And the drugs definitely helped. Once I was high, I would do anything, no matter how crazy. The problem was I started to have more and more smoking-hot girls in my bed, but a limp dick in my hand. So I phased out the coke, but the confidence remained. I was JRL now. I acted like I was on coke all the time, but I didn’t actually need it anymore.
And once JRL came into the picture and started to gain some notoriety, that was game over pussy-wise. Women just want to fuck JRL, under any circumstances. I was this disgusting, obnoxious, arrogant, privileged kosher pig. They thought there must be some hidden depths there to explore. Instead they just found more and more hidden shallows.
And then I started to realize the value of using women as props. Not only could they help you get into any club in town; they also enhanced my social media profile. Don’t get me wrong, I could look at pictures of me all the time, but stick some beautiful girl with a beautiful cleavage hanging all over me, and the likes and the shares will grow as much as the semierect pricks checking out the image.
It was the rabbi’s daughter who first tipped me off to this. Originally she was another one-night stand. But she was funny, and we started hanging out more and more until she became a full-time sidekick. She was great for generating material. This whole notion of the daughter of a rabbi shtupping the ultimate Jew was just too great. Soon I was on Facebook making gags about holes in the sheets and taking her up the kibbutz. It was perfect and got me a lot of shares and a growing legion of followers.
But the rabbi’s daughter, and the various women who took her place, knew they were being used as props, sometimes without admitting it. They were always in on the joke. Plus they got to enjoy all that JRL runoff. The first-class trips, luxury lounges, the VIP rooms, the swanky meals, the hottest clubs. Even if it was all bullshit. We all have our price.
And speaking of price, it was because of this behavior that my inner man whore became an outie. I was contacted by a crazed JRL superfan. Incredibly she was also a rabbi’s daughter (now this is the second I’ve shtupped), except her dad was some Israeli Orthodox superrabbi, with curls to boot. She’d gone off the rails and ended up, as many do, down in Florida. She was holed up at the Hard Rock Casino near Fort Lauderdale, where she’d lost a small fortune and couldn’t leave until she’d won it back. Impeccable logic. She wanted me to head down there and spend some time with her.
Of course, I was appalled. Tickled and appalled. I told her how busy I was, how much money I would lose by schlepping down south, and how I couldn’t be bought and sold. Which of course I can. We came to some arrangement where she would “reimburse” me for my time and all I had to do was act like her boyfriend for a few days.
It was demented, and $1,200 was agreed upon. I was flown down there and instantly installed in her suite. It wasn’t even as if she were horrible looking. In fact, she had an incredible body. Her face . . . not so much. But when she put on the huge sunglasses that I insisted she wear at all times (even in the sack), she was definitely passable. I convinced her that constant shade wearing was all part of the JRL celebrity mystique. And, incredibly, she believed me.
I even “borrowed” her Mercedes for the day and took my ninety-five-year-old grandmother out for a joyride. I even brought her to eat at the casino, on my john’s tab, of course. I adore my grandma and could never tell her that my surprise visit was completely funded by a rabbi’s demented daughter who was paying me cold hard cash to plow her. That would be gauche.
And as much as I bragged to my pals about this whole situation and sent them pictures of this yenta who was giving me money in exchange for marital duties, I actually felt pretty grubby. After a couple of days, I wanted out. Of course, by this time she was completely in love with me. It all started to get a bit scary as she begged me to stay and made it clear that if I tried to leave, bad things could happen to me. I nearly had to call the cops to get me out of the situation. That would have been an interesting phone conversation.
Once this period of man-whoring was over, I realized the power of JRL. But I didn’t quite understand just how far this reputation had stretched. And then I went to Sweden.
I’ll delve into the international reach of the JRL legend elsewhere, but let me make a brief aside to discuss the merits of the women of Sweden. If you were not aware, Swedish women are the most sensational women in the world. Our nines and tens are their sixes and sevens. It is unreal. A nation of supermodels. And they love American men. If you can offer them something different, they will be all over you.
And there’s nothing more unusual and alluring to beautiful Swedish eyes than JRL. In their socialist paradise, a conceited, self-obsessed, capitalist putz like me is irresistible. On my first trip, the second I stepped onto the tarmac from the plane, I was besieged by obscenely hot nineteen- or twenty-year-olds who grabbed at me like I was the Jewish Justin Bieber.
Before the trip, I’d chatted online with a few girls who promised me a good time when I got to their country. But the reality was far beyond anything I could have ever imagined. There were girls throwing themselves at me, each cuter than the last. I’d see chicks too hot for Victoria’s Secret runway shows hurl vodka bottles at each other and engage in a full-on catfight in order to sit next to me.
And there were no games. No fucking around. It was all so practical. “What time can you get out of here so you can fuck me?” That sort of thing. There were no hang-ups. For a pussy hound like me, it was some sort of paradise. Too much of a paradise. I turned it into my own personal hell. I had to start saying no.
I was disgusted with myself, but after a few days of an endless conveyor belt featuring nonstop stunning shiksas, I was exhausted. In the past, when it was harder to get any, I would pretend to say no to get some. But now that I could have any chick in the room, I had to start turning it down for the purpose of self-preservation. I simply could not fuck anymore. And turning down the chance to violate a six-foot, blond Amazonian broke my fucking heart. But I guess these were first-world problems.
So I’ve had a certain amount of luck and a certain amount of brilliance. But now I know that if the pussy well ever did run dry, I could always move to Sweden and dip my bucket endlessly.
Of course, I was much more single then. Now I have the perfect ally in my darling Kate. If you’ve seen some Instagram photo of mine accompanied by comments along the lines of “Holy shit! Who is that chick with the impeccable rack?” that’s Kate. The perfect JRL complement. A beautiful girl who is up for anything anywhere. Pack your bags in the middle of the night, and bring your passport—we’re heading to JFK. Who knows how to play the game and accept my insanity. Here’s a tip for you: get out there and find your own Kate. Except you can’t. There’s only one Kate. God, do I love her.
The Pre-Closing Technique
My initial seduction technique with Jill taught me many things. The most important was the power of groundwork.
Now, my powers both in person and via whatever electronic medium I choose to utilize are equally magnificent. But back in the early days, I was much more of a mensch when dealing with someone remotely.
Once I became a full-blown slut scout, I adapted this technique not only to save my precious time, but also to ensure a conquest. Rather than attempt to talk to a woman in a club with music blaring and assholes throwing beer on you, you’d get her digits with the promise to speak to her later.
Then you’d start an electronic relationship, casual at first. Just a few texts a week. Then you gradually increased the volume. You start to listen to her troubles. You gain her trust. You sympathize with the shit that’s going on in her life (and there’s always shit going on in a woman’s life). And, most importantly, you make her laugh. You entertain her.
It’s so much easier to control the flow of information and the topics covered when this is all done via text or e-mail. You might have trouble coming up with the perfect zinger when under pressure, but if you’ve got a bit of breathing space, you can provide a brilliant retort that illustrate
s just how great you are.
And slowly these girls start to imagine that they know you. You’re in their heads. Then you can start to play a little. Suddenly they don’t hear from you for a couple of days. They get nervous, get worried. Then you come roaring back, and they’re relieved that you’re installed in their lives once more.
After all of this pre-closing and flirtation, once you actually meet the person in the flesh, getting laid is guaranteed. Sometimes, at the height of my pre-closing powers, I’d be inside a girl within seconds of physically meeting her for the first time. And this maneuver is a great way to bag women who are way out of your league.
If you approach a completely unapproachable girl in a club or a bar, she can judge you within seconds and decide whether you are not right for her. But with the luxury of a prolonged session of virtual chat, you can convince her of what a stud you are before having to prove yourself.
It was by this method that I managed to entangle myself with an unbelievably smoking-hot thirty-eight-year-old. The textbook, dictionary definition of a MILF. Not that you see “MILF” in many textbooks or dictionaries. I was twenty-one or twenty-two at the time and had no right at all being anywhere near this woman. Not only was she married (to one of Hartford’s leading bar owners and restaurateurs), possibly with kids, but she was so far out of my league, too, that we weren’t even playing the same sport.
But I just began to ply her with positive reinforcement, the way a less reputable player would have plied her with roofies. I built up her confidence, constantly told her how magical she was, made her giggle, made her feel good, and then pulled the plug. She messaged and I didn’t message back. Not for a few hours.
“What happened to you?”
I just fed her some bullshit line, but by then she needed me. Or felt like she needed me. I was offering her a bit of respite from her meaningless life. Once I’d started with the communication again, I had her hooked. Soon we turned the virtual into the physical, and she’d come over, do blow, and fuck my brains out.
She should have known better. She really should have known better. She was nearly twice my age, and I was playing her like a Jew armed with a calculator at a car dealership. But that just shows you the power of the pre-close. I went on to use this method many, many times with many, many shiksas.
And I wasn’t doing anything bad. I was showering them with compliments. I was making them feel good. And I honestly did want to fuck all these people. This wasn’t some sick power play. I really wanted to bang them, and, eventually, they wanted to bang me. No strings attached. They all had lives elsewhere. I just wanted to spend a little time to ensure I wasn’t wasting my time.
Sure, it could be considered a little manipulative. But are there any other parts of a relationship that don’t involve manipulation? I just did manipulation via text so I could be completely in control. So don’t blame me. Blame my service provider.
CHAPTER 10
CLOCKING IN AND FUCKING OFF
Foolishly, in an attempt to prove something vague to someone vaguer, I decided to get a job. Not just any job . . . a retail job.
Working in a retail environment is, quite obviously, the lowest form of employment. It has no positives at all. It’s low paid, it’s exhausting, you are dealing with assholes constantly, both with the customers and with your coworkers. It has no redeeming attributes whatsoever. But, to show my parents that I wasn’t completely worthless, I decided I needed to get a job and demonstrate my abilities. And, of course, I failed and revealed myself to have no abilities. At least none that were going to help me with my retail career.
It was all utterly doomed from the beginning. For a start, I used my nepotistic tendencies to get the fucking thing. My father had once played golf with Kenneth Cole. So I applied for a role at the Kenneth Cole store in Grand Central Station. On the application I basically wrote, “My dad played golf with your boss,” and I got the job. I didn’t deserve it and soon proved that I was incapable of executing even the most basic of tasks on any level. But they were too shit scared to fire me. My dad had golfed with Kenneth Cole.
I was seventeen. No one wants to buy shoes from a seventeen-year-old. I was a goofy, panicking, pampered piece of shit who was completely out of his depth. We worked on commission, so this was a toxic, competitive atmosphere. Old, seasoned salesmen who resented anyone taking bread out of their poorly maintained mouths fucking hated me and tried to get me out of the picture immediately.
No one ever showed me how to do anything. Not to fold, not to file, not to ring up a sale, not to find anything in the terrifying basement storeroom that had trains rumbling next to your head and rats fucking merrily on the slingbacks. I had my pride, of course, and refused to show any signs of weakness. So I acted like an utterly arrogant fuck—toward my colleagues; toward my bitch manager, who hated me; toward the customers, who showed no taste at all in selecting this cheap Chinese-manufactured crap to put on their feet. It was a slow-motion car crash taking place every day in my workplace.
After two weeks of trying to fit in, I started to act up. One morning I waltzed in wearing a $700 Hermès belt. It was a thing of beauty and outshone any of the accessories we were desperately trying to sell.
As soon as she spotted it, my bitch manageress took me aside. “You can’t wear that here,” she told me.
“Why not?”
“It’s not an item we stock. What if a customer sees that and wants to buy it?”
“I’d tell them where to find it.”
“But we can only promote goods that are designed by Kenneth Cole.”
“Really? You see, I don’t really think of Kenneth Cole as a designer.”
This didn’t go down well. Like all management in a franchise like this, she had a near-demonic devotion to the man at the top. He’d probably patted her ass at a Christmas party or a company picnic or something. She probably drooled over his profile in Fortune magazine while rubbing one out every night. Who the fuck knows, but she was pissed by my insolence. So I needed to be punished. And she selected the ultimate humiliation for me. I was moved to the ladies’ section.
If I was completely unsuited to selling men’s shoes, I was almost criminally incapable of selling tasteless shit to fat suburbanites passing through the train station on their way to getting ripped off at a Broadway show while stuffing Milk Duds into their hideous faces. It was farcical.
One glaring problem was that our outlet was pretty small and didn’t carry a massive amount of stock. If the customer wanted something in a size or color we didn’t carry, we were supposed to call around to other stores and locate what they wanted elsewhere. But, of course, by doing this, we’d lose commission. So I perfected the art of the fake, one-way phone call. I would pretend to telephone our flagship store on Fifth Avenue and see if they had what the customer required. They never did, of course, and most times the dumbfucks would settle for a different color or size and I’d make my money.
Then one day this bitch came in and wanted a handbag. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she instantly hated me. I turned my obsequiousness up to eleven, but she still wasn’t happy and acted like I was liberally smeared with dog shit. We didn’t have the exact bag she wanted, so I offered to call another store. I picked up the phone and made pretend small talk with the ghost on the other end.
Due to her diligence, I must have laid it on a little too thick and talked for way too long, because the unmistakable sound of a phone that’s been off the hook began to blare out. She went ballistic, of course. She accused me of never making the call and attempting to both defraud and humiliate her while I made up some lame excuse about the phone system having a few bugs in it.
She went off and ratted me out to the manageress. Then she stormed out of the store. I knew they were desperate to fire me, so I used every excuse I could think of to save my skin. I claimed she was deranged and had tried to steal the bag and had done the same thing the week before and was an anti-Semite. Any shit that came to mind, basically. I
was desperate not to seem like a glorious fuckup in the eyes of my parents and wanted to keep this job for at least the rest of the summer. And so she let me slide. Just. And made it very clear that my next fuckup would be my last.
So it’s pretty great that my next fuckup was also my best. I sold a woman two left shoes. Deliberately. Now I’m Al fucking Bundy. Not my finest hour. She came in. She was a bitch. She wanted these particular hideous pumps. I went down to the horror basement to get them. I realized that I’d fucked up and had shown them to another customer previously and not put them away properly. Then I saw an actual rat in the basement stockroom fucking right next to my head and panicked, grabbed two left versions of the same shoe, ran upstairs, and sold them to her. Obviously she came back the next day and was pissed beyond belief. She shouted at me, she shouted at my manager, and she shouted at the imperial logo of Kenneth Cole on the wall.
I knew that was it. I was gone. So I said, “Look, the bitch had two left feet when she was in here yesterday.”
And then I walked out.
This experience, plus the previously chronicled disaster at New York–Presbyterian Hospital, proved one thing to me: I am not built for conventional work.
It’s just not in me. I come from a long line of maverick entrepreneurs. People who never took a train to an office. People who made their own hours and took a day off when they wanted to. People who felt physically sick when someone told them what to do. And I was just like them. It was in my DNA.
Idiots look at my life and assume I’m lazy. I work incredibly hard. But I work hard to make my life easy. I work hard at scoring the best deals on first-class flights. I sweat over getting my face in gossip rags and my name in newspaper columns. I spend considerable time taking the perfect shot to slap up on Instagram. Living my life the way I live it takes work. I just don’t have a boss. And I never wear a tie.
Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?: Confessions of a First-Class Asshole Page 15