Straight to Hell

by John LeFevre

  “Jesus. What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” On a day like today, I’m being sincere.

  “I’m sorry,” she says while trying to exhale a sigh of relief from her mouth and simultaneously inhale through her nose as if to retract the tears and mucus and whatever else has been welling up inside of her. Whatever it is, it’s not pretty. “It’s just that I really thought I was going to get fired today. I know I make a lot of mistakes and people don’t think very highly of me. But I just don’t deal well with pressure, and I’ve been working pretty much nonstop. It’s been really really hard.”

  She pauses, proceeds to sit down next to me, and then continues.

  “But I’m trying and I’m getting better, and I’m going to keep getting better. So I guess I am just really relieved that I didn’t get fired today, because I’m not even really sure what I’d do if I did get fired. I’m sorry. I’m just so relieved that I made it. Thanks again for all of your help.” And with that she walks away, this poor, lonely girl.

  I am genuinely moved. But as things go in this world, this would be the last time I would ever see her. First thing on Monday morning, she is fired.

  It turns out that she was supposed to be fired with everyone else on Friday. But her boss didn’t want to pull the trigger then because he had a hugely important pitch on Monday morning that he needed her to put together for him, which is why she was coming to me for help in the first place. So her boss made her work late into the night Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday in order to finish the presentation. With her newfound determination and reinvigorated spirit, she even pulled an all-nighter on Saturday night. And that’s rarely supposed to happen.

  So then, come Monday, her gutless boss called into the office from the road, asked to speak to another managing director, and said, “Hey, it’s Benny. I’m not going to be able to make it back from this bake-off in time to come into the office. So can you please do me a favor and just go ahead and touch base with HR and then fire Carol for me, mmm’kay? Thanks.”

  And that was the end of it.

  Fuck you, Benny. Mmm’kay? You’re lucky the lawyers made me change your name.

  Making It Rain

  The expatriate banking community in Asia is exceptionally close, with huge overlap between professional and personal relationships. Most of my good friends work in finance and are colleagues, competitors, or clients.

  When one of the more notorious hedge fund managers announces that he’s getting married, it’s a big deal. The wedding party is a competition and demonstration of influence. I remember our boss saying, “Hey, Smithers, I hear your counterpart at Deutsche Bank is one of the groomsmen. Where the fuck are you?” That’s a fairly aggressive way of insinuating that our client must be giving a lot more business to one of our main competitors.

  With the Warden, I was never allowed to go to bachelor parties, missing out on trips to Taiwan, Vegas, Bangkok, Jakarta, and a few other “golf weekends.” I did manage to sneak in a Macau stag party under the umbrella of a FBT.

  The weekend is a big deal. Bankers and hedge fund managers are flying in from Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, London, and New York. Our home base for the weekend is the Shangri-La hotel in Makati City, an area of metro Manila and the main financial hub of the Philippines. Why would someone want to have a bachelor party in a landlocked swamp turned financial district outside of downtown Manila? The place is crawling with love monkeys.

  It’s my first time there. I have a colleague who usually calls dibs on the Manila business trips. Given his infatuation with love monkeys and the fact that he still lives with his parents, I don’t object.

  The weekend festivities kick off in local style—a private jitney from the hotel to the Hobbit House. Not to be confused with the Hampton Jitney, a Manila jitney is a semi-open-air hybrid between a taxi and a bus, constructed from old World War II vehicles that the US government abandoned in the Philippines at the end of the war, complete with long bench seating. They have become a ubiquitous symbol of the local culture and tend to be ornately painted and operated by colorful street entrepreneurs. Typically, they are used to haul lower-class people long distances to their soul-crushing jobs, while crammed into an aluminum cattle car and forced to endure sweltering heat, shocking pollution, and agonizing traffic. Tonight, the jitney is like a Disney ride tour of the Valley of Ashes for a dozen investment bankers, most of whom clear seven-figure bonuses.

  When our driver pulls into the Shangri-La and sees our group standing there, his eyes light up. He knows he’s in for a night of abuse and torture, but he’ll come away with more than an extra month’s salary in his pocket. After a quick inspection, the first thing we do is send him back out with a handful of pesos to pick up a large cooler, bags of ice, and as many cases of beer as he can carry.

  The Hobbit House is a mediocre steak house and bar with live music and performances. Started by a former Peace Corps volunteer, its mission is to provide dignified employment for “little people,” while at the same time creating an homage to and celebrating its founder’s love of J. R. R. Tolkien. There’s been a bit of revisionist history applied to the actual benevolence factor following some local protests and calls for it to be closed down for exploiting and demeaning its employees. Their intentions may be good now—giving dwarfs a place to work and meet other little people in a country where they would otherwise be ostracized—but it hasn’t always been the case, and it doesn’t mean that their customers’ intentions are equally noble.

  According to our supposedly well-informed organizer and team leader, this is the place where midgets wear drink trays on their heads and drunken after-hours midget tossing is a nightly occurrence. When our waitress is not amused by our comments about midgets giving blow jobs while standing up, we begin to question his due diligence, as well as our expectations for the evening ahead of us.

  As she is taking our drink orders, we test the waters once again. “Check out that pen in her hand. Wow. Let me see that,” a guy shouts while grabbing at her. “No, not the pen. Give me your hand.” He then proceeds to hold it up. “Wow, do you know how ginormous this would make my cock look?” Check please!

  Apparently, the Hobbit House isn’t what it once might have been, or perhaps never was. It’s quite possible that we have mistaken it for the Ringside Bar in Makati, home (to this day) of midget wrestling, boxing, tossing and all-around belittling.

  Having been abruptly asked to leave, it’s time to jitney over to Burgos Street, the reddest street in the red-light district that is Manila. This is primarily the reason we’re staying in Makati—Burgos Street is a strip of provocative neon lights and poorly lit bars for expats who seek the company of exotic Filipina girls, while watching dance shows and consuming cheap booze. That sounds terrible, and it’s actually much worse than that. Walking around, it’s impossible not to be accosted by door girls, mama-sans, freelance “masseuses,” and other purveyors of the dark arts of Asia. I don’t need to be told how handsome I am every twenty feet; I just want to drink. There is also considerable ladyboy risk—the Philippines is no different from Thailand or much of Southeast Asia in that there are so few opportunities for many destitute people in the rural districts that they send their kids (boys or girls) into the cities to serve as prostitutes.

  Parading down Burgos with our group presents a hilarious education for a few of the guys who, having flown in from distant lands, are still somewhat unfamiliar with Asia. They certainly hadn’t expected to be led around by a few Burgos Street celebrities. “Hey-lo, Henry, where you been?” “Bobby, you back so soon. Your favorite girl inside tonight.” That’s like going from New York to a strip club in Tampa and being so memorable that they recognize you six months later.

  However, with names like High Heels, Rascals, or Ivory’s Jungle Room, any further education for our newbies is no longer required. I have no recollection of which particular bar we ended up choosing, other than that it was one that cam
e highly recommended by our fearless ringleaders.

  The place is heaving with disgusting, degenerate white men ranging in age from backpacking teenagers to Liverpudlian pensioners who’ve chosen to wind down their mediocre existence on this planet living in nihilistic self-indulgence and relative comfort, instead of in some miserable British council estate. Of course, it’s also swarming with love monkeys, all 9s and 10s by Makati standards.

  Relying on his experience and expertise, this is where Varun, the head of syndicate at , takes over. “How much will it cost for you to kick out every single customer?”

  The mama-san thinks for just a few seconds; she’s clearly better at understanding risk (and math) than all of us. “You give me seven thousand US dollar, okay?” In another life, she’d probably make a good bond trader.

  “Done. Do you take Amex?” He then turns to the groom. “Congratulations, buddy. This is my wedding present to you.”

  They shoo out all the riffraff, without allowing any “takeout,” and then lock the doors so that it’s just the twelve of us and thirty or forty girls. It’s an open bar, with clothing optional and the “dibs” rule in effect.

  My first move is to send one of the girls out to buy some plastic cups and Ping-Pong balls, which are unsurprisingly easy to find in Makati. I make sure she knows to invite our jitney driver back with her to come in and help himself. The Philippines is 98.5% Catholic, but he doesn’t seem to require much convincing.

  After Beer Pong slowly descends into stakes that are too punitive and sordid to recount, we move on to Liar’s Dice. But we play that every weekend in Hong Kong, and it’s too hard to stop the girls from signaling to each other. I don’t blame them for cheating. After Beer Pong, they’re petrified of the consequences of losing.

  Next up is Love Monkey Bowling, which doesn’t require much explanation, other than to say that we slick down the bar with a layer of cooking oil, and then take turns sliding the naked girls down it, aiming them at impromptu bowling pins in the form of ketchup bottles.

  As the “dibs” start to kick into effect, it becomes harder for us to maintain the focus of the group, and therefore impossible to complete any more games without teammates or competitors sneaking off to dark corners for their own game of Doctors Without Borders.

  This is where I take charge of a small group, mostly the out-of-towners, who seem less disposed to channel their inner Colonel Kurtz. They haven’t been off the plane for five hours yet and this is how day one has started.

  I’m going to dial things back a notch or two and take them to the Casino Royale. “Yes, of course it’s just like the James Bond movie.” As we are leaving the bar, we each grab a love monkey to take with us for good luck. Might as well—they’re already paid for, and altruistically speaking, they’ll be safer with us.

  By the exit, we see Varun, having not bothered to search for a dark corner, with a wide grin on his face. He’s got a drink in each hand, a girl under each arm, and another on his lap. “T.I.A., baby. T.I.A.” The acronym from the movie Blood Diamond—“This Is Africa”—had long since been appropriated as “This Is Asia.”

  As I knew it would be, the casino is disgusting. “Sorry, chaps. It’s not Monte Carlo, but tonight, it’ll have to do.” I can tell that they don’t really want to be there, but I just want to gamble. We start off together at the baccarat table and then gradually jump around in search of blackjack, more drinks, and better luck.

  One by one, my compatriots pull the Fenwick Exit and slink away unnoticed. The Fenwick Exit is like the Irish Exit but with a love monkey clinging to your arm.

  I end up hitting it big, relatively speaking, considering that I started with about US$1,000 in peso equivalent. Here I am walking away with US$10,000. My only problem at this point is that the payout is all in pesos; it’s such a shitty casino that the government-issued gaming license stipulates that they must operate entirely in local currency. My problem is exacerbated by the fact that the highest-denomination banknote is only ₱1,000, or approximately US$20, leaving me with stacks of tired, dirty, well-circulated bills.

  Pockets bulging, I head back to the hotel with my lucky charm in tow. Given my success at the tables, calling her a love monkey at this point would almost be degrading. Almost.

  I have no concept of time (I had gambled until nearly 8 a.m.), so walking back into the hotel, I run into a few of our group already convening for breakfast and Bloody Marys in the lobby bar.

  Feeling charitable once again, I drop my lucky charm off upstairs in my room so that she can at least enjoy the amenities. She’s absolutely shocked that I have no interest in fucking her but is quickly distracted by the Frette bathrobe and the rain shower. With that, I lock my valuables in the safe (rookie move—I should have done it when I first checked in) and then head back downstairs, pockets still bulging. After all, I’ll need the bricks of cash as props to explain my early disappearance the previous night.

  We spend an hour or so drinking in the lobby bar, waiting for the full group to emerge in time for our scheduled brunch. A few wake-up calls, a few more Bloody Marys, and a trip to the bathroom for a quick bump, and we are off through an interconnected series of walkways and office building atriums to the nearby Greenbelt, Manila’s version of an upscale shopping mall.

  Brunch is remarkably civilized, complete with pitchers of mimosas and bottles of good wine. Relief washes over the newbies; this weekend isn’t going to be a complete descent into Hell.

  Three hours and one crazy game of credit card roulette later, we are walking back through the mall contemplating our next move. Standing on the top floor overlooking the expansive atrium below, we stop and admire the hordes of locals schlepping across the ground level. We openly compare this view to that of the throngs of admirable and selflessly hardworking Filipina helpers who crowd the sidewalks of Hong Kong every Sunday, sitting in their cardboard box forts while playing cards and giving each other manicures on their only day off. In the context of this fleeting, drunken, yet philosophical discussion about income inequality, I am reminded of the fact that I have roughly five hundred ₱1,000 notes casually weighing my cargo shorts halfway down my ass.

  I decide to unbundle one of the stacks and nonchalantly drop a bill over the edge of the third-level railing, against which we are all leaning. The bill flutters around magnificently as it makes its way slowly down, catching the invisible currents that push it ever so gently one way or the other. No one notices until it’s about twenty feet off the ground, at which point it catches the attention of just one guy. He watches very hesitantly, clearly discounting the likelihood of this falling object being anything other than a worthless piece of paper, but also hedging his bets by tracking its final movements such that it comes to rest at his feet.

  “Well, that was too subtle.” This time, I take three banknotes and discreetly let them slip out of my hand. Once again, the slow and unpredictable flutter is a joy to watch. The first guy spots them right away. Unfortunately for him, he’s unable to mask his excitement, and a couple of other people immediately stop to see what he is staring up at. He continues with determination, stumbling around, tracking the erratic movement of the falling bills, trying to decide which one he should home in on.

  Now, we’re getting somewhere. The three lucky recipients thus far, still somewhat confused and unable to ascertain the money’s source, are now fixated on the heavens above. This time, I decide to drop five banknotes, once again discreetly enough as to not provide any proof of my existence.

  At this point, I’ve only managed to get the attention of about a dozen people, all of whom have their eyes glued to the sky as real money inexplicably continues to rain down. With them entranced by the fluttering movement of the bills and battling the blinding sun that is shooting through the atrium’s glass roof, I drop a few more bills. And then a few more. Finally, I have managed to get the undivided attention of a meaningfully sized crowd, all while remaini
ng undetected.

  There are whistles, claps, and cheers. People in all directions, having attempted to figure out what the hell is going on, are beginning to descend and gather below us. Money continues to rain down with a slow but increasing frequency. The security guard working the door at the Adidas shop abandons his post and sprints across, making a leaping grab over the outstretched arms of a meek woman. A few of the retail employees, at the risk of losing what is by their standards a great job, come charging out of their respective stores and join the growing fray.

  I respond to the crowd, now more than fifty strong, this time with a cluster bomb of bills in short bursts. Things are starting to get crazy. Hands and eyes to the sky, people are running around chaotically as the breeze pushes the money back and forth, up and down, in all directions. Angst and frustration grow as they contend with the overwhelming task of choosing where to place their focus, not to mention the agony of repeatedly coming up just short. The stakes are high. One rather large, overzealous woman fails to see a bench that takes her out at the knees, sending her tumbling headfirst onto the unforgiving granite floor. “Fuck. I wish I had a camera” rings out from the Wall Street peanut gallery. A young girl, no older than six or seven, having spotted an outlier, patiently tracks the lone bill as it drifts away from the crowd. We’re rooting for her; it’s now within mere feet of her small hands. Boom! A huge brute broadsides her at full speed with a hit that would cost him fifteen yards in the NFL. Instead, he’s rewarded with a day’s pay.

  To me, this is a social experiment or maybe some kind of performance art. But I can’t help it if a dozen drunk white guys in polo shirts, khakis, and Havaiana flip-flops are laughing their asses off. A few of them have now decided to join in on the action. I hand out bills by the handful; it’s like we’re feeding pigeons in the park, and I’m the only kid who brought birdseed.