It has something of a family atmosphere, and like most families, it’s completely dysfunctional. It’s a bitterly competitive community, but also a really supportive one. If you can get on the inside (as I did), you’ll never pay a penny, even as a customer. But getting to that point takes work. A shitload of work. You need to develop status. That fuels everything in the industry. Not money—status. Because to get laid, you have to prove to the girls concerned that you’re worth it. And as I’ve mentioned, getting laid is what the game is all about.
I estimate that I have probably consumed around $350,000 to $500,000 in comped product and service during the height of my club-ratting existence as a nonrevenue customer. That’s taking into account the extortionate prices they charge at every level. Getting in, getting tables, getting drinks—they overcharge consistently and maliciously. The dumbbells who pay are happy to pay, because they want to get laid. And they think the fastest way to get into someone’s panties is through their wallet. There’s an entire profession based on that business model, but for some reason they haven’t encountered it. And let me tell you, it would be a lot cheaper to get a whore.
So financially, there are a number of idiotic, rich guys (and it is always guys) who support the whole industry. The rest of us just suck at their teats and work on our positions within the club. All we want to do is never wait in line. At the door outside, at the bathrooms inside, at the bar, at the tables—anywhere. The ultimate goal is to stroll up to a doorway, get the bouncer who is built like a linebacker to give you a hug, to get the guy with the clipboard to not even look down and just usher you in, to have a drink placed in your hand, and to be led to a table in the prime spot in the club that already has five beautiful women sitting there. And for many years, that’s exactly what I did. And here’s how.
You start with three clubs. Do a little research; find out where’s hot right now. Don’t focus on just one; you need to play the spread. And then you work them to death. Five, six times a week you’ll visit one or two in rotation, getting your face known, chatting up the staff, befriending everyone you can find. The bouncers are the best people to get on your side. They hold all the power. You make them feel special, and they will do anything for you. Their entire profession is based on being treated like shit by rich, white, drunken pricks that look exactly like you. Show them some respect, and they will do your bidding.
When you’re first getting to know a place, get your story straight and keep it short and sweet. This is your elevator pitch, which you desperately need to land to get you inside a club. Be confident and succinct. “I’m not on the list, I don’t have a table, but I’ve heard you guys are great. I just wanted to grab a drink and see for myself. Can you accommodate me?” Usually they will be so taken aback by your candor that they’ll snap that velvet rope open lickety-shit. Then, as you exit, you talk to them again. Thank them for their kindness; shake their hand. Get them to remember you so that when you hit the place again, they’ll smile and usher you inside.
And if you try and fail, don’t hang around. Clubs like to have a long line of expectant putzes salivating outside, desperate for entry. It makes idiots who are passing by think, “Shit, there must be something really fucking special going on inside there.” There isn’t. It’s just a nightclub. They are all exactly the same. But you will damage the mystique somewhat if you’re standing in the doorway, throwing a hissy fit because they don’t like the look of you. Retreat and try again on a different day with different staff on the door.
When you’re on the inside, you need to find the promoters and get them in your pocket. These are guys paid by the club owners to drag beautiful people to their establishments and keep them there. They are the dung attracting rich, stupid flies who will actually spend some cash. The promoters always have the best tables, the sweetest liquor, and the hottest girls clustered around them like genital warts. They are total douche bags but can be won over pretty easily with flattery. Few are smart. Throw a few kind words in their direction, and they’ll be sniffing at your crotch like a puppy.
I’m happy to take their booze and their skanks. It gives me the same sense of sick satisfaction as watching my cleaning lady pick up a used condom. They are an unnecessary evil, there to dredge the last few shekels from any passing Persian with a lubricated wallet. But they usually have the prime real estate in the club, and from there you can work the rest of the place. That’s why it’s important to know the layout of the club you’re trying to infiltrate. It’s not just a bar, some tables, and a dance floor. This is territory we’re talking about. And if you’re at the best table, it will be assumed that you’re a somebody. And from that position you can start to work on the other members of the staff. The waitresses, the busboys, the cleaners. Everyone can be exploited for your own ends. As you make your presence known, you’ll soon be part of the family and enjoy all the advantages that offers.
Eventually you’ll be recognized and accepted. And once you’ve fully integrated yourself into the life of the nightclub, untold wonders will be yours. You won’t get the key to the executive bathroom, but you will get the code for the employee bathroom, which is even better. That’s obviously the best location to bang broads and blow coke. The biggest financial loss of my entire nightclubbing career was the five-dollar bill I used to tip the Dominican guy who guarded bathroom four at Bungalow 8, which is where I’d drag any number of shiksas. And he’d only get that money once I’d sealed the deal. If I didn’t get any, neither did he! But it still ended up costing me a fortune.
That’s an important lesson in club life. If you start to spend money, you’ll never stop. It’s like fucking a woman and then handing her a thousand bucks. You’re never going to get that pussy for free ever again. Once you’ve opened your pocketbook, there’s blood in the water, and these fuckers won’t rest until you’re chum. Never spend a dime—that’s the most important thing. Keep your legs open and your pockets closed. The best way to hang on to your trust fund is to forge and cultivate relationships.
Nightclubs are all about access. Access to doors. Access to booze. Access to holes. One to get you in and one to get you off. And the way you get both is to keep watching and learning. You know in the movie Casino? There’s that quote from Ace Rothstein:
In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I’m watching the casino manager. And the eye in the sky is watching us all.
It’s exactly the same with club rats: In clubs, everybody’s got to watch everybody else. The doormen are watching the bouncers. The managers are watching the doormen. The owners are watching the managers. The promoters are watching the owners. The bar staff are watching the promoters. And I’m the eye in the sky watching them all. And trying to fuck them all over.
The Full-Circle Approach
Sometimes, people are just assholes, and there’s very little you can do about it. Especially the type of people who chose to make nightclubs their chosen career path. They have to be douchey; it’s a vital part of the job description. And sometimes you can just get on the wrong side of them and stay there. But these situations can also be aggravated to your advantage.
If you are repeatedly trying and failing to get into a place and have run out of options, throw a fucking tantrum. Scream and curse and call the prick who is standing in your way every filthy name conceivable. Drag his mother and his pets into it. Question his sexuality or SAT scores. Edge the conversation to the point of violence, and then pull back. Say anything derogatory that springs to mind—just make sure that this schlub is going to remember you once the encounter is over.
Then you do something that no one expects. You apologize. Not there and then, but at a later date and at a neutral location. This may take a little bit of r
esearch and some trailing. Find out where they spend their off-hours, or unearth any other clubs they like to frequent. Approach them casually, as if it’s a complete accident that the two of you are sharing the same space. Then you start with the soft soap.
“Look, I am disgusted with what happened the other night. I was completely out of line. I am having some personal issues at the moment, and I’m taking some pretty strong medication for an ongoing groin strain. I didn’t mean to lash out at you. I was lashing out at myself. I am appalled by some of the things I said about you and your family. All I want to do now is make amends with you in some way. If there is anything I can do to make this situation right, just let me know. In the meantime, please understand how shocked and disappointed I am with myself.”
Then you leave it at that and vanish. Don’t try to elicit a reciprocal apology right there and then. You give it a little more time. But then you follow up with a gift. That’s one of the reasons I got into the pocket-square business. It’s the perfect compensation item for a whole litany of situations. So you send your victim a lovely present, with a note reiterating your regrets at your hideous behavior and your utter regret that it occurred. Wait a couple of days, and head back to the club.
Now they will do anything for you. You’ve shown humility. They will be so amazed that you went so far in your apology and were happy to make a complete martyr out of yourself that they’ll allow you unfettered access to their grandmother’s vulva if it was suddenly on offer. Yes, it takes a little legwork, and you need to make yourself look like a pissy little crybaby, but you’re in! It works like a charm. And they’ll never forget you. That’s what I call the full-circle approach.
Now, this story is not exactly a prime example of the full-circle approach, but it does show you how any situation can be used for currency and leverage. It’s been well documented that I have a complex and often dysfunctional relationship with many members of New York’s nightclub elite. Once I started to get more famous and have more of a profile, I didn’t need to wrangle or barter myself inside the velvet rope. I was JRL, and that was enough. But sometimes my actions had consequences.
As you may be aware, I had a run-in with Star Jones at a polo event in the Hamptons. I posed for a photo with her (of course) and then posted the picture featuring the both of us. Except that I had added a thought balloon next to Star’s voluptuous head with the image of some Devil Dogs inside it. It was a cheap joke that got a lot of play on social media. It also got me banned from that establishment and anywhere else owned by Noah Tepperberg.
Despite being violently bald, Noah is a global bigwig, owning clubs and restaurants all over the planet, including Marquee, Tao, Lavo, and some more pretentious-sounding, bullshit places. He’s an asshole, but he’s a big-deal asshole and wields a lot of power. So he’s not the sort of person you want to piss off. And he’s a grudge holder, as I was to discover.
Noah employed a doorman named Rich Thomas, who is an even bigger asshole than his boss. Just one of those pricks who’s given a clipboard and decides to swing it like Ron Jeremy’s dong. It’s the only bit of power that he has in his life, and he likes to let you know about it. I’ve had many run-ins with him, including making him number one in my “Ten Most Hated People in New York Nightlife” (I only made number three). This and various other indiscretions by me in his general vicinity have not impressed him at all.
I’d just JewJetted over from Los Angeles, picked up a few shiksas en route, and headed over to a club called Avenue, where Thomas brandished his clipboard of power. He was not too excited by my appearance and basically told me to fuck off. Now, I don’t like being refused entry when I have a number of lovely ladies on each arm. It makes me look like a soft-dicked imbecile. So I told Mr. Thomas exactly what I felt about him, in particular how he was a disgrace to his race (he’s African American) and how I was more black than he was. This was in front of all the bouncers, and if there’s one thing a black guy hates, it’s being called out on not being black enough in front of other black guys. But then again, who does? Look, I know it wasn’t classy, but honestly, this guy was an asshole.
So I left with my entourage and headed to 1 OAK, which is where everyone always washes up at the end of the night. It was a bit early for me to be there, two in the morning or so. I was casually having a drink with my party, standing near the bar, and minding my own business. So I was quite surprised to see Rich Thomas himself strolling over the dance floor and heading straight toward me at quite a pace. I couldn’t believe he would have left his post at Avenue with such reckless abandon. I then realized he was obviously coming for me.
Which he did. He walked up and sucker punched me right in the gut. My indiscreet words in the doorway had obviously hit home, and he was seeking vengeance street-style. I could completely understand. But Rich had royally fucked up. Unfortunately for him, I’d just invested in a Flip cam that day to chronicle my exploits and had, partly by accident, managed to film the entire incident. I was surprised as he was, but I still pointed this out to him.
“You stupid dipshit, say cheese,” I told him, pointing out the blinking red light of recrimination.
Rich looked like he had just crapped his pants, then grabbed the camera and ran off into the night. Now, this really pissed me off. First, because I could have posted that footage to YouTube and made him look like even more of an asshole and gotten a few hundred thousand hits. And also because I’d just got the fucking camera and it cost a couple hundred bucks. Getting punched is an occupational hazard for an asshole like me, but losing personal property is another thing entirely. So, on advice, I called a friend of mine who is a detective at the NYPD. (Which is a very useful ally to have. Take my advice: get yourself a friend at the local police department.)
My cop companion told me that Thomas was neck deep in shit. This was felony robbery, and even if he had a completely unblemished record, he would be arrested and charged and maybe jailed pending bail. Thanks to the cost of the goods, he had really fucked up. His cheap doorman outfit could be exchanged for a nice orange jumpsuit really fast.
I let all this information filter down to the media, the whole thing getting reported in a number of blogs, and eventually Rich, Noah, and his people got to hear about it. Soon I was summoned to a summit at Hillstone with Mr. Tepperberg’s lawyers. They treated me like a long-lost brother, showering me with expensive cocktails and overpriced entrees and flattering me widely while alternately begging me not to press charges. They knew the shit it would cause them. There followed another meeting with Rich Thomas himself, where he had to suck up to me in a fairly unpleasant way. Which was fantastic.
I agreed to drop all the charges and forget about the whole thing. In return I was reinstated at all of Noah Tepperberg’s establishments in perpetuity. And obviously, I never stepped foot in one of his places ever again. I wouldn’t darken their towels with my presence. But I just wanted them to know that I could walk into one of his businesses and act like an asshole with complete impunity. Having that hanging over their heads was enough compensation for me.
And the lesson here? Any situation can be used to your advantage. By being an asshole to Rich Thomas, I was able to have the biggest nightclub owner in Manhattan treating me like a juror. Oh, and always film everything. That really helps.
CHAPTER 8
SHTUPPING ZUCKERBERG:
HOW FACEBOOK
RUINED MY LIFE
I’d fucked around with employment before, but this was my first real job. My first foot on the career ladder. My first job title that actually meant something. Not that it meant anything, obviously. It was a job title. They never mean anything.
But, remarkably, I was about to use my MBA talents in an administrative capacity at New York–Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia University, one of the most esteemed medical facilities in the country, if not the world. Obviously I’d landed this role through nepotism rather than through any skill on my part. My dad worked in the medical field, and he’d pulled a few s
trings to get me a job that I was completely unsuited for. It’s the American dream.
So it was from this inauspicious vantage point that I dressed up to the proverbial GQ and headed way, way, way uptown for my first taste of the dreaded nine-to-five. Or, in fact, the eight-thirty-to-six.
At first it was quite exciting. I was given an ID and handed a catalogue of office supplies and equipment and ordered to pick out what I needed for the job and introduced to the gals in the typing pool and all that shit. Then I was shown to a “hot desk,” where a huge pile of sickening manila files were placed in front of me. My boss said, “Good luck,” and I was left alone. It was at that moment that I realized I had, in a George Costanza way, absolutely no fucking idea what I was supposed to do. None.
This wasn’t just initial confusion on the first day of a job in which everything would work out once I got the hang of it. It was utter fucking confusion at even the basic fundamentals concerning my employment. Nada. I flipped through the paperwork, saw spreadsheets and graphs, and realized I was completely out of my element.
I was too dumb, proud, or paralyzed with fear to ask anyone for help. What was I supposed to ask? “Excuse me, can you tell me how to do my job?” This was what I’d had years of expensive college and graduate school to learn. Exactly this kind of MBA stuff. And it instantly struck me that I had no idea how to do it. Higher education is great at teaching you about things. Really crappy at teaching you how to do things.
It was then that it struck me. I did not want to work this way. Ever. It was horrible. The cold, sterile drabness of a medical facility with the sound of nervous typing and hushed conversations and trips to the pisser to break up the day. Fuck, it was scrotum-shrinkingly depressing. Everyone and everything around me was ugly. The walls, the faces, the furniture. It was an absolute avalanche of misery. I would have bolted for the exit right there and then, but my parents would have instilled Jewish guilt within me. Dad had played many rounds of golf to get me here. I was ready to quit by eleven thirty.
Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?: Confessions of a First-Class Asshole Page 12