away, that my master's degree came from the Bronx, Barnes Avenue School of Street Survival..

But then, at the end of the day, it all got down to the Joe Pevehouse mantra that, "If you can't dazzle them with your foot work then blind them with your bullshit". And I invented bullshit.

~

An Open Penitentiary Plus Georgie and Donny

Being 91 ain't all bad. 

Besides just not being dead, I can fantasize about oral sex (certainly not with the Princess) without feeling guilty. It's plenty okay, at 91, to stare at the tight asses of young women, knowing that being an old reprobate is good for my soul. 

After all, staring is as much as I can do, knowing that my drooping, dripping faucet no longer knows from the straight and narrow.

The independent oil and gas business in the 70's and 80's was an open penitentiary and if you didn't  realize that paranoia improved your peripheral vision you would get fucked. Looking over your shoulder was crucial for survival.What the average business man would think dishonest, the average oil and gas guy would think that it was sharp trading. 

Some oil and gas towns and states were worse than some others. Mr. McGee of Kerr McGee once told me that he avoided Denver based acquisitions because of some real life, unhappy experiences.

Midland, Texas, Fort Worth were almost 'straight'. Oklahoma City and Tulsa were very dangerous.Calgary, Canada was truly the last of the Wild West, cowboy towns.Vancouver, B.C. was an absolute no, no. Salt Lake City had a stock exchange that specialized in mostly oil, gas and mineral penny stocks. Unless you had the Mormons on your side you were fucked.

The guys who ran the drilling funds, aka tax shelters, were really dangerous except for guys like George Bush who didn't know how to be totally dishonest. But the Georgies of the world were in very short supply in the Denver oil patch. Phil Anschutz was/is  pretty straight. 

Georgie and his buddy Donny Evans would show up at the Y at noon to work out and recover from one too many the night before. They were serious drinkers. They waited, generally, until evening to start having again, 'the hair of the dog that bit them'. They were some kind of pair to draw to until Donny went straight, quit drinking and with a great assist from Laura Bush, got Georgie to quit.

At least Georgie and Donny  were mostly honest.The last totally honest being was Jesus and it's been all down hill since.

And then we have some button hole patriots who think that wearing an American Flag pin on their lapel makes anything they do okay, no matter how borderline the action. Samuel Johnson famously observed that, 'Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels'. But even those button hole patriots, for the most part, pay no never mind to Pearl Harbor Day. Don't even pay lip service to Dec 7.

But even worse, young people hardly know what happened Dec.7,1941.

On Sunday, Dec.7,1941 I was at the movies with my best friend Buddy Goldfarb. Double feature for either 15 or 25 cents. Don't remember which.

Me & Buddy Goldfarb, Tinian, 1945

The Pearl Harbor attack was announced at the movie theatre. Everyone's reaction was disbelief and indignation. Monday everyone and anyone who could walk, talk and chew gum at the same time volunteered for a service. I went to a Navy recruiting office and was told that I needed a new set of eyes. Then I tried the Army who also told me to fuck off.

Then I started to pound the draft board to draft me which they finally did. Stamped my papers 'Not To Be Sent Overseas'. Orders which in the end were ignored, thanks to my insistence and to my ability as a dot-dash guy, aka radio operator.

My years in the service left me with a bum Okinawa leg and an enriched life with great memories.Very proud to be part of  the Greatest Generation. And still looking down at the grass.

~

Army IQ, Capt.Gooch, Shooting The Rapids

"Grandpa, are you rich?"

"Yeah Jake, but only from time to time." The story of my life. These days I'm working at making a 'from time to time' come back.

The Army was the great equalizer. It had its own definition of stupid. Stupid was being an enlisted man in the Army, particularly a private. All directives were written so that a moron could understand them.Written for the lowest common denominator.

Naturally, if you had an an IQ over 85, you didn't read them. Plus you could depend on the fucking sergeant to scream them at you.

When Captain Gooch came to see me in the barracks at Schofield Barracks, I was certain he was going to try to fuck me and give me something distasteful to do.Gooch really didn't like my big mouth (which was attached to the rest of me) which Gooch considered to be an enormous asshole.

"Feshbach, I really hate to do this but I'm going to make you a corporal. General Buckner asked for two personal radio operators and I chose you as one of them and I can't say that you're a terrific radio operator and still a private. Try giving up being a pain in the ass, it will only hurt for a minute."

Learning how to control and fire a 50 caliber machine gun from a half track, made me edgy. My Mom and Pop wouldn't even allow a BB gun in the house. Joining the Boy Scouts with its uniforms was also out.(Mom and Pop had emigrated from the old country where uniforms and guns were equated with pogroms.)

But when I heard that digging the General's latrine was also part of my job I decided that being busted back to private was better than digging latrines for anyone, except me.

So I became, deliberately, a classic Army fuck up. It was kind of fun, dropping radio transmitters and not being able to dismantle and rebuild the machine gun. It got so that the Sergeant quit asking me to do things. Even taking books off of bookshelves. He said that he was afraid that I would figure out a way to ruin the books.

It was perfect. My fuck up routines got me sent back to the 241st Signal Corp Company, as happy as a pig in shit. Gooch was pissed and the poor bastard that took my place was killed with the General on Okinawa.

And I didn't get busted. Promoted to Sergeant, to replace Sgt. Boggs from Texarkana who was also killed on Okinawa. He wasn't with General Buckner. He was just there.

One of the real great things about being a salesman is that being rejected becomes a way of life. Like breathing. But knowing that each rejection puts you a step closer to a sale makes someone telling you 'no', 'fuck off' or worse becomes another 'so what?' experience. Great training for staying married.

My kid, Joe, used to say a big key to staying married was to always say, "I'm sorry. It's all my fault". Worked for me for 27 mis-spent years while that approach ginned up Guilt, with a capital G.

When you're 20 years old you think you're going to live forever. When you're 91 you hope not but still try to be fit and escape Alzheimer's. Sometimer's is the preferred alternative. This is Noah, talking about the flood.

At my Mom's 70th birthday party my toast to my Mom started with,'Well Mom, everyone knows who their mother is but only God knows who their father is.' When the Princess got knocked up the first time, she hated me. That convinced me that I was the father. The other times she barely spoke to me and hated herself.

Shooting the financial rapids, at 91, one more time. Breathing hard but still breathing, while traveling the Fitness Road, blissfully single.

~

WWII and A Diuretic

"Regrets, I have a few, too few to mention.", My Way, Frank Sinatra...

While watching a WWII film the other evening, the duffel bags we all carried, when transferred, were prominent. We were all so proud and felt so macho carrying them on our shoulder. We all felt special, particularly when the civilians stared at us.

Carrying all I owned in one bag did seem a little weird.

Before getting on board the troop transport we had to empty out our duffel bags for inspection. No booze on board permitted. I had a couple of loaves of bread.Passed inspection with the Sgt. not realizing that my Pop had hollowed them out and each loaf had a bottle of Haig and Haig Pinch scotch bottles.

Hoarded the booze until our unit was transferred to a landing craft for the 'fun trip' from the Philippines to Okinawa. Sleeping on the hard fucking deck had little appeal for me so I traded the 2 bottles of booze with an officer for 3 cots, for me and two buddies. The other GI's hated us for our 'comfort'. The officer got loaded.

Some pundit on TV the other day said that, 'life is short', a very trite old line. At 91 that line is, for me, a fucking bullshit line. Life seems particularly long in the early morning, having had, generally a lousy night of fitful sleep with fears of impending doom generating bad dreams plus needing to hit the head every few hours.

The risk to reward ratio of not getting my ass out of bed at 12:00, 2:00 and 4:00 AM and stumbling to the john was clear. Get my ass out of bed or piss in the bed. A no-brainer choice.

I do enjoy having the insane fantasy from time to time that my schlong could get as stiff as the rest of me, instead of it being a God damn dripping faucet fueled by a diuretic.

Knowing how to drive in the 1940's was not common and it made a half-assed big shot out of me. I could drive from our camp up the hill to our observation post. Being a $50 a month chauffeur/radio operator was wonderful. Suited me fine. Loved driving the Jeep up the hill.

Observation post? Yeah we had an installation overlooking Crescent Beach and the Straits of Juan de Fuqua where we were supposed to watch out for strange ships, aka Japanese, entering U.S.waters.

Sounds like a joke now but it was serious business in 1943. Puffed us out with self importance.We were protectors of the US coast line.

My time was spent in the observation post looking out the fucking window, learning Russian (not well), improving my skills as a typist/radio operator, pissing off Lt.Hamil and fantasizing about living out my wet dreams.

"Regrets I have a few, too few to mention.", My Way, Frank Sinatra

~

Risk Everything, Regret Nothing.

Moderation is fatal (and plenty fucking boring).

"Feshbach, you've done such a great job as a radio operator that I'm going to put you in for PFC.", said Lt. Hamlin in 1944 at Camp Hayden,Washington.

"Give the fucking $4 a month to someone who needs it. Being the ranking Private in the barracks makes me special so I'll pass." That exchange greased the way for me being transferred, very quickly, at my request to an outfit scheduled to go overseas, aka combat.

AA reinforced my dislike of 'people pleasers'. A fate not for me. Gotta have, for balance, people in my life, who like me and people who dislike me.Without a filter between my head and my mouth it was a certainty that a lot of people that I would meet would dislike me.

Being overdrawn, after going sober, at the bank, almost $900,000, in 1980 dollars, made living and sleeping with the fear of impending doom a big part of my life. I was driven, insanely, to supporting my divorced (thank God) ex-wife, my kids, a few friends and my own fucking big time spending which included just giving money away. Never could handle having someone else pick up the lunch or dinner check. Masochism at its finest.

But I always believed in my earning power and my Pop's mantra that, "In America the money is up to your knees. You just have to know how to bend down and pick it up." A life time of going up like a rocket and down like a stick was my schtick.

Israel was my creme de la creme of immoderate living until it wasn't. Deciding to raise money to drill for oil in Israel really sealed my fate with the Princess.We had a great swap going. The Princess thought that I was bizarre, I thought she had a real boring streak in her.

The problems that the Princess had with my Israeli efforts started with my virtually giving up all of my income to concentrate on connecting with the Israeli bureaucracy and super Jews who thought that I was stupid.

Finally, I waved the flag of surrender. $500,000 give or take poorer and with the undying resentment of the Princess except when I took her along on one of my many trips to Israel.

Then there were Donn and Daisy Tognazziny. Having written a tome about Walt Disney the thought came to me to promote the stock in Europe. Donn was based in Zurich, worked for the same bucket shop as I did and we struck a deal for him to help me peddle the Disney stock in Europe. This kind of coincided with my Israeli efforts so I invited Donn and Daisy to join me in Jerusalem all at my expense. Very dumb.

The Princess was right in labeling me as 'bizarre', but now at 91, busted on my ass, I have no regrets and am without Italian Alzheimer's where you forget everything except the grudge.

And again, as the Italians say, 'If you can't stand ingratitude, never do anything for anybody.'

~

A Veteran's Day Reverie: Bullets, bullets everywhere...and not a drop to drink.

Where were you when.....?

In the thirties we had Poppy Days in the whole United States, including the Bronx, with American Legion WWI Veterans standing on street corners selling poppies celebrating Decoration Day and Armistice Day.

Armistice Day was was really special.11:00 AM on the 11th day of November commemorated the signing of the World War I Armistice.

The whole of the United States came to a dead fucking halt at exactly at 11:00am. Grade schools, high schools, people at work, Mommies screaming at kids, everything came to a dead stop. Cars stopped moving, clerks quit selling, teachers quit talking. It seemed as though the whole world quit breathing for 2 minutes.

Decoration Day was originally a commemoration day for the Civil War dead of both sides. It morphed into Memorial Day which commemorates all US war dead. (Naturally, it was switched to a Monday to give everyone a three day weekend.)

Armistice Day morphed into Veterans Day to celebrate veterans of all US wars. The greatest beneficiaries of both holidays are the retailers, resort owners and asshole politicians who use both days as excuses to run off at the mouth. Except they do have great old war movies on TV.

'Those were the days my friend.We thought they'd never end.'...Fiddler On The Roof..

The Brits still celebrate their Remembrance Day with Poppies Galore. Men and women both wear them.

Standing on the Coke line while in the hospital on Saipan: The Japanese soldiers left in the hills hadn't read the Marine Corp's press releases and didn't know that the U.S. had 'taken' the island. Almost every afternoon came wham, bam, slam! Out of the fucking hills flew the bullets.We learned that the term 'gun fire' was for the movies and 'bullets' were for the real war world.

The guys in line scattered like whores in a whore house being raided by the police.We went for the ditches.Why we thought that diving into open ditches was safer than just standing in line just beats the shit out of me.We just felt like we had to move.

The most bothersome thing about those flying bullets was that when you have been hit once you know that you're not omnipotent and sometimes it's you in the line of fire and not just the other poor son of a bitch. You had always believed getting hit was for someone else.

But the most annoying result of the bullets from the hills was losing my place in the Coke line. Me and my gimpy leg were slow to stagger back and I always ended up at the end of the fucking line.

Officers didn't know from standing on line for a coke or a God damn O'Henry bar.We played poker for slices of the O'Henry bars. Shooting craps in the latrine of the hospital for real money was for post WWII Korea and on the deck of the hospital ship.

Bernie Feshbach & Buddy Goldfarb - Tinian 1945

But then, what the hell were you going to do to kill time in a hospital for the ambulatory, on a fucking island in the middle of nowhere, that you had never heard of. Swimming never seemed to be an option though we did go swimming when on Okinawa after the war ended. Saipan is now a resort destination for the Chinese. Who'da thought?

And why Coke and not Pepsi or O'Henry and not Baby Ruth? We were sure that some assholes behind desks in the states were getting paid off. Turns out we were mostly right.Graft for government contracts during WWII was very real.

My Pop, during the war, volunteered to manufacture, at no profit, the sheepskin vests used by the Air Force and some asshole government contract officer wanted a payoff. Patriot for a price.

'Drop your c...s and grab your socks.' was the sergeant's screaming wake up call in the States. On Okinawa, Saipan, Tinian, etc., sleeping was edgy and playing with yourself was not so important.

~

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Ah, the thrill of it all when you're around 13 years old in 1936 and living in the Bronx, the Capitol Of The Universe. You inveigle 50 cents from your Mom, take the Gun Hill Road bus to the Jerome Ave. elevated to get to 34th St.

Spend 20 cents on a Nedick's hot dog and orange drink then on to the real goal: the sporting goods section on the 5th floor of R. H. Macy.

Swinging the baseball bats, trying on real leather baseball gloves and fingering the leather footballs. All, over the top wonderful. No money to buy anything, but imagination ruled while fantasizing that I was Carl Hubbell, Babe Ruth, Sid Luckman and Sammy Baugh. Never fussed with the tennis or ski stuff. Those sports were for rich people not Bronx street Jews.

Finish the downtown visit off with another hot dog and orange drink or a chicken pot pie at the Automat.Then back home, happy as a pig in shit or a clam in mud.

Suddenly, 34 years whipped on by while I accumulated a wife, four kids and a dog plus a Jewish mansion in Portola Valley with a mortgage. Acquired, along the way, a reputation in the investment world as a successful stock broker and oil and gas guru and damned proud of it. Jewish mansion? More house than I should have signed up for.

Get in the bag SAP flying first class to NY from SF. Need the booze to keep me elevated. Lay over in N.Y., stay at the Sherry Netherland Hotel, keep on keeping on with the booze, pick up a hooker, pass out, no sex, get rolled.

Felt really awful but didn't miss a beat. All alcoholics have one thing in common: feeling like shit a lot of the time, with suicidal thoughts. But God blessed me by allowing me to be a 'functioning alcoholic' which meant that I only fucked up from time to time, not all the time so I thought that I was okay.

Go to Israel the next night, not feeling too swift or too fucking smart (aka really stupid). Flew El Al, First Class, sat next to the head of Mossad. Not much conversation. Pretty anxious to have 'a little of the hair of the dog that bit me'.

Drinks served in very small glasses. Being a high velocity drinker I asked for my third scotch over ice within 10 minutes of taking off, the flight attendant looked at me like I was a bull with a bastard calf and asked with that Israeli intonation, "Another one?" (emphasis on "another") just like home, with another Jewish broad making me feel guilty about drinking but not guilty enough to stop.

As we approach the airport in Israel, the back end of the plane exploded with people singing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem giving me goose pimples. As with lots of Jews, I had the feeling of  'coming home' although, at that time, there were more Jews living in NY than lived in Israel.

This was only a few short years after the '67 war and not too many years after Israel's War of Independence and Zionism was really flourishing. And I was/am a Zionist. Hitler convinced me that Jews had to have a country of their own, a country of last resort.

Checked into the King David Hotel and had a small suite overlooking the Old City. Loved hearing the calls to prayer for the Arabs.There were two young American women (kids) in the lobby lounge who were in tears.They were out of cash and couldn't cash a stateside check from a Mom. The Israeli's had cashed too many rubber checks for American Jewish tourists. So with boozy feelings of warmth I cashed it. The check was good. The Mom later wrote me a note of thanks.

In the beginning of my ridiculous and futile effort to raise a fund to drill for onshore oil and gas in Israel, I went through several months of trying to connect with someone in the Israeli bureaucracy with zero success. Very fucking annoying trying to help someone who wouldn't even return a phone call.

So one night, while a little little bit in the bag, I phoned Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister, spoke with someone in her office who put me in touch with Zvi Dinstein, the Israeli Energy Minister who naturally turned me over to someone else.Wading through Israeli bureaucracy was not like spending a day at the beach.

Trying to raise money to drill for oil in Israel was a great ride for me with no regrets. I grew to love Israel and its over the top rude people. I have always contended that if you combine the rudeness of a New Yorker with the rudeness of a Parisian, you have an Israeli. But I loved them for what they were and are: a relentlessly creative and imaginative people and culture, rudeness and all.

Being a slow learner it took me 13 months of traveling all over the U.S., calling on rich Jews and commuting to Israel,to realize that I was pissing into the wind.The rich Jews would consider technology investments but wildcat drilling was off their radar screens.

Mr.Gruss (Joe) said it all when he said that charitable giving to Israel worked for him, shooting money down dry holes was not for him. Mr. Gruss was already a very successful oil and gas operator in West Texas.

Lesson learned? Moses should have turned right instead of left and the Jews would have all the oil instead of the Arabs.

~

Mr. Clean....Even If You Close Your Eyes You Don't Disappear

"Prediction is difficult, especially about the future." or "It ain't over until it's over.”, Yogi Berra wisdom.

Last week, my favorite, optimistic, and only cardiologist Dr.Nguyen made an appointment to see me in six months. At 91, rowing upstream, to make it, yet for another six months. Too bad that Dr.Nguyen's optimism can't bring my dead 'schlong' back to life.

In the seventies, some 25% of all the onshore oil and gas produced in the U.S. was produced within 180 miles of Midland, Texas, the capital of hard drinking, hard living old fashioned wildcatters. Entrepreneurs to the end. Being around them, much less traveling with them was always serendipitous.

Mr. Clean (Tall guys are called Shorty.) as I called Tom Brown, was the ultimate hard living, hard driving, fucking obnoxious when drunk, human being. Every trip with him was always memorable. Something unexpected always happened.

One time he and Donny Evans came to London to speak at a one day oil and gas seminar that I had organized. Oil men Deane Stoltz, Joe Pevehouse, Ken Whiting plus a very smart Denver attorney, Bill Fishman were speakers. Drew a big crowd of institutional investors plus the usual ration of fucking flakes who wanted to have a free lunch at Claridge's.

The Bobbsy Twins were well on their way to becoming blind drunk while flying from Midland to Dallas to New York. Once aboard the Concorde for the trip to London, they settled in for some serious drinking until Mr. Clean got nasty and belligerent and the flight attendants cut him off. Donny was less drunk, which was easy done.

When they arrived at Claridge's, Brown started his London stay off by calling the London cabbie, loudly, a 'stupid son of a bitch'. The cabbie may have been stupid but at that moment Mr. Clean wasn't any smarter. By paying the cabbie the fare with an oversized tip I stopped him from beating the shit out of Mr. Clean.

It was a Sunday night and Claridge's Hotel lounge was as dead as a married man's sex life, or my sex life. Same, sad deal. Brown stormed into the lounge drunk wearing a crumbled, wet, corduroy suit literally screaming, 'Where are the women?'. He even embarrassed the other oil and gas geniuses who were kicking back with a drink or three.

Brown never recognized that alcohol and erections only worked when you're 20 years old. Only one of the many London sex clubs was open and Brown and Evans left the group and went to the club in the pissin' rain.

Tom Brown was the ultimate hard living oil man. He started his business life as a salesman with a tire company and evolved into a drilling contractor/producer in the oil business. He lived a lot longer (into his seventies) than I had predicted. He made, lost and remade a fortune. Tom and I spoke a few weeks before he died and he told me he was happy. "I've lived one hell of a life", said Tom. What a fucking understatement!!!

Brown's wife at that time, Roz, was a classic. Great looking gal but one who had too many face lifts and had inhaled too much booze. Her face seemed frozen in time. Roz was a terrific drinking companion for Mr. Clean with an appetite for booze that seemed unquenchable. Roz was a walking example of the AA adage: one drink is too many and 100 isn't enough. Been there, done that.

One afternoon while we were on a stock promoting trip to LA, Roz was with us I was "assigned" to baby sit her in the United Airlines lounge while Mr. Clean was making a side trip to Santa Ana promoting the stock.

Before Roz and I left for the airport, Roz had had already inhaled her favorite 'get up and go' drink of half a glass of milk mixed with half a glass of Jack Daniel's Black Label. She was barely lucid while complaining about how terrible she felt all the way to LAX.

Once in the United Airline Lounge, Roz's taste was simple: chilled vodka no vermouth. Roz thought that her breath didn't smell by drinking vodka. She sipped the vodka through a sterling silver straw she had made by Tiffany.

Tom showed up shouting, "I'm thirsty". Roz had already put away at least five drinks before he arrived. He then inhaled three or four while Roz kept pace with him until our flight was called. On the 50 minute ride from L.A. to S.F. both Roz and Tom inhaled, I repeat, inhaled, at least four drinks each. They were high velocity drinkers.

That night at dinner they had after dinner drinks, by the gulps, without eating dinner. They got into a roaring, drunken argument, and we had to go back to the hotel. It was both very boring and surprising that either one was still able to walk. Or hadn't killed one or another.

The next day Mr. Clean made a corporate presentation to about 150 suits at the North Beach Restaurant in San Francisco. But before the presentation Tom had at least two Bloody Marys, then had a couple of belts of booze plus wine at lunch. I was pissing my brains out after consuming what felt like gallons of Perrier water. The more Mr. Clean had to drink, the greater the company oil and gas reserves had grown. That day they grew by a factor of three or four without drilling a well.

After making the presentation, Tom stayed at the restaurant with two of my friends Peter Costigan and Bill Kneas. They ordered "six packs of stingers on the rocks”. Getting really bored I went back to the hotel.

When I returned to the hotel, Roz phoned my room and pleaded with me to go get Tom because she felt like shit and thought that she might be drawing her last breaths. So like a fucking idiot I did. Brown and my friends were blind, roaring drunk and all four of us went back to the hotel.

That evening, we were going out for dinner with some friends of mine. Roz came down to the lobby lounge looking regal (she was tall) in a white dress. She announced that she felt like hell and only by drinking two glasses of milk and bourbon was she able to join us. I knew that I was in for a very long night.

Sitting in the lounge drinking chilled vodka Roz suddenly jumped up, announced that she didn't feel good and was going back to the room. Brown, Peter and Bill never missed a beat. Repeating the same fucking stories over and over again and laughing like crazy with each repetition like it was the first time they heard the story. Very fucking boring.

There was a great looking gal sitting by herself, sipping wine and I went over and asked her if she was a "working girl” to which she proudly said "yes". She became my companion for the evening.

She literally saved Tom’s life with the Heimlich maneuver after a snack at Trader Vic’s almost choked Mr. Clean into the next world.The hooker was a school teacher moonlighting as a hooker but only giving blow jobs. She was intelligent company and a great sex partner. Should have taken her home.

~

The Irresistible Patti Brown

Tuning 91 this week, God willing, and I still look like shit....'Everything changes, everything remains the same'.

So in my 50's along comes Patti Brown a once practicing Catholic but with her Irish still shining through her spiritual soul. Strong feelings of community are the basis of spirituality and Patti was loaded with a great sense of community.

Beautiful, slightly chunky, big boobs, very smart and an enthusiastic tennis player, with easy laughter, was Patti Brown. Jews and Catholics seem to connect easily and often. Jesus was a Jew so we have 'Jews For Jesus' which I always thought was a punch line for a religious joke.

Thinking of those big boobs reminds me of the first and only time that I tried sex on Patti. So one evening, Patti was sitting in my lap, a little tipsy from inhaling too much wine (or else why would she be in my lap) and Patti said, "I feel horny."

Taking that comment as a signal from God my left hand went swiftly and directly to Patti's right tit. Patti brushed my hand away and she left my lap as though she was shot out of a fucking cannon. For sure, Patti wasn't that horny.

Patti became a focus of my life, sexless notwithstanding. Patti was a notch above slightly crazy but really smart, a wonderful combination. Being around totally predictable and sane people is really plenty fucking boring. Patti was anything but boring.

And Patti loved to laugh which, for me, was a substitute for an orgasm. (How was I to know that at around age 87 me and orgasms would take different paths?)

Patti was a dedicated devotee of astrology and our 'signs' made us a 'perfect' pair. Until Patti, gratefully, came into my life, cancer was a sickness and a scorpion was a deadly fucking bug. Turned out that Cancer and Scorpio are Astrological signs.

Also it turns out that Patti and I may have been a perfect pair in Astrology but not in life. We went out a lot. No dating. 'Dating' implies sex of which I enjoyed none with Patti. We just went out, a lot.

Fortunately Patti's Irish DNA didn't include the Irish proclivity for booze. ('An Irish queer is a guy who likes women better than booze.' Quote forever true).

In the late seventies EST and having your colors done, were the rage. EST had its pseudo shrink approach where no matter how good your life was, they were going to make it better. The Princess had thrown me out. How much better could life be?

Getting your 'Colors' done was a Patti Brown, off the wall, kind of a thing. So up to SF Patti schlepped my Jewish ass to get my colors done. Which meant finding out which color clothes best suited my personality which in turn would make made me more attractive. At that time my 'Brioni Awakening' hadn't really yet happened. Takes a lot to look like shit in a Brioni suit.

Throw in Turnbull, Asser shirts, Hermes ties, Weston shoes and even I could look good. Never great until I became eligible for the third of three stages in life. First you are young, then you become middle aged, then you're looking great.

After hours of being questioned by a color 'expert', who was a nice woman and clearly a frustrated shrink and quite a bits nuts, I was declared an Autumn. Patti's presence saved me from institutionalizing myself during the q and a.

We then went to the North Beach Restaurant and had a great WOP dinner and headed, exhausted and stuffed, back to Palo Alto on the then new Hwy. 280. Very light traffic made it feel like a deserted, back road in those early days.

Patti asked if she could take a nap. A day that included going to the City, talking to the whacked out colors woman and directing my colors inquisition had wiped out that poor broad. I told Patti to do it. Then, in spite of having a ton of coffee earlier and driving 70 miles an hour, I joined her for a quick nap.

My eyes opened when the car took down two saplings, slammed into and under a chain link fence and bounced off of huge oak tree before it came to a halt. Driving on snow and ice in Iowa had taught me not to hit the brakes. My Mercedes convertible was totaled but thanks to God, both Patti and I were able to walk across the field to a lone house and get rides home. Both of us virtually unscathed.

The punch line to that saga is that unbeknownst to me, the Princess, in all her fucking self righteousness, had cancelled my car insurance. Starting over for me without a car was made all the more tough.

I had just quit drinking and Patti, was wonderful to and for me. Patti gave me a purpose in life with her smile, laughter, brains and her touch of insanity. (It takes one, to know one).

Saw Patti, the other day, for the first time in decades and she looked fabulous. Slim, trim, beautiful and still with a knockout smile and laugh.

In the end Patti's Astrologer was on the money in telling Patti to 'kiss me off'. Living with someone brings out the worst in me. Which can be plenty bad.

~

Profligate Spending, Wham...Bam...Slam...Goodbye Ma'am

Fat and skinny had a race, all around the pillow case. Fat fell down and broke his face; Skinny won the race.

• There was a Jewish oil guy in Wyoming who was being offered, a ranch that included some Black Angus cattle that were being grass fed on the ranch. The oilman reacted with a classic line (true story)... "I never own anything that's eating while I'm sleeping"

• The Italians have a great line, "Unless you can stand ingratitude, never do anything for anybody". Makes it essential to do good things for good's sake, to have a good name, which is its own reward.

• Ever wonder, as I do, what 40-year-old hookers turn to when they quit hooking. Fucking for fun or sport fucking seems out. Those worn out hookers probably marry guys who have little interest in sex.

• In the late seventies the Regency Hotel bar in The Big Apple used to attract older (thirty something) hookers. Very expensive. The crème de la crème of hooker bars in NYC was the Sherry Netherland Hotel bar. Knockout looking women, seriously expensive (sadly, way out of my pay scale) but the opening, introductory question, no matter what the pay scale was, "Are you a working girl?”

• The all time fun bar in NYC was Maxwell's Plum. Always 4-5 deep with young guys looking to fall in love for an hour or two (wham, bam, slam, good bye ma’am) and the gals mostly looking to fall in love. Made little difference to me because I couldn't get laid in a whore house with a $100 bill pasted on my forehead much less pick up a straight woman for some 'action '. Without booze in me I had no delusions. Also, a guy in his 50's chasing young pussy is a non starter, except if the guy is rich and open handed.

• In Midland, Texas there was Lonnie, the bellman and an absolutely great guy, who was Midland's premier pimp (great personality with a stable of girls at his disposal). In the 70's Midland was a booming oil town and hookers were attracted to it. The last I heard Lonnie was shining shoes and making everyone laugh.

• Calgary, Canada was the last of the Wild West towns with the hookers patrolling "hotel row". The French Maid was a low down bar with upscale Johns. I stepped into an elevator at the International Hotel with a young woman already in the elevator. The elevator doors closed and she promptly grabbed my 'privates' and asked if I wanted a 'trick'. While being at a loss for words isn't my style, I was so startled that the elevator arrived at my floor before I could say 'No thanks'. Turned out that the hookers never left the elevators until some one said, 'Yes, how much do you charge?'

• In retrospect, I find it remarkable that I did my business and evolved into a very successful one-man 'investment bank'. With it all, I developed a deep store of knowledge of the oil and gas business plus a formidable address book of folks that are big and small time in the world of finance. This all happened both in my drinking and non drinking days.

• Sober, I raised some $1 billion (adjusted for inflation) from natural gas pipeline investments for blue chip pension funds while making good friends with the people I solicited for investment dollars. Bunches of money came my way which was promptly dispersed to my kids, ex wives, friends, hookers and strangers.

• Drinking or not I squeezed a ton of living out of my profligate and busted on my lower case jewish ass lives. In the bag or not, I lived on the edge always looking for the unexpected. Both courses were nerve wracking and wonderful, simultaneously.

• While I am busted on my ass, I am wealthy with friends dead and alive, not including my first ex wife who actively disliked me. I'm really sorry that she died but I sure don't miss her.

~

Golden Years

90, breathing hard on, God willing, 91.

Waking up at 5:30 from an oldster's fitful so called sleep, feeling like shit but thinking of Dean Martin's unforgettable line, ‘knowing that it was as bad as I was going to feel all day'.

My number one thing to do, after getting dressed for my day in the trenches of trying to feel optimistic is to check the obits of the NYT and SF Chronicle on line, to see if I'm still alive. 'So far so good' as the guy who jumped off of a 50 story building said as he passed the 30th floor on the way down.

Being inspired with the knowledge that I'm still alive, and touching my toes for a stretch plus doing a wall crawl for posture, gets me going into the kitchen to make a healthy, but really boring, fucking breakfast.

Fresh fruit smoothie, raisin toast, at least 3 cups of coffee plus the inevitable oldster pills. My thyroid, diuretic and sinus pills plus vitamin supplements round out the breakfast.

By then the newspapers have arrived and links that my friends might care about start going out. My friends probably cringe when my name shows up and think that 'here is that old son of a bitch again'. Every once, in a long while, a 'thank you shows' up on my screen.

Then the diuretic pill kicks in and awhizzing I must go. When you're 90 'holding it in' is not an option. 'Holding it in' means an underwear change. Drip, drip, drip or go to the head are my choices.

And if my schlong could get as stiff as the rest of me, sex would, gratefully, come back into my life. And pigs will fly.

It isn't erectile dysfunction that attacks my schlong. It's old age dysfunction. As Willie Nelson so famously said, "I'm sorry that my dick died before the rest of me". Golden years? The inventor of that line must have been 25 years old. Golden Years at 90? Yeah, my lower case bronx, jewish, fat ass.

My Golden Years started in my callow youth and ended in my late 70's. Those in between years including the ones in the service were, in retrospect, my Golden Years . I was a profligate spender my entire life.

Spent on my family, my friends and certainly myself. I was always certain that I could replace the considerable amount of money that I spent every day. And replace it I did into my late 70's. I loved every minute of giving it away and spending it.

The first sign of the end of my Golden Years came when my dick started to die. I went from hookers galore, loose and easy, to a once in awhile triumph of being able to do it. Hookers, as I have often said, were wonderful. For a few hundred dollars, I got to fall in love for a half an hour a time. I didn't have to make any conversation and the burden of proof was never on me. And when it was over she was gone. No cuddling!!

My decline during my Golden Years became really apparent when pictures of naked, beautiful young women with big boobs (aka tits) were boring. Then when people started asking me if I was retired, I knew that my Golden Years had, for the most part, ended. Living those Golden Years believing that moderation is fatal and plenty fucking boring as well was wonderful. Very little done in excess is very little done.

Trying to do good for doing's sake, not to generate a reward has, to this day, been a turn on for me. Touching people's lives has always been an important goal...

Putting myself under the gun (as in spending more than I made) provided the impetus (aka adrenaline rushes) that I needed to keep me in money making motion. Being fucking stress addicted is in my DNA.

So here I am, almost 70 years after taking one on Okinawa, as happy as a pig in shit with at least 70 Golden Years and a Purple Heart. The last five years haven't been too swift, but with 75 Golden Years out of 9o total years my life has been more than just okay. Happy as the proverbial pig in shit or a clam in mud.

I often wonder what happens to a 40 year old ex-hooker. Probably marries an old man with very little, if any, interest in sex.

Weed, Shrinks and Group Analysis

'There is nothing more boring than perfect.', said the spider to the fly.

Smoking dope wasn't my thing. Tried it once. The Princess liked it. Our next door neighbor, a shrink loved it and always had a supply of marijuana on hand. I went to several parties, after I quit drinking, that were shrink centric. Smoking dope was the life of the shrink's parties.

So, being Jewish, automatically guilty and in defiance of Einstein's law where he says that if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, each time looking for a different result, you are insane, I went, one more time after the Princess unloaded me, to a shrink.

Proving my second ex-wife correct. The first one thought me to be "bizarre" while my second ex-wife thought me "strange" or "crazy".

Group therapy is an unbelievable experience. You sit in a circle and each person talked about their problems. And, as with one on one sessions with the shrink, no one ever left any session laughing.

Having spent 50 minutes exploring what the hell was wrong with you, makes it plenty fucking tough to feel good about yourself. Maybe the phrase 'circle jerk' came out of group therapy.

The big plus of shrinkage is that you learn all about yourself which took me about a year. You get to know why you do a lot of stuff. But knowing why you're fucking up is a long way from stopping being fucking up. But at least you know why.

The big minus is that the shrink gets to look at you as a big fucking milk cow but the teats have money in them not milk. Squeezing those teats provide for wives, kids, mortgages and 'girlfriends'. Letting go of the ‘milk cow' is seldom prime on the agenda.

So, in my 'group' was a good looking, smart woman who was married to a shrink. She was the group 'facilitator', whatever that meant. One day she showed up wearing a Star of David. She was as Irish as Paddy's pig which stimulated a lot of curiosity.

An Irish broad wearing the Star of David just didn’t work. We later found out that the shrink who was Jewish was banging her and since she was already married a fucking engagement ring wouldn't work. So they settled on a gold Star of David hanging on a gold chain hanging around her not so golden goddamn neck.

They both got divorces and did marry, with the shrink's original wife going off the fucking wall. She in turn signed up, right away, for therapy with another shrink. As with me, she was a slow learner. She was Jewish, so she believed that the divorce was all her fault.

And is it any wonder that shrinks bang their patients and vice versa? The patient, in my view, mixes up dependence with love so 'afucking' we will go. Didn't work for me. Never had a woman shrink nor am I gay.

A memorable experience, actually a nightmare, was a 24 hour marathon group session where everyone sat around a circle, for 24 hours, slamming one another and just beating the shit out of your thinking, your personality, the way you dressed and anything else someone in the group could think of that made you unacceptable.

Spending 24 hours being told that you are a worthless piece of shit ain't fun. The only laughs were the ones you were the subject of.

I have always believed that 'interventions' used on drunks and addicts came out of group fucking therapy.

Life without premeditation is wonderful....

Marijuana, Kurt, The Vatican

Going to Rome by way of Tel Aviv and Kibbutz Mishmar David to see Kurt made perfect sense to me since acting without premeditation came naturally to me.

In 1970-1971, I helped found a venture capital group. As it turned out, the enterprise was disaster in spite of my partners being very successful making individual investments in the venture capital arena.

Not only was our basic concept terrible but the business plan really sucked. Making investments in venture deals found and vetted by others turned out to be really different than developing and vetting your own deals. Like the difference between night and day.

One of my partners knew a guy (Lloyd Hand) who had been Chief of Protocol for President Johnson, so he knew every son of a bitch and his uncle. We paid him $10,000 (About $56,000 today) plus travel expenses which added another $3,000 ($17,000 today) to introduce us to the Bishop who ran the Vatican Bank.

The Bishop, we were told, ran the bank and was Mayor of Vatican City as a result of saving the Pope's life in the Philippines when the Pope was attacked by a fucking nut with a knife.

The trip was wild, booze driven, insane trip. Travel for me back then was a way to get away from the Princess, really drink big time and walk around feeling like shit every day. A good trade off for me. Rather feel like shit than be treated like shit.

"Kurt I'm going to give you three options. You can finish high school and go to Israel. You can quit high school now and go to Israel. Or Kurt, you can go to jail. You have a week to make up your mind.”

”You are maniac.", the Princess screamed at me. We were sitting in our all white living room and for a fucking flash I thought that I'd be a victim of domestic violence with that sweet demure Princess beating the shit out of me, while I bled red in a fucking sea of white.

When we built that Jewish mansion (aka a house you can't afford) the Princess and her decorator came up with all white furnishings for the living room, which made the living room unlivable. Unfucking real.

So the living room was designed for adult groups only. The only time that the kids were allowed in that fucking room was when they were in trouble with me or the Princess. It was a come to Jesus room. It was an all white 'woodshed' without a horse whip or club. Lots of ranting words by me was the punishment of choice.

Kurt had a kidney ailment and was in and out of the Stanford Convalescent Home for Children, which literally saved his life. Being in and out of school was a great hindrance in his making lasting friends at school though he did have a few. He started shooting pool and coming home at all hours. The Princess would wake me in the middle of the night to find him, which I’d sometimes do but mostly not.

His friends were pool hall bums. They would come to the house to play poker, each guy looking worse than the other. When those fucking bums started showing up at the door (seldom used) looking for Kurt I got really spooked. In between all the action, the Princess and I went away for a weekend. Came home to find the un-living room a virtual shambles with Russian antiques pieces, for all practical purposes, destroyed.

So one Sunday night, without premeditation or discussion with the Ice Queen, I issued my ultimatum. Two Israel and one jail option.. with a week to decide.

The following Sunday Kurt told me that Israel absolutely now, was his choice. He was less than a month from high school graduation and the Princess, an education freak, started crying. But it was apparent to me that Kurt was up to his ass in alligators.

The next morning Kurt came with me to S.F. to go to the Passport Bureau.

Filled out the forms but we didn't have his Goddamn birth certificate. So we left the bureau and I went into action. Phoned Iowa for instructions. Sent $2.50 to Iowa, special delivery, where Kurt was born. Enclosed another $2.50 for the bureau to return the birth certificate special delivery.

Memorial Day weekend, starting that Thursday, was coming up and the Passport Bureau was to be closed Friday. I had an intuitive feeling that time was of the essence. Wednesday arrived and so did the fucking birth certificate. So down to Passport Bureau to get the passport went Helene my secretary.

Helene was beautiful, a good worker but not a Phi Beta Kappa Key candidate. She phoned from the bureau to tell me that there was an enormous line and doubted that she would get to the front before closing.

San Francisco Passport Bureau

"Get up close to a window and just stare at the clerk. Do not take your eyes off him/her. The clerk will feel the pressure, call you up to the window and ask you what you want. Get the passport." Which is exactly what happened and Helene got the passport.

Thursday evening Kurt was packing to take the Red Eye to New York when in walked the police to pick him up for selling marijuana. The Princess was hysterical while I had a few pops to sustain me and concentrated on finding an attorney.

Kurt was one of 13 kids from affluent, upscale Woodside and Portola Valley. Most of the kids had been picked up at least once before.

Turns out that the Princess and I were the only parents in attendance and Kurt was the only one with an attorney. When I asked one of Kurt's arresting officers where the other kids’ parents were with attorneys for their kids, the officer said "The fathers are probably traveling and the Mothers are in the bag. Attorneys? No way were the parents going to spend any more money on those kids."

After Kurt was gone the car he had been driving was taken in for service and a big bunch of marijuana was found stuffed behind the front dashboard. Plus shoe boxes full of grass were found in his closet.

Kurt was on the Mishmar David Kibbutz in Israel when I was going to Rome. So I thought I would "stop by" and see him before I went to Rome for my business. I thought Rome and Tel Aviv were "kissin’ cousins", close by one another. That was a major misconception.

Almost 5 hours of drinking in the air. Spent a night on the Kibbutz which was memorable. It was only a few years after the '67 war and spirits and ideals on this communal farm were high.

I went to Rome and the Vatican the following day to meet with the Bishop. The night before the meeting, we went for a horse and buggy ride to get acquainted with Rome. Expensive and a piss poor way to see Rome. Very boring.

The next day we went to see the Bishop who was from Cicero. He had been an "advance man" for Pope Paul VI. The Bishop's hands were like ham hocks and he was as tough as nails. Smoked Pall Mall cigarettes like there was no tomorrow. But, at that point, I was smoking 4 1/2 packs of Lucky Strikes (no filters) every day with yellow fingers. So the Bishop and I looked like two chimneys and that was right up my alley.

My partner who insisted on doing the major part of the presentation was a very nice, smart guy whose voice never seemed to stop "droning". Your eyes would glaze over as he droned on and on. He could put a sore ass in vinegar to sleep.

The Bishop managed to stay awake and while he was not a financial man, he knew a dumb deal when he saw one and turned us down, out of hand. But it was for me, through the booze driven, cigarette haze and yellowed fingers, a fabulous experience and the beginning of a wonderful long term personal relationship with Bishop Marcinkcus.

A great person guy, in spite of his fruitless efforts to convert me. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. My trip back to SF was out of sight with unreal booze laden memories.

The P U Club, Dale Frey, Ken Langone

Living a life of always going ‘Up The Down Stairway’ and lovin' it...

"This club, (The Pacific Union Club in S.F.) has a Circumcision Detector and a loud bell goes off when I walk in so I always come in through the back door (basically the women's entrance) which doesn't have the detector. The effect of tripping the Detector would be like hearing an earthquake alert."

The membership committee of the P U Club had never really recognized that Jesus was a Jew. This was before the goofy Jews for Jesus, non-movement had gained any traction at all.

Pacific Union Club

It was at a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation small, exclusive fund raising dinner hosted by Dale Frey and Ken Langone that I spewed those words in answer to a question.

Since both Dale and Ken knew me, but not all that well, they thought that since I was a big earner, living large, that God had taught me how to accumulate money and make it grow. As well as how to piss it away on the Princess (aka First Ex Wife), my kids, myself and various sundry strangers, who probably, like the Princess, thought that I was 'bizarre’. Profligate for sure. Bizarre? Suit yourself.

There were a few others at the dinner including a fabulously wealthy guy who had extracted some big time investment money from Dale Frey's GE Pension Trust. He too was Jewish like me but he was so fucking rich that they turned off the Circumcision Detector when he showed up.

He couldn't become a member of the fucking P U club but his rich friends covered for him when he was invited to the club...he went through the front door.

So at this small exclusive dinner the Executive Director of the Foundation was my next chair neighbor. She was from Tennessee, a really good looking woman and for some weird reason kept asking me the damnedest questions about myself.

Being powerless over my own bullshit, I was more than just happy to accommodate this Southern Beauty. We all know that a man thinks with his eyes.

Then came her question about how often I came to the P U Club. I looked at her like a bull with a bastard calf. My response was that due to the Circumcision Detector, that me and the P U Club were hardly kissin' cousins.

The dinner itself was a cross between great and pretty awful. The awful part, for me, came when the scientist doctors went through their research results and the progress of the research programs. Those descriptions were eye glazing.

The fun part was just listening to Ken and Dale. Nothing eye glazing about either one. They were apparently going to a few cities, with wives, in Ken's burner, aka airplane and enjoying each city and each other.

Naturally, in playing the game, I made a commitment which I promptly paid. I was right in predicting to Dale that it would take a few phone calls to extract the commitment that the big rich guy made.

One day, when I heard an eagle screaming and saw pigs flying, I knew that Dale had accomplished his purpose for the Foundation. Later, Ken, Dale and I had a few laughs about the whole affair, particularly the part about the Circumcision Detector.

One of the partners at the NYSE bucket shop for which I worked, Laury Ames, a Continental Air founder, invited me to lunch at Snobsville a few times. I always came in through the back. The people at the bar, serious pre-lunch drinkers, were divided into two clusters. One group was made up of retired club members with the second group still gainfully employed. There was a real class distinction at the P U Club with the working stiffs looking down on the retired people.

Two different worlds at one pompous fucking bar.

Putting in a four letter word show for the waiters at the P U Club was fun. They were snobs as well and would be properly horrified at my foul language. They apparently didn't subscribe to my idol George Carlin's philosophy that 'there are no bad words, just bad thoughts'.

Ashaking and Agroaning...Earthquake Time

There's gotta be a Willie Nelson ashaking and agroaning, earthquake song.

"I'm feeling dizzy. What the hell is going on?” It was 1954 and having just moved from flat, boring Iowa, where the big thing was to have 'corn, knee high by the fourth of July’, to Palo Alto, located in the Land of Milk and Honey and Fruits and Nuts, and where the big thing was to be laid back and enjoy the weather.

Now, the gazillionaire geeks and nouveau riche have all but destroyed that culture. The geeks dressed like slobs, making obscene amounts of money and completely powerless over their own bullshit, dominate Palo Alto. Bye, bye sweet college town.

In Iowa, 5 days in a row in January of temperatures warmer than 20 fucking above degrees was considered a heat wave. In Palo Alto any temp in January, in and around 32, is considered a 'cold blast'.

While sitting on the front lawn, in that summer of '54, of the Eichler house we lived in and visiting with a native Californian neighbor, I suddenly felt dizzy and felt like the ground was moving under my fat ass. The thought that I might be having an inadvertent bowel movement did flash on me.

I looked quizzically at the neighbor and he quickly explained, laughing, that we were having a 'fucking tremor'. He thought it funny, while I thought maybe I was better off freezing in the winter and living in an insanely buggy, humid, fucking hot Iowa weather in the summer.

The occasional California tremors through the years have made me no never mind. The papers hardly reported them.

When the big mother came in 1989 and shook up Candlestick Park I was living large in the Big Apple enjoying my friends, hookers and making more money than I deserved. God, it was fun. No booze, no smoking, just living a wonderful, high on the hog life. Wine or not, real shakers produce real tragedies

But at around 3 and change in the morning of Aug 23, 2014 my earthquake nonchalance ended with a real, live jolt. 'My building', about 50 years old and built real cheap, was making edgy noises, like it was coming apart at the fucking seams.

Being on the top floor of a creaky old building that seemed to be moaning and groaning like an old whore on Saturday night ain't too swift. A+ for scary and Palo Alto is about 90 minutes, by car, from Napa Valley, which really paid the price for its sinful, wine soaked living.

Twenty seconds or so became a fucking lifetime with all kinds of bad scenarios going through my normally empty head. Sleeping in my tee shirt didn't make me too fucking well dressed for a hurried exit to the street. But then, how in the hell was I going to get down to the street from the fourth floor without getting killed by flying debris?

On and on. What a fucking twenty seconds it was. A Bronx Jew in an earthquake is an oxymoron.

Fortunately the twenty second shaker and baker ended with me deciding that even at 90, dying in a lousy earthquake held no fucking appeal for me.

'Money Is Like Manure...', Hello Dolly

'If you think you're crazy then you really must be sane else how would know that you’re crazy.’ Catch 22.

As Groucho Marx so famously said, “If I knew that I was going to live this long I would probably have taken better care of my money."

Ah, where did the many, many millions I earned go? Cause I don't have even a small itty, bitty, little bit of it left. Profligate spending? No respect for accumulating money? Chasing straight women and wonderful hookers? Always spent more than I made?

Guilty as charged of all of the above and more.

Being overdrawn was part of my lifestyle. Me and keeping a record of the checks written in order to know my bank balance weren't even kissin' cousins. My banker in Palo Alto both loved and hated me.

Simultaneously.

My favorite story about the banker, often told, starts with when my OD was getting close to seven figures in eighties dollars. I went to see him when my OD was literally, over $900,000.The conversation got mean when he started pounding me on that fucking overdraft. Naturally, being wrong, I indignantly stomped out of his office.

Needed some medicine, went to the pharmacy directly from the bank and noticed that they were selling lottery tickets (a new phenomena at the time) and bought three. Got back in the car, phoned the banker who was, in my view, a faux Born Again Christian who never used foul language (which I love).

Told the banker that a new development had come up and I was working on a way to cover my OD soon. He became really excited and asked what the new development was."I bought three lotto tickets."

"Fuck you" he shouted and slammed the phone down.

I was totally arrogant about my ability to make money and my arrogance was well founded. My genius, immigrant Pop always said that in America money is up to your knees. You just have to know how to bend down to pick it up. And I, sure as hell, knew how. Old age has stiffened my back. Too bad that my schlong can't get as stiff as the rest of me.

A banker in Iowa once asked me what I was going to do with the money I wanted to borrow. "Spend it", I said. Off the wall he went. He thought that I was being a smart ass and he turned me down. He didn't realize, as promoted in Hello Dolly, that I believed that money is like manure, 'You have to spread it around for it to do any good…'

Making many millions of dollars disappear, is a talent few people want. But I'm living proof that it doesn't take a fucking magician.

While mucho of my bucks were spent on myself, the bulk of the money was spent on others. My friends, my wives, before and after divorces (a half of a half doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot). My four kids and the Ice Princess plus my second ex wife were the real focus of my 'mishuga',crazy spending.

The Ice Princess complained a lot and very fucking bitterly, that I spoiled the kids. But my cry was that I was not "schitzo” and couldn't give her (#1 ex wife) everything she wanted (and she wanted plenty, starting with being a born again clothes horse) and not do the same for the kids.

How she adored and loved I Magnin. Apparently the monthly, horrendous, I Magnin bill suited me fine. The Princess was clothes and shoe horse and looked beautiful in what she bought.

A ton if money was pissed away on people I hardly knew or even cared to know. When I got sober one of my kids had a tennis shop. God only knows how many warm up suits and tennis rackets I bought for flight attendants that I saw just once and didn't care to see ever again.

Trying to support the tennis shop with purchases for flight attendants got boring. Even inherently bright flight attendants became brain dead while on that job. My real interest was in the success my kid and the tennis shop. The seventeen years between marriages were also terrific for spending money.

Would I do it all over again? For sure!! My disrespect for accumulating money spilled over into a ton of good for others and me.

Sadly, as the Italian adage goes 'If you can't stand ingratitude, never do, anything for anybody.'