"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.
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| 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'.
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