Expensive Talk, Big Boobs

'Never confuse activity for achievement.' ~ John Wooden.

Kinda like, 'Never confuse brains with a bull market'.

Lessons well learned but plenty fucking tough for me to live with. My big mouth has always been overactive without a filter between it and my brain. In the army my hyper active mouth earned me weeks of KP and the dislike of every non-com and officer that was unfortunate enough to be in charge of me.

Staying out of the guard house was a major accomplishment of mine during that laughter called my army career.

My big mouth was the source of the start of many weird, fucking, unique experiences that made my life 'different'. Inviting a gal, a stranger, to London as my guest seemed natural to me. The invitation rolled out of my mouth like water over a dam, unfiltered.

Sharon was her name. I met her on a flight to Midland, Texas having been summoned from London by my oil and gas patroon in Midland, Deane Stoltz.. Sharon was on her way to Albuquerque on some kind of fashion business.

Remember please, that a man thinks with his eyes and I was always inclined, at the first look-see, to look at a woman starting at her waist up. A habit that got me in a lot of trouble over the years but that didn't stop me from being 'boob addicted'.

While I had never, in my life, seen Sharon before the flight, I felt just sitting next to her for two hours gave me the necessary insight to know that she was perfect for me. Bright, good looking with big boobs gave Sharon the aura, for me, of a perfect soul mate. Couldn't beat that image with a stick and she acted as though she liked sex. So, I invited Sharon to London as my guest.(Turned out that if Sharon liked sober or drunk sex, it was with someone else.)

A few weeks later, on a first class flight from New York, with a guarantee of her own paid for room at Claridge's, in came Sharon who I welcomed at Heathrow with a car and driver. Very big time showing off.

Sharon immediately proved herself to be a sincere pain in the ass. While I worked all day, Sharon was a dedicated wine drinker who loved to smoke dope as well all day. I did neither. All I wanted was good company and some sex. It quickly became very fucking boring with Sharon being half stiff all the time and my schlong inactive. Having sex with a woman, three sheets to the wind had all the appeal for me of a sore ass in vinegar.

It was not very fucking complicated. I was getting neither sane conversation or sex. So, after two days of that action I sat Sharon's sorry ass down in my suite and said, "Sharon, your meter has expired. Your time is up and it is time for you to go home."

At the end of the day I felt pretty fucking stupid for having invited her but smart for sending her home - cut my losses short.

Looking for the unexpected has always been a driver for me. Too often the unexpected was pretty fucking expensive and always as a result of shooting from the hip with my big fucking mouth.

"Regrets? I've had a few but too few to mention." ~ My Way, Sinatra

Slice And Dice For Mashed Potatoes, Living The Unknown, The Richemont

Trading our civilian clothes for Army khaki was like becoming a chameleon, in reverse.You went from different colored clothes to one color, known in the Army as 'shit, brindle brown', aka khaki.

I had just arrived, by train, in Fort Dix after saying goodbye to my crying Mom and my proud as punch Father in Pennsylvania Station, New York City later known as The Big Apple, The Capital of Temptation.

Every kid going through the Penn Station gate knew that their lives had taken a turn into the unknown but we all knew that we had a new family. The Army was our new family. And through all of the fucking wisecracks, none memorable, we knew that our family was run by our new lords and masters with whom we could not argue, ignore or dispute a decision.

Our freedom of thought and action was history.

Standing bare-ass naked, tugging on our schlongs, doing what was called 'short arm inspection' all to prove that we didn't have a 'dose' of gonorrhea. That first short arm inspection turned out to be repetitively common. As long as that 'thing' didn't drip we were safe. At 91 1/2 it drips, not from gonorrhea but from a diuretic.

There ain't anything like a free thinker in the Army. I don't think that any of us realized that our days of independent thought were as dead as an old man's sex life. (Sadly, at 91 1/2 I know all about that.)

No menus. High carb foods with mashed potatoes were a staple, the cornerstones of lunch and dinner. Fried potatoes at breakfast. Doing KP, peeling spuds, mopping floors and scrubbing enormous pots and pans were chores to come. All a long way from a 5 star hotel.

The Regular Army guys, pre Pearl Harbor enlistees, mostly looked like shit with both huge guts and huge appetites. Nutrition meant eating everything that wasn't nailed down which always seemed to include mashed potatoes at lunch and dinner. The regular Army guys also seemed to have a ferocious appetite to fight, big guts and all.

While the first day was truly memorable, spending the first night sleeping in a cavern like barracks with a bunch of guys that you didn't know from Adam's fucking odd ox was wildly different. Being 'homesick' never entered my stream of consciousness.

There was a certain electricity in the atmosphere with the thoughts of an unknown future. It really dominated my thinking, starting with the First Sergeant screaming 'drop your co..s and grab your socks' at 6:00 AM. That screaming, fucking voice eliminated any need for an alarm clock.

One day, some 40 years later, having lunch with a Swiss banker at the Richemont Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland I became distracted by the tall, willowy, blond beauties have lunch with their swarthy, Mideastern keepers and that first day at Fort Dix came into my mind.

Going from being a buck private making $50 a month to sitting at the Richemont having lunch in the middle of all that opulence seemed bizarre. And it was.

The Army taught me that living in the here and now, living in the unknown, was exciting and mostly great.Staying and eating at the Richemont was exciting and fun. It too was the ultimate in living in the unknown.

~

Currency Controls, Living High On The Hog

'Currency controls? What the hell are controls, Peter?'

While employed by the NYSE firm, Irving Lundborg & Co. I was deemed uncontrollable and needing proper supervision. So, I had my own.personal, compliance officer. Living on the edge, skirting the fucking rules were my specialty. And the powers that were at Lundborg decided that they needed a pair of extra eyes to supervise my trades.

Peter Costigan had all the necessary bona fides to ride herd on me: Stanford Undergraduate and Stanford Business School degrees. Most important he had a great sense of humor and with me, was a fucking hard drinker, though not as hard as me and he did escape my fate of needing to go to Alcoholic Anonymous, which turned out to be a life changing experience.

Peter often went to London to flog stocks.One day, at a boozy lunch, he commented that his niche market in London were investment companies that owned investing dollars.The UK had at the time, 'currency controls' to restrict pounds leaving the UK. So Peter would trundle off to London, ensconce himself at the Connaught and generate commission from investment companies that owned dollars. Peter concentrated on local California company shares.

One of my great, most fun, drinking experiences was with Peter and his closest friend, Bill Kneas. One evening, after getting suitably fucking smashed at the North Beach Restaurant, Peter left Bill and me to continue our drinking and get more fucking brilliant with each drink.

A most wonderful feeling when really smashed is the feeling of being a genius. No chance to replicate that feeling when sober. I see and feel all my 'pimples' when sober.

Bill lived in Marin and his wife came in to get him after speaking with him on the phone. Bill asked me to care for his car, an Oldsmobile Convertible. In those days I thought that genius was my first calling and being a big shot my second calling. So the Princess and I had a place in the City, at the Clay Jones Apartments, with a fabulous view of the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges. Loved to sit in an easy chair, inhaling Grants 8 Year Old Scotch smashed, enjoying the view.

The parking attendant at the North Beach told me that he had two Olds converts, a blue and a gray. Which one did I want? I chose the gray and drove off in it. All hell broke loose when it was discovered that I chose the wrong color car. Batting .500 was not acceptable. After suitably apologizing to the owner upon return of the car the following day, I sold the guy some stock in King Resources which then went bankrupt.

After looking into 'currency controls' and deciding that a prepaid London gig would be terrific for me, I went to my 'pay stations' in Midland, Texas and convinced the CEO's of five public oil and gas companies that pre-conditioning London to Midland company shares would pay off with the English buying their shares when they became available sans currency controls.Great trade: I produced results spending gobs of their fucking money.

My first step was to meet Peter and his wife Anne in London where Peter was to introduce me around. That was not, by any measure, a spectacular success. But Peter's introduction of me to Gordon Grender plus Bill Tichy's (a friend and Dean Witter analyst) introduction to Don Moynihan of Witter's London office began almost 15 years of London success and pleasure. It was pure joy living for months at Claridge's Hotel, shuttling in and out of London on the Concorde, making life long friends with lots of laughs along the way.

I damn near drowned in my own ego.

This go round started in 1977.Currency controls were lifted by Mrs. Thatcher in 1979. Like a blind hog, I found an acorn.

~

Here and Now: Post Puking in Korea, ADHD On a Tractor

The 'here and now' is sometimes hard to take but it is sure one hell of a lot better than 'the dead and gone'.

Unless, of course, you believe in a glorious after life. But old Jews like me don't believe in an after life.You do good for good's sake so that you can leave a good name not because you want to go to heaven. For me there ain't no heaven and their ain't no hell.When I die I will be stone cold, fucking dead.

'Here and Now' was the name of a AA Sunday night meeting started by a tough little Irishman named Jimmy. Jimmy had empathy but no compassion. If a practicing alcoholic showed up at the meeting, in the bag, Jimmy would throw him out.

Strangely, the meetings that were held at the VA facility in Palo Alto didn't draw flies. The weird part is that booze was big time in the service (dope and pills hardly at all) in my days.Getting drunk at every opportunity was a sign of manhood. I was very big time Macho in that department.

At 21 being blotto and getting an erection is possible. At 51, and beyond, being in the bag and getting an erection is every man's dream..

At my first AA meeting, at the Vets, there was only one other guy, the secretary and me. After listening to the 'other guy', a Viet Nam vet, it seemed to me that the poor son of a bitch needed to be put away. He was the product of dope and booze and a real mess. More looney than sane.One more meeting was my emotional limit.

When farming in Iowa, getting half in the bag on weekends felt like my only way out. Slopping hogs, milking cows, plowing corn, needing to take an outdoor shower in the summer before the Princess would let me in the house for dinner, deserved some reward. Weekend booze was my reward.

Actually one of the most memorable farming experiences was spending days on end plowing corn. Sitting on a fucking tractor, going up and down endless rows of corn at about one mile per hour and having to concentrate on staying in the dirt, between the rows of corn, tested my ADHD. At the end of each day I was really wired for sound and could have probably lit up the city of Philadelphia. So, often a little booze and a roaring screamer with the Princess were my outlets.

My drinking companion in Iowa was often my first father-in-law but he complained about me drinking his whiskey, the whiskey he had paid for. So I told him, in no uncertain terms, to stick his whiskey where the sun don't shine aka 'stick it in your ass'.

We continued to drink together, but each out of our own bottle. We were attached to one another by an electrical bond of mutual disrespect and dislike.

We had a great trade going. He disliked me for my in his face attitude and in turn, I disliked him for what he was. He drowned fishing in that fucking fish-less, loaded with weeds, Clear Lake, Iowa.

Getting in the bag on warm sake in Seoul, Korea was fun until it wasn't. I made my first and last trip down Sake Alley (warm or not) in Seoul. I barely made it back to the barracks to puke my brains out. Getting sick from drinking was no big fucking deal in the Army. That was just part of the whole Army scene.

Out here in the Land of Milk and Honey and Fruits and Nuts, there was a guy, a sometimes drinking buddy of mine who loved heated red wine. He drank that bullshit heated wine which got him in almost instant motion or numb. Sometimes he just passed out at the table. He called it falling asleep.

I concentrated on Grants 8 year old scotch. He died of alcoholism and here I am at 91 1/2.

The moral is an old AA 'truism' that God takes care of drunks and fools and since I qualify on both scores here I am, still around, full of piss and vinegar. And still, thank God, without a filter between my brain and my mouth.

~

Sex, The Princess and A Dripping Faucet

After three years in the Army which included one gunshot wound, two things drove me: making money and my little head (now, no more useful than a dripping faucet).

It took my first ex-wife, in a rare show of candor, just three weeks after we were married, to tell me that she felt that she had made a mistake in marrying me and was already very worn out with me. On our honeymoon, in Jamaica, a few months later the Princess said it again. The Princess seemed to enjoy telling me, that even knowing me was a mistake.

Being both a guilty Bronx Jew and stupid, I tried futilely to get the Princess to like me.Love never had a chance.I often wonder why self pity was a very minor factor in my life. But optimism, looking for serendipity and laughter have always mostly overcome negative feelings.

After 27 years of my trying to change her negative feelings towards me the Princess threw me out.She originally claimed that it was my drinking that forced her into bouncing my ass out of our Jewish Mansion.

When the Princess blamed my drinking for our divorce to a friend my self righteous indignation surfaced and I went fucking nuts.

I phoned the JAP and said, "Bonnie, quit telling people that you threw me out because I drank too much. Tell the them the God damn truth. Tell them that you threw me out because you didn't like me in 1947 and you still don't like me in 1974. That's the real truth and I'm cool with it. Quit playing the booze card."

Never did get any more 'Woe is me, I married an alcoholic.", feedback.

The Princess did confess to a mutual friend that being married to me was exciting. In a moment of weakness she told that to me as well.We'd been happily divorced for about 10 years when that comment popped out of her mouth.Talk about a day late and a dollar short.

But the Princess had a ferocious memory and remembered, in detail, all the asshole things I had done and they were a big fucking bunch. As I told her several times (redundancy is a specialty of mine) "Why is it that you remember, in detail, every asshole thing I've ever done and you never give me credit for the good things that I've done?" Her answer was her consistent steely eyed, WASP look of total disgust and disdain.

My son Joe's advice on how to stay married came along way too late for me. My son, Joe, contended that a basic rule for staying married is for the guy to say, when necessary, 'I'm sorry, it's all my fault.'

Yeah, most divorced couples are amiable toward one another until they talk about something serious. Then it's the same old noise.

For 28 years after our divorce, without a court order, I saw to it that the Princess continued to live in the life style that I had made her accustomed to living. She surely deserved it. (Living with me wasn't like spending a day at the beach.)

The minute the Princess stopped receiving her $5k a month and other high priced perks, she stopped even acknowledging me. See me at a local shopping center and the Princess would turn turn her head away.

The Princess, I believe, died with Italian Alzheimer's where you forget everything except the grudge. Sad for her.

~

Above and Beyond with My VA Hospital

God bless the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, a caring health facility.

Starring Dr. Patricia Nguyen, Dr.Mitchell Wong and Angella in the pharmacy at the VA PAHCS.

Dr. Nguyen a pre-eminent cardiologist is always over booked but on my very recent date, Dr.Nguyen broke her previous record for keeping me waiting.

After sitting in the waiting room for 45 minutes, building up a head of indignant steam, a nurse came along to take my 'vitals': blood pressure, temperature, weight, etc. Then back to the fucking waiting room.

After another 15 minutes, along comes a different nurse and escorts me to the examination room. 15 minutes later, in walks a doctor, not Dr Nguyen, who introduces himself. I look at him like a bull with a bastard calf and ask him what the hell he wanted. 'Just want to ask you some questions,' he says.

'Where is Dr Nguyen?'.

'Dr Nguyen will be along in a few minutes'.

By then I've gone aerobic, my blood pressure has gone through the roof and I say to that fresh faced doctor 'Fuck you, I'm outta here.', and to my car...drove home, wired for sound, sucking wind all the way.

(Went for a blood test necessary to get my thyroid pill prescription renewed.)

About an hour later at home, Dr.Nguyen phoned, to my huge surprise, apologetically and insisted on 'interviewing' me for about 20 minutes. I complained, in my usual grating voice that her scheduling person was an overbooking maniac. Dr.Nguyen, in spite of my bitching and complaining gave me survival guidance.

In my 91 1/2 years of being 'doctored', this and my next day experience with Dr.Wong, really stand out. I could have laid down and died in the Menlo Medical Clinic and my doctor would have stepped over my body to get to the next paying patient.

Phone me? The Menlo Medical Clinic? That's a joke.

The next day, schlepping my weary ass back down to the VA was more than I could contemplate. I cancelled my appointment with the great, Dr. Mitchell Wong my Primary Care physician, who then phoned to check up on me.

Dr.Wong put me through his wringer, checking up and advising me with his survival wisdom.That made two phone calls in 24 hours from two caring physicians.

Ah, but those thyroid pills were a problem that Dr.Wong solved. Dr. Wong leaned on the pharmacy to get the pills out the same day.

Lo and behold Angella from the VA pharmacy phoned at 5:30 PM to tell me that she was going to drop them off at my place after work.

The VA PAHCS is a shining model of fostering a culture of caring. How lucky can I be.

And yeah, no woman will have me, thank God, because I no longer drive at night. Gotta have concern for the other drivers on the road...Hello Lyft/Uber.

~

One For All, All For One

'What you see is what you get.'

'Take a flying fuck to the moon.'

Expressions of independence learned while in the Army but well used by me since those days.

The strange part is that independent thinking and being a GI were not even kissin' cousins.Except when you were diving for cover when the bullets started flying. Then we became heavy thinkers. By then we had learned, the hard way, that the bullets were not our friends.

For some weird reason, my days in the service didn't come into my daily stream of conscious until I was around 84 years old. No one ever asked about them and I never spoke of them.Once in a long while someone would ask why I limped. Always had some smart ass answer. Never said that I was hit on Okinawa.

Putting myself out as some kind of hero or patriot seemed silly then, as it does now. We were wherever we were because that was where we were supposed to be.

But going to the VA Palo Alto Health Care facilities snapped me to attention. Seeing vets who looked worse than I did (no small trick) and still being alive brought history back to me. Lots of vets with WWII baseball caps in my early days at the vets.

Now it's the Korean and Vietnam War vets who tool around in their motorized wheel chairs, mostly overweight and looking like shit.

WW II vets, like me, die every day. Hardly ever see a vet with a WWII baseball cap at the VA health care facilities these days.

Now the Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq vets look at the likes of me and think that we are fucking freaks. Freaks maybe. Fucking freaks, hardly possible. At 91 1/2 my schlong is a faucet which drips from time to time. Hardly a fucking sex tool. A major league generator of the need for fresh, dry underwear.

At the end of the day the most meaningful memory, for me, of the service was the deep seated feeling of family. A feeling that is sorely lacking in my life these days.

As a first generation American, with immigrant parents, I was lucky as a kid to have lived 'family' to the hilt. Huge family dinners: 'break the fast', passover, on and on. Squabbles but feelings of family reigned.

The Army, through fist fights, harsh words and hard times was the ultimate in 'family' living.We were, all of us, in it together. One for all, all for one.

~