by John LeFevre
When I was interrupted by the sound of an aggressive dog barking, I politely explained that I was at the New Delhi airport and a wild animal had snuck into the terminal. “It looks rabid and is menacing this poor lady and her baby. Anyway, market conditions remain receptive to new issues as evidenced by the tight pricing and strong after-market performance of recent deals.”
Letting the
Bad Out
“Get the fuck out! Get the fuck out!” I am screaming at the top of my lungs. An intruder has me painfully chicken-winged with one arm twisted behind my back while he punches me in the head with his other hand. I manage to block most of his punches with my right hand, but my left arm feels like it is about to snap in half.
Some guy has broken into my apartment. This is Hong Kong, one of the safest cities in the world. Shock. Pain. Panic.
I scream out again, “Get the fuck out! Get the fuck out!” I try to pull away, but he’s definitely got the upper hand. This is when I first realize that I’m also completely nude.
The intruder yells back, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” I manage to extend my left arm far enough to swing around with my right hand and clock this guy right in the temple. He doesn’t go down, but he staggers back, releasing his hold of my left wrist in the process.
Now, it’s a fair fight—at least fairer. I’m still a little bit wasted and, of course, somewhat exposed with my cock and balls flapping around. As I square up to fight, I notice that there are two of them, with the second intruder enjoying the show. This is probably not going to end well for me.
I throw another punch at the first guy and then retreat around to the other side of my dining room table. My punch has proven to be not particularly effective; I’m now cornered as they close in on me from both sides of the table.
“Fuck you. Take what you want and get out,” I try to reason with them. They continue to converge on me. There’s really no point in screaming because the typhoon-proof walls are made of concrete.
I decide to go on the offensive and lower my shoulder and barrel at the smaller of the two intruders, taking him out with a highlight-reel hit. From there, I race down the hallway toward my master bedroom. My plan is to lock myself in there and phone for help.
My apartment hallway isn’t that long so the other guy is right on my heels. I make it inside, but right before I can slam the door shut behind me, he manages to wedge his arm inside the doorframe. I’m pushing and slamming the door against his arm; he’s pushing with his shoulder to minimize the force, while also trying to muscle his way in. At this point, it’s clear to me that these guys want more than my valuables. I have never experienced a feeling of such terror.
I’m fighting a losing battle, especially now that there are two of them pushing against the door. I relinquish my tenuous control of the doorway and jump across the bed to create some separation. Once again, they have me cornered.
“Fuck you. Get out!” one of the guys yells at me. Holy shit, are these guys on drugs?
“Fuck YOU! Get out!” I yell back.
One of the guys inches his way around the bed while the other one guards the doorway; I’m totally trapped. I grab the only defense I can find—a pillow—and launch it at the guy bearing down on me. It doesn’t do shit. I throw the second and only remaining pillow within reach. But again, its impact is negligible, if not laughable. Finally, I grab the duvet with both hands and flip it up like a cartoon character casting a net, flinging it directly at his head.
This move is not entirely ineffective; the distraction gives me enough time to jump back across the bed and make my escape. Now I’m on the offensive once again, bounding over the bed, ready to launch myself at the guy standing in the doorway. I have already leveled this fucker once. There’s no way he can handle another piece of me—a strong man, naked and fighting for his life, using the bed as a springboard to launch my escape right through him.
He offers little resistance as I lunge through the doorway and run back down the hallway. As I am running, my concept of time slows to a virtual halt and I am overcome by this epiphanous moment of clarity. Hang on. That duvet cover that I just threw, that tasteless pattern . . . I’d never own sheets that disgusting. That can’t be my bed.
I make my way out to the living room. Holy shit, there’s a leather couch and a bookshelf straight from an IKEA catalog. Who decorated this fucking place? That dining table, what is that, wood veneer? This is when it finally takes—this is not my apartment. The layout is identical, but I am definitely not in my apartment.
I head straight for the front door without stopping to collect my clothes, my wallet, my cell phone, anything. I make it out into the corridor; it looks familiar. Okay, so I’m in my own apartment building. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I look across the hallway and see a familiar doormat and Chinese porcelain umbrella stand. Not only am I in my building, I’m on my floor.
I manage to make it into my apartment and bolt the door behind me before my neighbors make it out into the corridor—assuming they even followed me at all. I retreat to the safety and comfort of my own bed and considerably nicer sheets. It takes quite a long time for the foreign chemicals in my body to overcome the adrenaline of my misadventure. But eventually, I pass out.
The next morning, the bruises to my head, shoulder, arm, and wrist tell me that none of this was a dream. I lie in bed for hours, dreading the idea of having to go back across the hall, apologize, and ask for my clothes, wallet, and BlackBerry back.
Once I’m ready to face the music, I drag myself out of bed and head into a spare bedroom that I’ve converted into a walk-in closet. There I see yesterday’s suit jacket hanging from my valet stand, my tie deliberately placed on top, with my BlackBerry and wallet neatly arranged on the adjacent dresser.
I have to remind myself that it couldn’t have been just a dream; my head is about to explode and these bruises don’t lie. The only conceivable explanation is that I must have come home, gone to bed purposely, and then had some kind of unfortunate drunken sleep-walking escapade. So it’s not entirely my fault—this is back before anyone really understood the dangers of mixing alcohol, cocaine, Klonopin, Xanax, and Ambien.
After about a month of sneaking in and out of my apartment, I finally run into my neighbors in the lobby—two Australian guys I’d never met prior to the night of the incident. They recognize me right away. “Mate, fuck me, it was you after all?” But they’re pretty cool about it—nothing a case of wine and an apology can’t smooth over. All in all, I consider myself to be pretty lucky. If a Chinese family had lived there, I’d probably be dead. If a woman had lived there alone, I’d probably be in jail.
I need someone to save me from myself, a grounding force in my life. I need a girlfriend.
The timing works out perfectly. Soon after this incident, an ex-girlfriend “coincidentally” transfers from New York to Hong Kong just a few months after finding out that I had moved here from London the year before. Her plan works, and just a month later, we’re back together. I couldn’t be happier or healthier. We have rekindled a volatile relationship and seemingly made it perfect.
Capital markets are booming in the post-SARS Asia; our jobs keep us busy and feeling satisfied and fulfilled. She works traditional investment banking hours, which means long nights, frequent business trips, and the occasional weekend in the office. I’m working sales and trading hours, which means 7:30 a.m. to around 7 p.m., or whenever we can hand over to New York. Occasionally, I’ll have evening conference calls or will work late into the night if I am pricing a deal during New York hours.
We understand each other perfectly—the canceled plans, the late nights, the interrupted dinners, the stresses of a high-intensity job, and the priorities associated with being career focused and ambitious.
We’re the perfect power couple, two mid-twenties bankers pulling down solid six-figure incomes. Life is good. The Four Seasons Langk
awi only has a $2,500-per-night suite available over Easter? No problem. We don’t like our main course entrées at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon? Bring the menu back. The Armani bar won’t let me in wearing shorts? There’s an Armani store downstairs. My maid is stealing my $200 La Mer moisturizer? Good for her; skin care is important.
One of the best aspects of our relationship is that, given our respective schedules, we spend time with each other only two or three nights a week. There’s always plenty to talk about and we generally don’t get sick of each other. A quiet night at home watching a romantic comedy, something most guys dread, is a welcome respite for me after three or four nights in a row of wining and dining clients, or going out with colleagues and friends while she’s working late.
Most nights, I am able to do as I please. I can have drinks and dinner with clients or friends and I’ll still get home before she does. As long as I get home first, it doesn’t even count as a night out.
Or, after a really rough day at the office, I might just be too exhausted to go out after work, or simply not be in the mood to be social with anybody. Thankfully, she’s still at work, so I can play Mario Kart in peace while I blast my way through a six-pack.
A simple text from me saying, “Long day. Quick gym. Then home to wait for you,” is all I need to pave the way for an unregistered night out. The only thing I need to watch out for is the occasional surprise text back, “Got out earlier than I thought,” or “Gonna head home and do my conference call from there.”
That’s when I’ll pound my drink, pay my tab, deflect the verbal abuse from my friends, grab a cab, race home, shower, brush, rinse, and then jump safely into bed with a prop—something weighty like Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton—right before I hear her key in the front door. Perfect timing. This scenario’s playing out time and time again is actually the genesis of the Warden nickname.
Of course, mistakes are bound to happen. It’s not always possible to keep these worlds entirely separate. In fact, in Hong Kong, it’s impossible. The universe of expatriate bankers is exceptionally small. We all drink and eat at the same places, hang out at the same clubs, and live in the same neighborhoods. Despite Hong Kong being a city of seven million people, it’s impossible to go out on any given evening and not run into someone you know.
The downside of living this dangerously is that I risk getting busted constantly, particular if I run into any of the Warden’s colleagues. There are a couple of them who obviously want to sleep with her, so they’ve become famous for ratting me out. Other times, some half-wit will innocuously mention to her that they saw me out. Just like that, I’m in Château Bowwow. Thank God for spare bedrooms.
She constantly hears stories about me from her colleagues, and not just about debaucherous late-night exploits. Since I’m competing with them for business and sometimes even working with them on deals, our worlds are inescapably intertwined. This dynamic can go both ways. I’ll be out with some hedge fund client, and he’ll say, “Yo, I took a roadshow one-on-one for this Morgan Stanley high-yield deal. I want to bang that blond China coverage chick that came to the meeting,” or I’ll hear a colleague or another competitor say, “We’re doing this property deal with Morgan Stanley. Man, that bitch is a cunt.”
For the most part, I enjoy the few evenings and weekends that we do get to spend together. I just also enjoy my freedom and enough time to let some bad out. In addition to having a date night once or twice a week, we also try to meet for lunch every now and then.
Lunch dates are a dangerous precedent to set. I should have learned my lesson in London when I had a girlfriend from my analyst class who couldn’t comprehend the notion of separation of work life and social life. Granted, I was sleeping with the girl who sat twenty feet away from me on the trading floor, so I guess I didn’t either. Every time I’d come back to my desk from grabbing a sandwich with a colleague, there would be a message waiting from her: “I saw that. So you have time to have lunch with Kamal, but when I ask, you say you’re too busy?”
Lunch dates with the Warden aren’t any better. There’s nothing fun about it, sitting there for an hour listening to her vent about coworkers I don’t know or give a fuck about. Listen, I don’t give a shit if Andrew, some random fucktard on your execution team whom I’ve never met, gets AIDS and dies, let alone that he had the “audacity” to circulate a draft offering circular and list you last on the CC line of the email, even though you are the self-described “point person” on the deal. Not only is your story ten minutes too long, it’s not even story worthy in the first place.
On one such day, about thirty minutes before my dreaded Warden lunch, I get a Bloomberg from Ewan Hunt, the head of syndicate at UBS, inviting me out for a liquid lunch. I can either go meet my girlfriend and listen to her drone on about how great and underappreciated she is at her job, or I can share two or three bottles of wine with Ewan, a slightly irritating prick.
Ewan is undeniably smart and articulate, but he takes himself far too seriously. He once gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal about the quality of business hotel gyms and demanded that he be quoted. That’s also what makes him so easy to fuck with.
If I’m on a client conference call with him on a deal, I’ll refer to him as a vice president because I know he has this compulsion to immediately interrupt and clarify that he’s an executive director. Or if I know he’s dialing in to a call from an airport (which he likes to announce in an attempt to highlight his importance), I’ll tell him to go on mute because we’re getting a lot of terminal background noise. “That’s not from me; it’s quiet here in the first-class lounge.” The entire syndicate community is well aware of the origin of the massive chip on Ewan’s shoulder: his first wife left him for another woman.
I’m not really in the mood to have lunch with him today. “Sorry, dude. Short notice. No can do. Insufferable lunch with the bird already on the books.” More important, if I cancel on her, I’ll have to make it up to her tonight—and I already have plans.
After a bit of back-and-forth on Bloomberg chat, Ewan guilt-trips me into canceling on the Warden and joining him. “Okay, for fuck’s sake.” I feel bad for him. “See you at Dot Cod in twenty. I’ll tell her that I have back-to-back conference calls and can’t leave the desk. If you get there first, order a bottle of something decent.”
We have a delightful lunch; as I said, aside from being completely self-absorbed, he is charming, well read, and intellectually curious. Three bottles of wine later, we reach the point of either staying out all afternoon and getting shit-faced, or going back to the office and finishing out the day. I choose the latter.
In the ten minutes it takes me to walk back to my desk, I have a Bloomberg message waiting from Ewan: “Good times. Any preference on what client I list you as when I expense it? ;)” I’d rather someone not treat me to a meal if they’re just going to mention the fact that they paid for it. But that’s typical Ewan.
Twenty minutes later, I get an email from my girlfriend with “FWD” in the subject line that simply says “WTF?” Ewan had forwarded her our entire Bloomberg conversation where I’m bemoaning my lunch dates with her and joking about lying to get out of it. “Is this really the guy you want to be with?” he wrote, and added, “I’m in town until tomorrow if you want to grab a drink. ;)”
Now, I’ve always known that he’s had a thing for my girlfriend, but I never expected him to go this low. I do the only sensible thing I can do: I forward that email to every senior syndicate counterpart in Asia, introducing it with “FYI . . . Just in case you ever thought you could trust Ewan Hunt.”
When it comes to relationships, sometimes other people are out to fuck me over. And sometimes, I just do it to myself. But in investment banking, it’s often the job that fucks me over. Socializing with colleagues and clients is an important ingredient to having a successful career. Decadent dinners and alcohol- and drug-fueled nights out are a sell-
side job requirement.
On one such innocuous evening, the Warden sends me an email letting me know that she’s working late and has to cancel our date night. Perfect. I respond with feigned disappointment and tell her that I’ll probably head to the gym and then have a quiet night at home. I’m in decent shape, but based on the number of times I use the gym as an alibi, I should be a swimsuit model.
I make plans to meet a client and a few friends for drinks and dinner. It’s a fairly simple plan—a free pass to eat and drink as much as I want and then go home, shower, and pass out. As long as I can do this before she finishes work, it’s like it never happened.
It works like a charm—drink, eat, drink, pass out. The next morning, I wake up at 6:45 a.m. and tiptoe out of the bed so as to not disturb her. I’m usually out the door around 7:15 a.m., whereas she generally doesn’t head to the office until about 9:30. If she’s stirring after I’ve showered and suited up, I’ll kiss her good morning.
“Just fucking go. Do you remember last night?”
Normally, I know better than to respond to this question. There’s no upside in volunteering information that is potentially more damaging than what she might already know. However, this vague recollection of having texted her comes back to me. A simple message, “Exhausted. Off to bed. 143.” I specifically remember sending her this text before I got too wasted, even though my night was just getting started.
This recollection gives me enough confidence to roll the dice. “What? I went to the gym and ran into a friend on my way out. He convinced me to grab a few drinks and then I was so exhausted that I came home early and went to bed.”
“Okay. So you don’t remember me, having worked all fucking night, coming home at two a.m.? Then I guess you don’t remember me being bolted out of the apartment and knocking and banging on the door and calling your phone for thirty minutes? So then, I guess you don’t remember the doorman having to call a locksmith who didn’t show up for another hour? Only for me to come in and find you passed the fuck out?”