Up The Down Staircase

A 'minimally invasive procedure' is a procedure that is like a minor operation. Both are something that someone else has. My 'minimally invasive procedure', on Tuesday, is a result of a bum aorta (heart) valve.

Breathing hard after sex was fun. Breathing hard after walking 150 steps, while a laughing matter, ain't fun. But it is one whole hell of a lot better than the alternative of not breathing at all. 

Or so I'm told but not by people who have died. They ain't talking.

Between the Transcatheter Heart Valve Clinic (Now there's a mouthful.) at the Stanford Hospital and the VA Palo Alto Health Care System (Another mouthful.) a 'minimally invasive procedure' procedure has been prescribed for me by outstanding medical professionals. GE Health Care testing equipment was enormous help in getting medics to their conclusion.

TAVR is the acronym for Transcatheter Aorta Valve Replacement, another mouthful and the name of this 'minimally invasive' procedure. A catheter with a new aorta valve attached is inserted in the groins and guided to the heart where, through some magic hocus pocus, the defective valve is replaced with the new valve.

Didn't Google TAVR because using Google for every kvetch was making me into borderline hypochondriac.

In the olden days open heart surgery was used. Nothing minimal about that. At 92 or even younger, open heart surgery sounds like a death defying operation. It ain't 'minimally invasive'. Check that out with Bill Tichy.

Being a curmudgeon does not prevent me from recognizing the efforts that Judy Baer, Dr. Patricia Nguyen, Dr. William Fearon, Zoe Magee and Dr. Giacomini have all made on my behalf. And the countless number of technicians as well.

A few recovery days in the hospital and this Old Bronx Jew (92 in a few weeks) will be ready to tear life up one more time. Can't wait to stop breathing like a stuck hog bleeds when I take a whiz. Just standing still shoots my heart rate to bad. Taking a whiz is an exercise in stamina.

Making money, riding my stationary bike for 45 minutes, being able to walk several miles, lifting weights, learning Spanish and telling someone to suck eggs out of small holes slowly or take a flying fuck to the moon are all on my agenda.

Which includes traveling to the Big Apple, London and acting like a big shot one more time. Maybe King Kong, aka John Myers, will take me to Rao's so that I can hob nob with gangsters and bankers.

Yeah, I am looking forward to living and doing with optimism and a drive for serendipity for another bunch of years. Living on the edge too.While my dick has sadly died, the rest of me is raring to go.

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'God's Banker' Archbishop Paul Marcinkus....A Partial Reprise

"Bernie did you see those Swiss guards when you checked into the Vatican?  And you know my secretary Mauvi don't you? Well, Mauvi and those Swiss guards get paid. Don't bring me deals that don't bring me income."

The only thing the Bishop didn't say was 'Are you fucking stupid or what?'

This was my second visit to the Vatican to promote a deal to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. I knew that the Bishop was big time but later found out how big. The Bishop was all over the newspapers. And not in a good way. But I didn't read newspapers in those days.Would have cut into my drinking time. The choice between reading newspapers or booze inhalation was a no-brainer.

The Bishop was a priest from Cicero, Illinois. Very personable, had huge hands, smoked like a chimney (Pall Mall, unfiltered or a pipe) and who was as competent to run the Vatican Bank as I would have been.Which was not at all. The Bishop didn't have the necessary paranoia. I am paranoid but not very fucking smart.

In the beginning the Bishop and I had one thing in common...smoking in size. The Bishop was 6'4" and a good looking guy. It was hard for me to think him abstinent.

Lloyd Hand, former 'greeter' for Pres. Lyndon Johnson and DC lobbyist, had introduced me and a colleague to the Bishop and I had stayed in touch with the Bishop. Fed my misplaced fucking ego to say that the Archbishop who ran the Vatican Bank and I were friends.

And so down the tubes went a proposal that I made to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the President of the Vatican Bank and Governor of Vatican City. I had developed a personal relationship with the Bishop over a 10 year time span and he had agreed to see me regarding an oil and gas royalty deal.

The deal was dependent on successful wildcat drilling to generate income. Turned out that the guy in charge of the drilling couldn't find his ass with either hand much less oil or gas with drilling equipment. He didn't find even a fucking mouthful of oil or gas.

But the Bishop proved that he did have some common sense (aka street smarts) and he turned down the deal which turned out to be a bad bet on a bad concept. But I stayed in touch with the Bishop.

At one point, after the Bishop was back in the States, the Knights of Columbus had been looking for him and they called me, a Jew from the Bronx, to find out where the Bishop was.

The Bishop was a terrific guy. He loved playing golf and I would send him, from time to time, golf books and boxes of golf balls. He would "try" to convert me. He never gave up though I told him that I was born a Jew and would die a Jew. He spent his last days in Sun City preaching in nearby communities.

He was "for decades, one of the highest ranking American prelates to the Vatican serving Popes John XXX III, Paul VI and John Paul II." But at the end of the day, he was in many ways a simple learned priest, from Cicero, Illinois without a financial background. The Bishop also lacked the deep seated cynical trait that is so crucial to being a successful money manager.

Sadly, he became embroiled in two scandals where one principal, a banker named Calvi, was found hanging beneath a bridge in London. Calvi had been a friend of the Bishop and was convicted of fraud. That association cost the Vatican Bank over $200 million. Previously, the Bishop was involved with a shadowy character named Sidona, with Mafia connections, who died in prison in Milan after drinking a cup of coffee laced with poison. That friendship cost the Vatican tens of millions or so it is said.

At one point the Italian government indicted the Bishop but he confined himself to Vatican City for a few years until the indictment was dropped.

The Bishop was, for me, a marvelous man who added significantly to the richness of my life and I cried when I learned of his death from Mauvi, his secretary. It was rumored that he was "banging" Mauvi who was not my cup of tea. She was, for me, a lovely woman with the sex appeal of a sore ass.

And no, in the twenty five years of knowing the Bishop I never did a deal with him as being his friend became the paramount feature of my relationship with the Bishop, may he rest in peace.

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Booze & Broads

Making extra bucks in the service as a GI, while not leaving the base, was a prime goal of mine but not easy to come by.

Bartending at the Enlisted Man's Club at Camp Kohler became my goal. 3.2 beer was as hard a drink as you could get. Drinking 6 bottles of 3.2 beer would get you to the latrine often to take a whiz but without getting a buzz on. 3.2 beer tested your bladder capacity. At 20, bladder capacity is minimal.

As a patron, the club seemed sane. As a bartender it was a madhouse. I made 50 cents an hour and all that I could steal or drink but I was too fucking slow, as a bartender, to steal. Everyone was screaming at me for their fucking beer. Who had time to even think of stealing or drinking? Also the Sergeant in charge of the mad house kept his jaundiced eyes on the bartenders' hands to be sure that the money went into the register and not their pockets.

I think the beer cost 10 cents a bottle. A carton of Chesterfield cigarettes did cost 50 cents. Civilians had a hard time getting cigarettes so I would send cigarettes to 'my girl' who, sadly for both of us, became my wife after the war.

American Tobacco, during the war, took the color green out of Lucky Strike cigarette packages and launched a campaign entitled 'Lucky Strike Green Went To War'. Chesterfields were my choice of coffin nails. I never did understand why 'Lucky Strike Green Went To War' became a slogan for American Tobacco.

Smoking, drinking and hallucinating about women were the GI's 'hobbies' of choice. Newspapers were unavailable and who the hell cared. No headphones for music or even individual radios. We lived in a soldier's world. Life was easy and uncomplicated. Sleeping while standing up and leaning against a wall wasn't a challenge. Easy done.

It seems like no one had ever heard of alcoholism in those days and our sex lives mostly consisted of 'wet dreams' or 'jackin off'. I often wonder when I turned into a 'sincere drinker' and then an alcoholic. For me it seems that my addiction really started with the WWII 'going away parties' for the guys leaving for the service. No girls, just a bunch of teenage guys getting roaring fucking dunk and loving it.

AA taught me that booze can be as big an addiction as drugs or sex, if you can get the sex.

How else could a dumb Jew from the Bronx feel totally worthwhile? Drinking gave me a leg up. Certainly not from listening to the 'Princess' who had an exquisite memory of every asshole thing that I ever did and I did plenty of them. The good things I did were instantly snuffed out of the 'Princess's' memory bank. I always felt worthwhile while sliding into the bag.

In AA a standard line is that your best day drunk wasn't as good as your worst day sober. Now that is, for me, pure bullshit.

I always like to talk about a fabulous menage a trois that I had with two hookers from Mozambique in Paris. The only problem is that I don't remember what happened but it had to be fabulous because I ended up with zero dollars in my pocket.

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