Googling Constipation, Kvetches, TAVR, Social Worker, Being Jewish

Stanford Hospital

 90 and still pissin' into the wind.  'Thinking The Impossible'..

You become, when you're in your eighties, a borderline hypochondriac. Growing old was downright pleasant compared with being old. Being old ain't for sissies or wimps. One of the best things of old age however, to paraphrase Dean Martin, is that you know that when you get out of bed in the morning that you're feeling as bad as you’re going to feel all day.

When you're old you think that every kvetch could be life threatening. Google became a big pain in the ass because it allowed me to constantly check on my fucking kvetches. I have Googled everything from constipation to aortic valve stenosis.

Bowl movements at 90 can be difficult. Straining to have a bowl movement became a way of life so I Googled 'constipation' and up popped stuff suggesting prunes, prunes, more fiber and more prunes. So I start every day with a boring fucking breakfast of a fresh fruit smoothie and three cups of coffee topped off with six nausea threatening prunes. Fiber is now part of a way of life for me. Plus, thanks to Google I no longer think that I'm going to get cancer because I can't take a shit.

At age 87 I cycled some 4,500 miles on an Eddy Merckx road bike thinking that I looked cool doing it. Yeah, everybody who knew me or of me thought that I was a fucking maniacal freak and maybe I was.

At 88, two really bad bike crashes put me in ICU twice. Macho me had to go out, the second time, not feeling good, with apparently a driving need to prove to the world that I really was a dumb schmuck. (Since 'schmuck' is Yiddish for penis it is impossible, by definition, to be a smart schmuck).

My first crash resulted in a 'visit' to the Stanford Hospital which is loaded with fucking 30 year old, know it all doctors. They introduced me to 'aortic valve stenosis'. What I thought was my 'heart murmur' for 30 years, was really 'aortic valve stenosis' and death was hovering over me, just around the corner. 

I needed to get an aortic valve replacement RIGHT NOW...As soon as possible. A TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement) procedure was a right away, must do.

'Minimally invasive procedure' were the buzzwords of the geniuses. Realizing that God created cardiologists, orthopods and urologists to perform procedures and knowing that a 'minor operation' is an operation that someone else has, I was as nervous about the whole thing as a Rabbi in a stone quiet Buddhist temple.

Minimally invasive? What a fucking joke. At 88, minimally invasive translates to death defying. The various pre-procedure tests for the TAVR were mind boggling. Shoving a catheter in your groin to run color dyes through your veins ain't like spending a day at the beach. You have to spend 3 hours post procedure in the hospital to be sure you are really okay. No problem for the doctors, big problem for me. I could see myself needing three weeks to a month to recover from that fucking minimally invasive pre-procedure, procedure assuming that I was still alive.

An angiogram, another necessary pre-TAVR procedure, is a pushover for younger folks. Not so much for an old dog like me. But the TAVR itself takes the 'risk free' cake.

This is where they replace the aortic valve by running a catheter from your groin into your heart with a balloon containing the new valve. The balloon goes into your heart and somehow the new valve is installed. Putting a new clutch in a stick shift car sounds more appealing and less dangerous. And then you're 'out of commission' for 4 weeks at least, after this so called 'minimally invasive' procedure. A phrase I grew to hate and still do. What bullshit.

The pay off came when I had to go see a social worker to discuss what happens to my body and my assets, such as they are, in the event that I kicked off while being 'minimally invaded'.

This wannabe shrink was pompous and loaded with 'what ifs'. She took me out of worrying about bowl movements, incontinence, fitful sleeping and just being old, to thinking only of death. Just like the old days. I might just as well have been living again with the Princess.

No way was a return visit to the social worker with documentation on my agenda.

If I want to feel like shit, I can do it all by myself. I don't need any help from a social worker or anyone else for that matter. When you're Jewish and guilty, feeling like shit comes naturally.

With Jews 'Something is terribly wrong if everything was alright'...Yossarian, Catch 22

Israel, Golda Meir, Zvi Dinstein, Leon Uris

'Two Israelis in a room and you have an argument. Three Israelis in a room and you have a fucking riot.'

After my Army discharge in 1946 and with Hitler's anti-Semitic crusade and the '67 Israeli/Arab War still very fresh in my mind, I became a Zionist. Meeting and spending time with Leon Uris, at Gardiner's Tennis Ranch in the 60's, reinforced my feelings about Jews needing a national homeland. Uris wrote “Exodus’, an historical novel and a best seller, all about the travails of Jews going to and settling in Israel post WWII.

Having lived through the German Bund, Yorkville (a center of anti-Semitism in New York City), the virulently anti-Semitic Father Coughlin and having fist fights as a kid because I was a Jew during the 30's pushed me into becoming a Zionist. In order to become Israel knowledgeable, I read some of the most boring, fucking books about Israel known to man. Great sleeping pills they were. Most Jews of my vintage believe that knowledge conquers all. I even tried that approach when farming…

It didn't work worth a shit for me when farming in Iowa, becoming easily the best read, really ignorant, jackass Jewish farmer in the Western world. After constantly going through the Federal Agriculture Dept. publications like shit through a tin horn, all that book learning didn't seem to help when sticking my hand into a birthing sow trying to help her to spit out pigs on a bitterly cold night in a February in Iowa. Colder than a whore's heart.

I was huge on theory but a fucking dummy in the real world of slopping hogs, milking cows, feeding cattle, riding a tractor, breeding sheep and just a schmuck generally trying to be a successful farmer.
If there was a mistake to be made, I made it. Trying to make an Iowa farmer out of a Bronx Jew was truly like pissin' into the wind or trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It was all bad capped off by the overwhelming boredom of plowing corn, going up and down rows of corn for hours at a time. Thank God at the time for Scotch whiskey. Survival nectar.

By 1971 I had evolved, in this order, from the Army into being a furrier, dress salesman, farmer, to promoting a wholesale automobile auction, selling advertising specialties, very successful car salesman and stock broker/security analyst, VC partner and an oversized pain in the ass to my suffering in luxury first ex-wife. Her notion of telling me of her love for me was to say 'Hello Bern'…

Moses turning right instead of left gave the Arabs the oil; Jews the fucking desert. The Israeli's had one small declining oil field producing all of 3,000 barrels of oil a day near Ashdod. The Israeli's claim to oil fame was a deal with Iran in which Israel was a big trans-shipper of Iranian oil. At the time, cooperation between Iran and Israel, was both unmentionable and a 'BIG SECRET'. But then if I, a dumb Jew living in Palo Alto knew it, what the hell kind of secret could it be?!



In about 1970 in a moment of 'genius', I decided to raise a private equity fund to drill for oil and/or gas in Israel. Talk about pissing into the wind. It was so ludicrous that a standup comic could do wonders with it. First I tried to contact someone, anyone, in the Israeli Energy Dept. 

After months of being shoved around like a whore in church, I grew so frustrated that I literally phoned Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel. Being half in the bag made making the phone call easy. It was midnight in Palo Alto; 10:00 in the morning in Jerusalem and the booze had wired me for sound. Everyone knows that an alcoholic with a telephone can be one huge pain in the ass.

Never did speak with Golda Meir but that experience became my first lesson in Israeli bureaucracy which was one tough mother to overcome. Unloading responsibility was the then cornerstone of Israeli governmental bureaucracy.

A few weeks after my phone call, Mrs. Meir's office passed me to off to the Israeli Energy Minister, Zvi Dinstein, who gave me my second lesson in how to deal with Israeli bureaucracy. You have to have the patience of Job because it was wait, wait, wait. 

Mr Dinstein, after a few weeks of my waiting, passed me off to the head of the Israeli Oil Co. who was a bright, nice guy and a survivor of Israel's War of Independence. It is interesting to me that the names of assholes can come to my mind easily but nice people's names not so easily and I can't recall his name.

He came with his attorney to visit me in the States. The Princess was having multiple orgasms at the prospect of hosting a dinner for two Israelis. It was only one of two times that my JAP approved of the deal. The other time was when the Princess came with me on one of my 7, in 13 months, insane trips to Israel. She loved it. I was busy promoting. She was busy sightseeing without me. The Princess was the ultimate travel freak, particularly when not with me. But she was dead right about the deal.

The deal, after spending tens of thousands on travel and entertainment of my own money (hangovers and me were intimate) was a total fucking failure. The rich Jews, potential investors, looked at me like I was a bull with a bastard calf. That whole story for another time.

You can be sure that the Princess gloried in 'I told you so.' Suffice it to say that while the money was gone my testicles, to the dismay of the Princess, were still there if barely.

Ron Perleman, Ken Langone, Stanley Druckenmiller, Cipriani's

Not seeing any pigs flying, I checked out of my Carlyle Hotel suite. This epiphany came to me when I shared an elevator with Herb Allen of Allen & Co after sharing one with Anne Bass of the Fort Worth Bass family the day before. My living in the 1980's at the Carlyle in a $15k a month suite suddenly seemed ludicrous, hideously insane and plenty fucking stupid.

When I shared the elevator at the Carlyle with Herb Allen, a very big time investment banker, I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here? A lower case bronx jew like me belongs in the Carlyle when pigs fly'. Nouveau riche for sure. I immediately walked to the front desk and told them that I was blowing the whore house. I happily, pissed away the pre-paid portion of my rent, walked across the street, made a deal with the manager of the Surrey Hotel and moved into the Surrey that day.

Staying at the Carlyle was some kind of a totally whacky experience but I felt like a pig in shit living there. At the Carlyle, the bell hops acted as though they were guests and contributed to the surreal royalty atmosphere. They thought that being around big shots made them big shots and they looked down, with discernible disdain, at no name schmucks like me. How I loved snapping their ‘wanna be’ royalty asses to attention with four letter word shows.

But since over tipping has always been my shtick I quickly bought my way into their acceptability. The room service people absolutely 'loved' me. Buying the 'love' of people who survive on tips is a slam dunk. Just takes a total, fucking disrespect of money. Those poor souls will, when getting big tips, positively fawn over you. Which does get to be fucking boring. And while currently busted on my lower case bronx, jewish ass I would do it all again. Even though at 90, I've out lived (aka: outspent) my money and sadly, my sex life. Viagra no longer works. As Willie Nelson so famously said, 'I'm sorry that my dick died before the rest of me.'

Living in New York City is for the rich or the young. The rich have cars and drivers. Getting around is a big fucking deal. For the young, New York has almost everything they want to do. Knowing that getting there is a huge pain in the ass doesn’t bother them at all. It's just part of the rhythm of their New York City lives.

Making New York wildly expensive was super easy for me. I spewed $100 bills to maître d's of Michelin rated restaurants like there was no fucking tomorrow and always insisted on paying when with others.

Eating at the long gone American Place with Stanley Druckenmiller more than several times a month was always fun. One ridiculous but fun dinner I had with Stanley was in my suite at the Carlyle. I had invited Stan to have dinner and watch a football game on TV. Since The last time that I had watched TV was in pre-remote days, using a remote was beyond my technology skills.

I went nuts trying to get that piece of shit TV to function before Stanley showed up. In the end I waited for him to get that fucking thing working right. The meal itself was very expensive but surely not memorable. But the server loved serving and I loved being served. And being with Stan, who is a born again genius and a great philanthropist was always loaded with laughs.     

Cipriani's, a non-Michelin rated restaurant, with mediocre, over priced food had become almost a second home for me. It is in the Sherry Netherlands Hotel. It was like going to a Broadway show every day, with laughs galore. Women with bodies of Auschwitz survivors and boobs by Dow Chemical were the order of every day at lunch. The combination of hookers, trophy wives, kept women and captains of industry plus celebrities was something else again. The manager Hassan and the maître d’, Sergio, were unbelievably great hosts and were wonderful to me. Hassan walked around telling diners his joke if the day. He and Sergio became 'family' for me.

A real star luncheon diner was the financier Ron Perelman who is a litigator's dream. He is one of the three most dangerous people in the world. 'A Jew with a lawyer'. My bet is that if Perelman isn't suing someone he must feel that his life is empty. He would sweep into Cipriani's with an entourage including disciple and business partner Don Drapkin. What a pair to 'draw to'. Drapkin learned the art of law suits well. He recently sued his mentor Perelman, the Master Litigant and beat him to boot. Actually the two deserved one another.

Perelman, being a big shot, got the same table, near a window, whenever he showed up. Living in a non-kosher life style incited Perelman to eat kosher as though eating kosher would redeem him. Very smart guy, a billionaire but something less than a weed to me. Didn't ever really meet him, though he nodded to me in Cipriani's. But then I really didn't want to meet him. No way was I going to suck up to that bum.

The other side of that coin is Ken Langone, a very close friend of Druckenmiller's. Ken is a street smart guy who has made billions but is as common as an old shoe. Ken is religious, spiritual, huge-hearted and a really smart guy. While living at the Surrey I would continue to play big shot and eat at the Carlyle where Ken and I had breakfast one Saturday morning. Ken was going, after breakfast, to visit a Home Depot store. Ken co-founded Home Depot.

Ken was looking for a placement agent to help solicit funds from pension funds for a private equity fund he was organizing. My good friend, Ed Spiegel of Goldman Sachs, suggested me to Ken who I had met previously.  And this is when I made the fucking huge mistake of a lifetime.

Having read the preliminary document I had concluded that the deal had a major flaw where 25% of the money could go into one venture capital deal. That ''flaw' was compounded by the choice of the manager of the fund. He had been an investment banker with Lazard Freres. There was no way, in my view, that a fee driven background would work in an acquisition/operating environment. In those days this schmuck, Bernie, fancied himself as the investor's protector. But I was right in both instances. At the end of the day the investors got their money back, the manager ended being a lot richer and I fucked up, again.

My huge error was in playing genius and not recognizing that I was missing an opportunity, on some level, to associate myself with a very, very smart, successful business man, Ken Langone. Ken has touched a lot of lives, all of which were better and richer for Ken's touch. I was too fucking stupid not to recognize that.

Yeah, one more jackass time I had taken the 13th unwritten AA step.....I had become powerless over my own bull shit. And too clever by half.

Roger Staubach, Richard Rainwater, Money Disappearance

Bye, bye $80,000,000 1980's dollars.

$80m 'soft circled' by a few pension funds but destroyed when Roger Staubach accepted a $1,500,000 investment in his company by Richard Rainwater.

Texas real estate, had taken a heavy hit in the 80's when oil prices collapsed. Houston and Austin were particularly hard hit and looked to me, to represent great investment values. And I had convinced Roger that Staubach Co. should be the GP of a private equity, real estate investment fund while I was to be the Placement Agent and partner in the deal.

Through an FDIC executive I had met Roger Staubach, who turned out to be an all time, all time, great guy including being modest to a fault. Associating with Roger grew to be a great privilege for me. Roger who wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful had some difficulty with my foul mouth, but survived it.

Roger is a spiritual, devout Catholic and the Church has been a great beneficiary of Roger's spirituality and money.

Staubach Co. in those days was primarily a placement company for companies that were moving or setting up facilities in different communities. Roger's group would scout out the new town for employee housing, warehouses and manufacturing facilities.

Roger was a perpetual motion machine, an incredibly hard working guy. The only thing he was missing, I told him, was a broom stick shoved up his ass. Punctuality and Roger weren't even kissing cousins. We missed a flight to Detroit to see Chrysler when Roger Dodger, That Almost Always Late Codger was late to the Newark Airport. A very upset Jew would have described me perfectly.

If Roger had a fault it would have been his penchant for his endless presentations of the deal to the potential investors. He tended to go on and on and did sometimes generate glassy eyed audiences. For me, with the attention span of a moth on a hot light bulb, those presentations were excruciating. At a presentation in Pittsburgh to top executives of the now deceased National Steel, I did suggest to the group, in an effort to liven things up, that Roger did have a tendency to take the 13th AA step, not in the big book, where you become powerless over your own bullshit.

Roger and I were at Muscle Beach (aka Venice, California) where we were to meet with Jim George, the then head of the State of Oregon Pension Fund. Roger and I were walking down the street when a guy startled both Roger and me when he walked up to us, saluted Roger and said "To a great American". In Manhattan another guy walked up to us to shake Roger's hand and said 'God bless you.' You can multiply those experiences ten fold....It was a wonder to me that Roger always kept his modesty.

When, in the interest of full disclosure, I told the guy from the State of Delaware that Roger was bringing Rainwater in as an investor in Staubach Co. the Delaware guy said, 'Count me out. I don't want to be on either side of the table with Richard Rainwater. Dealing with Rainwater once was plenty enough for me.' This in spite of the fact that Rainwater had built a reputation as a very smart money manager, managing money for the Fort Worth Bass brothers.

I pleaded with Roger to pass on Rainwater but it was like pissing into the wind. When the other potential investors heard that Delaware had kissed off the deal, so did they. Pension funds tend to be like fucking sheep. Bye, bye $80m in soft circles and over a year of my life plus several hundred thousand dollars of my own money that I spent on travel and entertainment expenses. I too had become powerless over my own bullshit and in the end, suicidal to boot.

But having had dinner with Rainwater and his first wife at Roger's house I did understand the refusal of the potential investor to deal with Rainwater. For starters, Rainwater set a very high bar for unbelievable arrogance though he did suck up to Roger. And when Rainwater's then wife would try to join in to the dinner conversation he would cut her off and start talking, treating her just as though she was an idiot. Rainwater had a weight problem and he had Maryanne Staubach make a special dinner for him.

Rainwater exuded arrogance. One of my kids, Matt, went to see Rainwater who kept him waiting for about 45 minutes. The Great Man let Matt into his office, bragged to Matt for around 20 minutes about successful investments and then dismissed him. Never bothered to ask Matt why he, Matt, was there to see him. Make no mistake, Rainwater was a genius investor and has made hundreds of millions of dollars but I wouldn't piss in his ear if his head was on fire.

Being around Rainwater was like spending time with a red neck relative. Spending time with Roger Staubach, a true gentleman and family man with a spirituality and an exceptional business man, was one of the great, upbeat experiences of my life.

Balance, NIH, Italian Alzheimer's

Baur au Lac, Switzerland

When people tell me that I'm a nice guy, I tell them not to repeat that to anyone else as I have a reputation to maintain as a loud, foul mouthed, asshole. Gives my life great balance.
 
You gotta’ have balance in your life. You need people in your life that like you and people that dislike you. So I am grateful when I'm told that someone thinks that I'm an asshole. Gives me balance.

Also, if everyone I meet likes me I would have to be an innocuous, people pleasing son of a bitch. So it's a blessing for me to be told that XYZ called me a prick and XYZ gets at least a one star Michelin style rating from me. Being able to award a five star rating to those who dislike me enough to wish me dead is really a blessing. My two ex (thank God that there were only two) wives got really close, from time to time, to deserving a five star rating. But there was no way, as much as I needed their dislike that I was going to bend to their wishes and drop dead.

Paul Schupf gets a 5 Star Dislike Bernie rating from me. Schupf, while not Italian, suffers from Italian Alzheimer's. (Italian Alzheimer's is where you forget everything except the grudge.) To balance his virulent feelings about me which are so strong, I need ten likes to offset his dislike of me. 

While he is a very bright guy, a big giver to Colgate, he tests the outer limits of frugal and boring. He has both my sympathy for what he is and my thanks for disliking me. "Please don't tell anyone that you even know me." were my parting words to him in front of the Baur au Lac in Zurich. Two weeks in London and Europe with Schupf had made me suicidal. I had all but forgotten that self-perceived genius until I found out recently that he has been nursing a dislike of me for 30 years. I felt a surge of gratitude. He is still putting balance in my life.

A way to, inadvertently, generate dislikes and bring the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome to the surface is to get hired by the CEO to help with the company's Investor Relations program. The underlings of the company immediately resent you and their Not Invented Here sickness blossoms in full bloom. Actually my first ex-wife, Bonnie, 'invented' NIH. 27 years of shitty ideas was my record with the Princess.

NIH is deadly in a marriage and not too swift in business. In business you do have to make a lot of friends to balance the number of people with NIH that you piss off. Bill Goff was a great example. He wore Gucci shirts that were embossed with a 'G'. Bill was the Vice President of Sabine Royalty whose CEO was Ashley Priddy, who was a giant in the independent oil and gas business in the 70's. Ashley was very prim and proper, wore a jacket at all times, even in the office. I met him at The Tennis Ranch in Carmel Valley. He would play mixed troubles wearing a blue blazer and white ducks. Ashley was a fabulous human being. Called me, one time, a 'dumb Jew' because I wasn't asking enough money of him.

Bill Goff's office was next to Ashley's. I would go on a four letter word binge, very loudly so that Goff could hear it which in turn catapulted him into Ashley's office. I really enjoyed being an asshole and wiring Goff for sound. Just a little payback for his trying to knock down every idea I ever had. Ashley asked me not to do it ('Do you have to do that?') but I told him that pissing Goff off made me feel warm all over, like a clam in mud. Goff was, for sure, a 3 Star Dislike Bernie aficionado. Ashley was too smart to dismiss my ideas. On the other hand I needed Goff to put my Like/Dislike Ratio in balance.

Roses are red, violets are blue, don't contract NIH. It's really bad for you. 

Whiskey, Smoking & ED, A Dog That Didn't Talk

Anyone getting close to or beating 90 and still fantasizing about having breathtaking sex is my hero. But I didn't need having sex to be short of breath even when I was 40.

God, that was a long fucking time ago. 50 years have years have whipped on by. I smoked at least 4-5 packs of 'coffin nails’, also known as Chesterfield's every day. I smoked even while bike riding in Portola Valley. I did have to stop when I needed to light up the next one which was often. Lighting a cigarette while pedaling was not, for me, possible. I gave up riding 'no hands' when I was about 16.

The family dog Haaken, a Norwegian Elkhound, went with me on my rides. Haaken didn't talk. He never said 'You shouldn't have done that'. He was perfect company. I didn't have to say 'I'm sorry. It's all my fault'. I could talk to Haaken without worrying about a fucking answer. How lucky was I that I owned a dog that couldn't talk.

I was desperate to stop smoking and thought, stupidly, that shrinks could help me stop. No chance. They were too fucking busy squeezing my money tit like milk out of a cow all the while trying to convince me that I was a latent homosexual and that being married and still masturbating made me one 'sick' son of a bitch.

Shrinks don't understand that to get a long time married man to stop masturbating, just get him a divorce. Shrinks are huge going after symptoms like smoking, drinking, eating too much and jacking off. The hell with attacking the 'sickness' itself.

In Portola Valley where we lived, we had a yearly neighborhood New Year's Day blow out. TV Football, booze, hors d' oeuvres and steaks made for one hell of a party.

Some smoked dope. I, at least, turned down smoking dope. Booze got me in plenty enough motion. 'Rammers' were the order of the day. Right before dinner some son of a bitch would yell, 'time for the rammers'. So after hours of serious drinking (wine hadn't yet caught fire) we would ingest at least two, big gin martini's with very little, if any, vermouth which would then shoot us over the fucking moon without our moving our feet. You felt like King Kong, omnipotent, indestructible, a great lover and a fucking genius.

At the 1973 party I noticed that Bill Kelly, a serious drinker and smoker, wasn't smoking. He told me that he had 'institutionalized' himself at the St.Helena Health Center, in Napa Valley, for a week.

Run by the Seventh Day Adventists, its mission was preventive medicine. The 'treatment' centered around physical activity. No religion. (Though I will say that if I could get around to believing in Jesus Christ, I would become an Adventist.).

Drinking booze and smoking while at the Center got you thrown out of the program. I told Bill that the Princess and I would go there. He cautioned me that the two of us to go through that trauma together was a very bad idea, unless we were prepared to have one of us strangle the other. An opportunity that I wasn't going to give the Princess.

So up to St Helena went the Princess with me as her chauffeur. A week later I picked her up. She was all virtue and self righteousness. The Princess no longer smoked, which made her, in her mind, a superior human being. A legend in her own mind, maybe a Saint. What a pain in the ass.

A few weeks later it was my turn in the barrel. Naturally the Princess was tooooo bizzzzy to drive me to St.Helena. And I knew that if I had a car available I would never survive a non-drinking, non-smoking week without driving off and cheating. So, I chartered a small two engine plane (a one engine bird was too fucking scary for me) and flew to St.Helena.

We landed at a strip in Calistoga located behind a filling station. I asked the attendant at the filling station how to get a cab to go to St.Helena. He looked at me like I was a bull with a bastard calf, laughed and said, “Are you kidding me? This town has a population of 3,000, a ton of serious drinker's bars, a famous alcoholism treatment center, mud baths attached to motels but no cabs."

So I offered him $25 (1973) and he drove me in his pickup truck to the St.Helena Recovery Center with me smoking like a chimney in Alaska. As we pulled into the grounds, my last, ever, pack of smokes went out the truck window and with it, the beginning of the end to a self destructive life style. Booze was next on my 'give up' list of two to hopefully be replaced by sex.

A few months later booze went the way of smokes and another new life began. Tennis, women, lots of laughs and new careers. I went from being a functioning, smoking, alcoholic to just a functioning alcoholic followed by becoming a non-smoking, recovering alcoholic no longer suffering from ED (old age brought it back).

Shrinks never understood that smoking a lot, drinking a lot and erections don't work well together. All the analytical bull shit in the world wouldn't snap that little son of a bitch back to attention. Abstinence was the answer. However, it did survive booze and cigarettes but not time. As Willie Nelson said, "I'm sorry that my dick has died before the rest of me." An old man's lament.

Atabrine, Whiskey Courage, Shrinks

Artistry by Sean Conroy oceaninashell.com

And then there was Atabrine, prescribed by one fucking shrink or another.

Shrinks, for me, were interchangeable with their demonic cures and their mind stretching reasons for everything that was happening. The Dow Jones Averages went down? There had to be a sub-conscious reason for the decline. My wife hated me? It was all my fault. A shrink’s mother’s milk was/is, GUILT. Yeah, in capital letters.

Getting me into a fucking shrink's office was my first ex-wife's primary mission in life. And like a dummy I was a shrink's mullet for 23 years, on and off. Mostly on. But it pleased the Princess.

Shrinks seldom cure problems. Covering them up with cockamamie reasons and 'cures' are their specialties. Smoking dope while watching porno movies was one shrink’s cure for our sex problems. That schmuck didn't understand that I hated smoking dope and my first ex-wife hated me. Particularly, inside of her.

Atabrine is just another demonic notion. It’s supposed to make you sick if you drink booze, wine, beer or anything with alcohol in it after you take one of the pills. And did those sons of bitches work? A thousand percent effective. Actually, after taking a pill and then drinking I thought that I was going to die and couldn't.

One time, after taking one of those asshole pills in the morning, I went to Denver to set myself up for a screwing by an oil mail named Bert Ladd who was my first motivator in becoming paranoid. After finishing my business with Bert (it was a turnaround flight day for me), I stopped at the Brown Palace and in my eagerness to feel like shit had a few belts.

Then sitting in First Class I ingested at least six of those little bottles on the two hour flight. As soon as I stepped off the airplane I knew that the Atabrine was doing its duty. I didn't have to think of committing suicide, I thought that I had already done it.

I sat down in a chair as soon as I deplaned. Some guy I knew and didn't like, came by took one look at me and suggested he call an ambulance. He said that I looked absolutely 'gray' and generally terrible. No way that I was going to please him and give my first ex-wife yet another reason to rail at me so I just sat there until I was able to walk, went to valet parking and proceeded to put everyone driving on Hwy 101 at risk. Fortunately, I got home safely, didn’t kill anyone en route and since my wife didn't care, she never asked how I felt or how my day went.

As long as I supported her I. Magnin habit and didn't bother her she was fine. I never took another Atabrine pill and it took a few more years for me to get my tired ass to AA.

My first ex-wife's father was a Romanian immigrant not a Romanian ignorant. His wife, my first ex-wife's mother, would complain that he didn't ever tell her what was going on. He got around that by consulting her about things that he really didn't want to do. Dora would always advise against doing whatever he suggested. (The negative gene that my first ex-wife inherited.) That device turned off the flowing of the tears of the 'you don't tell me what you're doing', faucet.

Once in a while he forgot to set her up, which always led to the 'you don't tell me what you're doing' tears and all. I seldom played that game. First, I did whatever I wanted to do then I told the Princess. Then indignation and tears flowed. Selling the Princess on every cockamamie notion that I had was more than I wanted to do particularly when it concerned the kids. Thank God that I had more good ideas than bum ideas. But I always did strive to be perfect like the Princess and my critics.

I was often operating on 'whiskey courage' which helped, like crazy. Yeah, Atabrine was the invention of the devil and perpetrated by an army of devils. But, with all its faults, it was another step towards AA. Atabrine, for me, was as useless as teats on a boar pig.

In the middle of my huge drinking problem, I decided to quit smoking. Smoking and drinking, but not fucking, are joined at the hip. Alcohol, erections and sex, unless you're 22, don’t work well together. Chesterfields were my self-destructive weapons. Between 4-5 packs a day, every day was my quota. Always living by the credo that 'moderation is fatal' (and plenty fucking boring) I was a real live chain smoker.

First I shipped the Princess's ass to the St.Helena Recovery Center in Napa Valley. The friend that recommended the place said that 'joint occupancy' by husband and wife would lead to murder of one or another. When the Princess came home (it was 7 days) full of virtue and self-righteousness (characteristics that my kids inherited) and giving me shit about my smoking, I went to St.Helena. The Seven Day Adventists who ran the place figured out how to make quitting smoking something less than a death defying experience and convert it into a life changing experience.

In turn, after I quit smoking and then drinking, I helped the Adventists set up their alcoholism program.

'Roses are red, violets are blue. If you drink or smoke too much, the St.Helena Recovery Center is the place for you.' ...And if you weigh too much as well.