GUILT, SOBRIETY, DROP DEAD, AN OLD MAN'S UNDERPANTS

Rancho La Puerto probably means nothing to 99.9% of humanity. It is a holistic fitness, mind fucking, expensive facility outside of San Diego in Mexico...It was my first ex wife's favorite fitness, mind elevating place. There I was, busted on my fat ass, while the Princess was living high on the hog trying to shrink her ass. Not doable. Elevate her mind? Maybe...

I had given the Princess 100% of our substantial assets and had taken on 100% of our substantial debt. But for this guilt ridden Jew, it was a great idea. After all, the Princess really needed to recuperate from a 27 year ride on my roller coaster of married life. Also, as a guilt ridden Jew, it gave me the over the top feeling of martyrdom.

So, all in all I was as happy as a pig in shit. After all, my fucking suicide attempt could have been successful. Rich or poor I was still looking down at the grass, with a great AA sponsor, Pat Cooper who I loved. Though, it did bother me that Pat told me, everyday, that I was crazy and should institutionalize myself. Advice I didn't take.

Our divorce wasn't final yet and the Princess was, as usual, attending Al Anon meetings and seeing a shrink to boot. The shrink, Mrs. Mindick, and the Al Anon women seemed to spend a lot of time telling the Princess that I was a total, irredeemable fucking bum.

When we were still living together, I had always known when the Princess went to see the shrink or went to an Al Anon meeting.  And so did the kids. The Princess would always, that night, have a life style changing pronouncement, sometimes two, for all of us. In one ear and out the other; Al Anon for the ignorant is a support group for husbands, wives and kids of serious drinkers.

While the Princess was working on her ass and freeing her mind from my influence at the Rancho I decided to turn off all that fucking noise. First I went to her Al Anon meeting. I was one of two guys in the room. The other guy was, when push came to shove, chasing pussy. Sitting around a big table each woman spoke of her difficulties in being married to a drinking schmuck called 'husband'.

When my turn came I said "My name is Bernie and I’m an alcoholic. I'm here to tell you that I am not a fucking telephone pole. When you give advice about me to Bonnie, bear in mind that I'm a living, breathing human being."And I stood up and walked out. I'm sure that those broads were horrified, shocked and pissed off that I had the gall to effectively tell them to drop dead. The guy, also a drunk, loved it.

Then I went home (No cell phone those days,1973-4) and called Mrs. Mindick  and gave her the same message. Poor Mrs. Mindick, she too was horrified at my phone call. But after 23 years of seeing shrinks, it was easy for me to manipulate her.

When the Princess got home and found out what I had done she went off the fucking wall. As a Confirmed Californian she shouted that I had 'invaded her space'. Did all that action change anything? Nah, but it made me feel warm all over. Like a clam in mud. Telling people to fuck off is, gratefully, part of my DNA....

And then there's the one about the old couple in the doctor's office with the doctor giving the old man last minute instructions. "When you come back”, the doctor says, “bring urine and feces samples". The old man being hard of hearing turns to his wife and asks," What did he say?".The old lady replies "He said, bring your underwear the next time you come here". ...A little too close to home...

No Filter, Booze, Problem Drinkers, Pension Fund Managers

With no filter between my head and my mouth it was easy to severely annoy John Casey and my audience of big time pension managers. Not once but three times within the space of a few opening minutes.

With a kid with the name of Colleen you have to know that John Casey is as Irish as Paddy's pig. He is a regular God Damn ball of fire, the original man in motion. Probably suffers, as I do, from ADD.

Casey is an Irishman without the Irish curse called whiskey, booze to us street guys. In AA I learned that a queer Irishman is an Irishman that likes women better than booze.

Very smart guy, great promoter with DNA spliced with old fashioned Irish blarney. He ran a thing, still called Rogers Casey, an investment consulting firm that consulted to major corporate, state and city pension funds. John invited me to speak at an all day investment seminar that Rogers Casey was putting on for clients. Circa 1983...

An Irishman and a Jew make for a good combination most times, sometimes not. Casey introduced me to the audience, waving a piece of paper on which I listed my various 'careers' (Farming, peddling cars, furrier, rag salesman, etc.). He commented that those who came before me had big time, color brochures which extolled the virtues of their firm’s records and firms themselves while all I had was a handwritten list of my 'careers'

I began my talk by saying that I had made many presentations and had a standard opening that I used all the time and that in the interest of feeling comfortable I would start this one exactly the same way. So I started by saying, ‘My name is Bernie and I'm an alcoholic’. 

Every narcissistic, asshole, genius, self important, pension fund manager in the room snapped to attention. You could have heard a pin drop.

My guess? At least half of the people in the room had a drinking problem. 25% was a cinch. Problem drinkers are a dime a dozen. This is Noah talking about the fucking flood.

Then I proceeded to tell the audience that they wouldn't like my kind of deal. My deals, I told them, matured in 5-6 years. They wanted deals that matured in 10 plus years because by then they would have another job. No performance worries; a problem for their successors.

I went on to say that I was but one Jew, working out of a hotel room without a secretary and there wasn't any way that I was going to shoot $25,000 down a rat hole, for a brochure that they would throw away, probably unread. Instead I was giving everyone a table top book co-authored by Walter Cronkite, called North by Northeast, featuring photos of passenger ships of the thirties, forties, etc.

Sent one to Water Wriston, CEO of City Bank. He sent me a thank you note and said that he went to Europe, as a child, on the ship featured on the cover.

My Irish sponsor, John Casey, wasn't too happy with my opening, off the cuff shots. Not that I had any prepared notes. As Joe Pevehouse used to counsel me, "If you can't dazzle 'em with your footwork, blind them with your bullshit." And sometimes I think that I invented bullshit.

I made some great friends as a result of that talk…still actively in touch with a bunch of them 30 plus years later.

I did go on to talk about the deal that I was peddling at the time. It was a gas gathering pipeline deal with GE as the lead investor. I raised $110 million in 1980's dollars. The deal produced an Internal Rate of Return of 26% with an almost 3x cash return. GE's IRR was 36% due to preferential terms. Took six years, from beginning to end.

John Casey? Saw him one more time at the at SFO, in the eighties, with his wife where I complained to him that I sent him a book that he failed to acknowledge. His wife gave him a shot of Irish irritation by upbraiding him for his rudeness. Me? No regrets! What came into my head came out of my mouth.

Casey never invited me to another seminar. And no, I never met Colleen who is good friends with Jen Myers Keating a special friend of my mine. Two true blue, Irish broads.

Me? Still the same foul mouthed lower case Bronx Jew though now I work out of an apartment without a secretary and think that at almost 90 that I still have a bright future. Even without sex. My little head is strictly for pissin' while my big head is strictly for thinking.

HONEYMOON, NIGHTCLUB, JOE E.LEWIS, SHOOTING CRAPS, A SHOUT OUT, THE BEGINNING OF A LONG, BUMPY MARRIAGE, THE KIDS, NO REGRETS....

An email to a dear friend, Cheryl, who asked me about what Cheryl called my 'my super human resilience'....

Cheryl:

You, as usual, are too kind to me, but I love it. I have always felt that a failure can lead to a success. So I never think that I will ever really fail because at the end of the day the failure will produce a notion that will be a winner. I don't believe that you learn very much thinking in terms of failure. The real lessons in life come from success and there is indeed a sunny side to every street I've ever walked. Repeating a successful action and not waste my time worrying about avoiding an unsuccessful one is what it is all about.

So I'm on my Honeymoon in early 1947 with my first ex-wife, Bonnie, the ultimate Jewish American Princess.We are in Miami Beach staying at the Floridian Hotel when I learn that a favorite comedian of mine, Joe E Lewis, is performing at a night club with gambling,outside of Miami. I also learn that the club will supply you with a car and driver, dinner and the Joe E Lewis show at no cost. So that night the Princess and I go to the club, have a great dinner, watch a fabulous show and go into the gambling room to gamble.

I loved shooting craps (A hangover from the Army). I tell the Princess that I am going to give $40, 1946 dollars, a whirl. I am hotter than a two bit hooker on a Saturday night, at the craps table and promptly have $1,000 in chips stacked against the inside of the table and decide that I'd better cash in and leave, to which the Princess agrees but she needed to go to the ladies room before we left.

While she was in the ladies, they started another table.Whereupon I gave it all back, plus the original $40.We leave and get into the car and Bonnie asks how much I made shooting craps. I told the Princes that I didn't make any money, lost the forty smacks. Whereupon the Princess goes off the fucking wall calling me everything but a milk cow but mostly a damn fool. By the time the the Princess finally quits shouting at me, I was really pissed off. I shout back,"What the hell is wrong with you? We had a great dinner, watched an equally great show, had fun shooting craps, had free chauffeured car rides and all for Forty Fucking Dollars, calm down God Damn it". The Princess could never see the efficacy of that logic. I thought that we had made a great $40 trade.She thought we lost a Thousand Dollars. Too bad for her.

All my life I have been blessed with an attitude that failure, while distasteful, has a sunny side to it. For me there is no failure because I'm going to squeeze some good out of those failure tits.

Let me also tell you how my kids resurrected my life with their fear of having to take care of me in my old age. They suggested, strongly via email, that I check into a veterans home for the indigent. At first I was really pissed and so it took a few weeks, for me, to come down off the ceiling.

Dan, my oldest son, a few years earlier, had pushed me into blogging. Simon Murray mostly, with Ron Herman and John Carlson helping, had been ragging on me to write a book.Simon has been terrific as have Ron, John, You and Greg. So today, I am grateful to Dan for his shoving me to blog as the blogs have been the basis of my book of vignettes. Additionally, I am  grateful to Dan, Kurt, and Matt for pushing me into re-inventing myself, for the 11th fucking time, at 89 years of age. Rather than me throwing in the towel, I'm loving my successful, stress laden, current life. My second ex-wife says that I'm stress addicted. Suits me, I am what I am.

You, Cheryl, really opened my grateful thinking faucet. This current episode of my life has been an over the top, wonderful experience. I have found that I have many friends who like me as I am. No small trick considering that I am an iconoclastic, old, son of a bitch.

Einstein so famously said that if you do the same thing over and over again, each time looking for a different result, you are insane. I try to avoid that trap of failure. As I am fond of saying, quoting my wonderful, very smart immigrant Pop. 'In America the money is up to your knees.You just have to know how to bend down and pick it up... And It doesn't make any difference how many times you get knocked down. It's how many times you get back up that counts'.

Keep fit,stay well

Think The Impossible..Keep Charging Ahead

Bernie

Regards to Greg and Melissa

Oscar Wilde & Okinawa

Was it Oscar Wilde who said that it is too bad that youth is wasted on the young? 

Getting old can be fun but being old ain't for wimps or sissies. When you're old you sure can't buy green bananas or fuck with small trees.

All that fitness stuff that I read fails to mention that at 30,40,50,69,70, even 80 you have stamina that is a warm memory at 89. To think that I rode,on my Merckx, 3,500 to 4,000 miles a year going into my late 80's is almost disgusting.

Now, peddling on my bike to nowhere, doing intervals and being a borderline wimp, I quit after 30 minutes and often think of how much of my youth I wasted with cockamamie excuses of why I didn't get off of my lowercase Bronx, Jewish ass and do something besides thinking of work, sex and getting a piece of ass. That, in spite if the absolute fact that I couldn't get laid in a whorehouse if I had a $100 bill stuck to my forehead.

Except when I was on my way home from Okinawa/Korea on a hospital ship. We we stopped in Yokohama and were allowed off the ship for a few hours. Being mostly mobile (When you're young, schlepping a shot up leg to a whorehouse made no never mind. The whorehouse was an attainable goal), I was let off the ship for a few hours, along with other mobile GI's, and off we tramped excitedly to a whorehouse.

To hell with booze and a steak. An orgasm was the deal.

Arrived safely at the house of ill repute, paid my money, stripped own to my bare ass and climbed in bed with a naked Japanese, flat chested hooker. In those days,if you contracted a 'social disease' like gonorrhea, known then as a 'dose', you couldn't get out of the fucking Army for at least 60 days or until you were declared cured, whichever came last. 

I decided that the moment of relief wasn't worth 60 extra days in the Army. I had about a minute and a half of 'non-intrusive sex', got dressed leaving physically relieved but mentally frustrated and dysfunctional. Back on the ship, everyone talked about getting laid, except me. I was too ashamed to confess to a 'hand job'.

Thank God, that I always believed  my Pop who used to say, in Yiddish, "In America, the money is up to your knees.You just have to know how to bend down and pick it up"..Yeah, a non sequitur. 

My Pop entered my stream of consciousness. 


This photo was taken in 1946, aboard the USS St.Mihiel which was serving as a hospital ship. It hauled my ass from Korea to Los Angeles by way of Yokohama and Honolulu. The trip took over a month. Wrote my folks almost every day with mailings from the stops. Hard to believe that I was ever 22 years old.

Free Association

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There was a Jewish oil man in Wyoming who was being offered, to buy, 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 - not for the reward. Ever wonder, as I do, what 40-year-old hookers turn to? Probably marry guys who have little interest in sex… 

In the 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 question no matter what the pay scale was, "Are you a working girl?”  

And the all time fun bar in NYC was Maxwell's Plum...Always 4-5 deep with young guys and gals all looking to fall in love for an hour or two (wham, bam, slam, good bye ma’am). But I couldn't pick up a hooker or a straight woman if I had $100 bill pasted to my forehead. Happily I'd quit drinking by then.... 

And 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". Very fun town.... Drinking and using hookers wasn't too swift. Could hardly remember what happened except I that I always had less money in my pocket the next day. Sober and being able to remember what happened much better...

In retrospect I find it remarkable that I did my business and evolved into a one-man investment "bank". With it all I developed was a deep store of knowledge of the oil and gas business plus a formidable address book of folks that are big time in the world of finance. I raised some $1 billion (adjusted for inflation) from blue chip pension funds while making good friends with the people I solicited for investment. I made bunches of money which I gave away or spent, enjoying myself as I went. 

Yeah, hookers were beneficiaries of my profligate spending. Life was (is) good. The alternative ain't too swift.