And from there I explained how that led me into the meat-and-seafood business and ultimately to Denise. It was at this point when my eyes began to well up with tears. With great sadness, I said, “…and we would get down on our hands and knees and roll up change to pay for shampoo. That’s how poor we were. When I lost all my money, I thought Denise would leave me. She was young and beautiful, and I was a failure. I was never all that confident with women, Patricia, in spite of what you or anyone else might think. When I first started making money in the meat business, I assumed it would somehow make up for that. And then when I met Denise, well, I was convinced that she loved me for my car. I had this little red Porsche back then, which was a pretty big deal for a kid in his early twenties, especially a kid from a poor family.
“I tell you the truth—when I first laid eyes on Denise I was absolutely blown away. She was like a vision. Absolutely gorgeous! My heart literally skipped a beat, Patricia. I was driving my truck that day and was trying to sell meat to the owner of the haircutting shop Denise worked at. Anyway, I chased her around the hair salon and asked her for her phone number a hundred times, but she wouldn’t give it to me. So I raced home, picked up my Porsche, and drove back and waited outside her shop to make sure she saw it when she came out!” At this point I flashed Patricia an embarrassed smile. “Can you imagine? What kind of man with any self-confidence does that? What a fucking embarrassment I was! Anyway, what’s really ironic is that since I started Stratton, every kid in America thinks it’s their fucking birthright to own a Ferrari by the age of twenty-one.” I shook my head and rolled my eyes.
Patricia smiled and said, “I suspect, love, that you’re not the first man to see a pretty girl and run home to get his fancy car. And I also suspect that you won’t be the last. In fact, not far from here there’s a section of the park called Rotten Row, where young men used to parade their horses around in front of the young ladies in the hopes of getting inside their bloomers one day.” Patricia chuckled at her own statement, then added, “You didn’t invent that game, love.”
I smiled graciously. “Well, I’ll give you that, but I still feel like a bit of a fool, anyway. As far as the rest of the story goes…you already know it. But the worst part is that when I left Denise for Nadine, it was all over the newspapers. What a fucking nightmare that must’ve been for Denise! I mean, she was a twenty-five-year-old girl who was dumped for some young hot model. And the newspapers painted her to be some old socialite who’d lost her sex appeal—like she was being traded in for a girl who still had some life left in her! That kinda stuff happens all the time on Wall Street, Patricia.
“My point is that Denise was young and beautiful too! Don’t you see the irony in that? Most rich men wait to trade in their first wives. I know you’re a smart lady, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. That’s the way of things on Wall Street, and, as you say, I didn’t invent that game. But everything in my life became accelerated. I missed my twenties and thirties and went straight to my forties. There are things that happen during those years that build a man’s character. Certain struggles, Patricia, that every man needs to go through to find out what it means to really be a man. I never went through that. I’m an adolescent inside a man’s body. I was born with certain gifts—from God—but I didn’t have the emotional maturity to use them in the right way. I was an accident waiting to happen.
“God gave me half the equation—the ability to lead people and to figure things out in ways that most people can’t. Yet He didn’t bless me with the restraint and patience to do the right thing with it.
“Anyway, everywhere Denise went, people would point at her and say, ‘Oh, that’s the one that Jordan Belfort dumped for the Miller Lite girl.’ I tell you the truth, Patricia, I should’ve been horsewhipped for what I did to Denise. I don’t care if it’s Wall Street or Main Street. What I did was in-fucking-excusable. I left a kind, beautiful girl, who’d stuck with me through thick and thin, who bet her future on me. And when her winning ticket finally came in—I canceled it on her. I’m gonna burn in hell for that one, Patricia. And I deserve to.”
I took a deep breath. “You can’t imagine how hard I tried to justify what I did, to place some blame on Denise. But I never could. Some things are just inherently wrong, and you can look at them from a thousand different angles but, at the end of the day, you always come to the same conclusion, which—in my case—is that I’m a dirty rotten scoundrel, who left his loyal first wife for a longer set of legs and a slightly prettier face.
“Listen, Patricia—I know it might be hard for you to be impartial in this matter, but I suspect that a woman of your character can look at things the way they oughta be looked at. The simple fact is that I’ll never be able to trust Nadine the way I trusted Denise. And no one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. Perhaps forty years from now, when we’re old and gray, well, then maybe I’ll consider trusting her. But that’s still a long shot.”
Patricia said, “I couldn’t agree with you more, love. Trusting any woman you met under those circumstances would require quite a leap of faith. But there’s no use torturing yourself over it. You can spend your whole life looking at Nadine through narrowed eyes and wondering ‘what if?’ In the end you might turn the whole thing into a self-fulfilling prophecy. When it’s all said and done, it’s the energy we send out into the universe that often comes back to us. That’s a universal law, love.
“But on a separate note, you know what they say about trust: In order to trust someone, you need to trust yourself. Are you trustworthy, love?”
Oh, boy! That was quite a question! I ran it through the mental computer and didn’t like the answer the computer spit back at me. I rose from the bench and said, “I have to stand, Patricia. My left leg is killing me from sitting so long. Why don’t we walk for a while? Let’s head toward the hotel. I want to see Speaker’s Corner. Maybe someone will be standing on a soapbox bashing John Major. He’s your prime minister, right?”
“Yes, love,” replied Patricia. She rose from the bench and hooked her arm in mine. We walked along the path, heading toward the hotel. Matter-of-factly, she said, “And then after we hear what the speaker has to say you can answer my last question, okay, love?”
This woman was too much! But I had to love her! My confessor! “All right, Patricia, all right! The answer to your question is: no! I’m a fucking liar and a cheater and I sleep with prostitutes the way most people put on socks—especially when I’m fucked up on drugs, which is about half the time. But even when I’m not high on drugs, I’m still a cheat. So there! Now you know. Are you happy?”
Patricia laughed at my little outburst, then shocked the hell out of me by saying, “Oh, love, everyone knows about the prostitutes—even your mother-in-law, my sister. It’s somewhat of a legend. I think in Nadine’s case, she’s decided to take the good with the bad. But what I was really asking was if you ever had an affair with another woman, a woman you had feelings for.”
“No, of course not!” I shot back with great confidence. And then, with less confidence, I took a moment to search my memory to see if I was telling the truth. I had never really cheated on Nadine, had I?…No, I really hadn’t. Not in the traditional sense of the word. What a happy thought Patricia had placed in my head! What a wonderful lady she was!
Still, this subject was something I would just as soon avoid, so I began talking about my back…and how the chronic pain was driving me insane…. I told her about the surgeries, which hadonly made it worse…and I explained how I’d tried taking narcotics—everything from Vicodin to morphine—and how they made me nauseous and depressed…so I took antinausea drugs and Prozac to offset the nausea and depression…but the nausea drugs gave me a headache, so I took Advil, which upset my stomach, so I took Zantac, to combat my stomachache, which raised my liver enzymes. Then I told her how the Prozac affected my sex drive and made my mouth dry…so I took Salagen to stimulate my salivary glands and yohimbe bark for the impotence…but in the end
I stopped taking those too. Ultimately, I explained, I had always come back to Quaaludes, which seemed to be the only drug that truly killed the pain.
We were just approaching Speaker’s Corner when I said sadly, “I fear that I’m completely addicted to drugs now, Patricia, and that even if my back didn’t hurt I still wouldn’t be able to stop taking them. I’m starting to have blackouts now, where I do things that I can’t remember. It’s pretty scary stuff, Patricia. It’s like part of your life has just evaporated—poof!—gone forever. But my point is that I flushed all my Quaaludes down the toilet and now I’m dying for one. I’ve actually been thinking about having my assistant send my driver over here on the Concorde, just so I can have some Ludes. That’ll cost me about twenty thousand dollars, for twenty Ludes. Twenty thousand dollars! But I’m still thinking about doing it.
“What can I say, Patricia? I’m a drug addict. I’ve never admitted that to anyone before, but I know it’s true. And everyone around me, including my own wife, is scared to confront me about it. In one way or another they all rely on me for their living, so they enable me. And cajole me.
“Anyway, that’s my story. It’s not a pretty picture. I live the most dysfunctional life on the planet. I’m a successful failure. I’m thirty-one going on sixty. Just how much longer I’ll make it on this earth, only God knows. But I do love my wife. And I have feelings for my baby girl that I never thought I was capable of. In a way, she’s what keeps me going. Chandler. She’s everything to me. I swore I would stop doing drugs after she was born, but who was I kidding? I’m incapable of stopping, at least for very long.
“I wonder what Chandler’ll think when she finds out that her daddy is a drug addict? I wonder what she’ll think when her daddy winds up in jail? I wonder what she’ll think when she’s old enough to read all the articles and finds out about her daddy’s exploits with hookers? I dread that day, Patricia, I sincerely do. And I have no doubt that day will come. It’s all very sad, Patricia. Very, very sad…”
And, with that, I was done. I had spilled my guts like never before. Did I feel any better for it? Alas, not really. I still felt exactly the same. And my left leg was still killing me, in spite of the walking.
I waited for some sort of sage response from Patricia, a response which never came. I guess that’s not what confessors are all about. All Patricia did was hold my arm tighter, perhaps pull me a little closer to her, to let me know that—in spite of it all—she still loved me and that she always would.
There was no one speaking at Speaker’s Corner. Most of the action, Patricia told me, occurred on the weekends. But that was appropriate. On this particular Wednesday, enough words were spoken in Hyde Park to fill a lifetime. And for a brief instant, the Wolf of Wall Street became Jordan Belfort again.
But it was short-lived. Up ahead in the distance, I could see the Dorchester Hotel rising up nine stories above the bustling streets of London.
And the one thought that occupied my mind was what time the Concorde would be leaving the United States—and how long it would take to arrive in Britain.
CHAPTER 16
RELAPSE BEHAVIOR
If I earn a million dollars a week and the average American earns a thousand dollars a week, then when I spend twenty thousand dollars on something it’s the equivalent of the average American spending twenty dollars on something, right?
It was an hour later, and I was sitting in the Presidential Suite in the Dorchester Hotel when that fabulous rationalization came bubbling up into my brain. In fact, the whole thing made so much sense that I picked up the phone, dialed Janet, woke her up out of a dead sleep, and calmly said, “I want you to send George over to Alan Chemical-tob’s house and have him pick up twenty Ludes for me, then have him fly them over on the next Concorde, okay?” Only as an afterthought did it occur to me that Bayside was five hours behind London, which meant it was four a.m., Janet time.
But my twinge of guilt was short-lived; after all, it wasn’t the first time I’d done something like this to her, and I had a sneaky suspicion it wouldn’t be the last. Anyway, I was paying her five times the going rate for personal assistants, so in essence hadn’t I purchased the right to wake her up? Or, if not that, hadn’t I earned the right to wake her up through the love and kindness I’d extended toward her, like the father she never had? (Another wonderful rationalization!)
Obviously so—because, without missing a beat, Janet was now wide awake and eager to please. She cheerfully responded, “No problem; I’m pretty sure the next Concorde leaves early tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure George is on it. But I don’t have to send him to Alan’s house. I have an emergency stash for you right here in my apartment.” She paused for a brief instant, then added, “Where are you calling me from, the hotel room?”
Before I answered yes, I found myself wondering what sort of conclusions could be drawn about a man who could call his assistant and ask her to use supersonic transport to satiate his raging drug habit and his obvious desire to self-destruct and not even get a raised eyebrow in return. It was a troubling thought, so I chose not to dwell on it very long. I said to Janet, “Yeah, I’m in the room. Where else would I be calling you from, numnuts, one of those red phone booths in Piccadilly Circus?”
“Fuck you!” she shot back. “I was just wondering.” Then she changed her tone to one of great hope and asked, “Do you like the room better than the one in Switzerland?”
“Yeah—it’s much nicer, sweetie. It’s not exactly my taste, but everything is new and beautiful. You did good.”
I paused and waited for a response, but none came. Christ! She wanted a full-blown description of the room—her vicarious thrill of the day. What a pain in the ass she was! I smiled into the phone and said, “Anyway, like I was saying, the room is really nice. According to the hotel manager it’s decorated in the British traditional fashion—whatever the fuck that means! But the bedroom’s really nice, especially the bed. It’s got a huge canopy with lots of blue fabric everywhere. The Brits must like blue, I guess. And they also must like pillows, because the room has about a thousand of them.
“Anyway, the rest of the place is stuffed with all sorts of British crap. There’s a huge dining-room table with one of those sterling-silver candelabras on it. It reminds me of Liberace. Danny’s room is on the opposite side of the suite from mine, but he’s gallivanting around the streets of London right now—like that song ‘Werewolves of London.’
“And that’s it. No other info to relay, other than my precise location, which I’m sure you’d like to know too. So I’ll tell you before you ask: I’m standing on the room’s balcony, and I’m looking at Hyde Park and talking to you. I can’t really see that much, though. It’s too foggy. Are you happy now?”
“Uh-huh,” was all she said.
“How much is the room? I didn’t look when I checked in.”
“Nine thousand pounds per night, which is about thirteen thousand dollars. It sounds like it’s worth it, though, right?”
I took a moment to consider her question. It was a mystery to me why I felt compelled to always book the Presidential Suite, no matter how ludicrous the price. I was certain that it had something to do with watching Richard Gere do it in the movie Pretty Woman, which was one of my all-time favorites. But it was deeper than that. There was this feeling I got whenever I walked up to the check-in counter of a fancy hotel and uttered those magic words: “My name is Jordan Belfort, and I’m here to check into the Presidential Suite.” Well—I knew it was because I was an insecure little bastard, but what the hell!
With sarcasm, I said, “Thanks for reminding me of the exchange rate, Ms. World Banker. I’d almost forgotten. Anyway, the room’s definitely a fucking bargain at thirteen Gs a night. Although I really think it should come with a slave for that price, don’t you?”
“I’ll try to find you one,” said Janet. “But either way I got you a late checkout for tomorrow, so we only have to pay for one night. See how I’m always watching your money
? By the way, how’s Nadine’s aunt?”
Instantly I plunged into paranoia mode—calculating the possibility of our phone conversation being bugged. Would the FBI have the audacity to tap Janet’s phone? No, it was inconceivable! There was a heavy cost to tapping someone’s phone and nothing meaningful was ever discussed on this line, unless of course the feds were intent on busting me for being a sexual deviant or a rip-roaring drug addict. But what about the British? Was there a possibility that MI6 was trailing me for a crime I hadn’t even committed yet? No, also inconceivable! They had their hands full with the IRA, didn’t they? Why would they give a shit about the Wolf of Wall Street and his devilish plans to corrupt a retired schoolteacher? They would not. Satisfied our conversation was secure, I replied, “She’s doing great. I just dropped her off at her flat. That’s what they call apartments here, Janet.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” said the obnoxious one.
“Oh, excuse me. I was unaware that you were such a world-fucking-traveler. Anyway, I need to stay in London an extra day. I have some business here. So book the hotel for an extra night and make sure the plane is waiting for me at Heathrow on Friday morning. And tell the pilot it’s gonna be a same-day turnaround. Patricia’s going back that afternoon, okay?”
With typical Janet sarcasm: “I’ll do whatever you say, boss”—why always such contempt with this word, boss?—“but I don’t see why you feel the need to bullshit me about why you’re staying in London an extra day.”
How had she known? Was it really that obvious I wanted to get Luded out in privacy—outside the prying eyes of the Swiss bankers? No, it was just that Janet knew me so well. She was sort of like the Duchess in that respect. But since I didn’t lie to Janet as much as to my wife, she was that much better at anticipating when I was up to no good.
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