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.'
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