8 | JACK WILSON
November 24, 2005
I’M ROPED INTO A DINNER WITH THE GUYS AT CHAPPY who cover our desk. It’s Thanksgiving and they are looking for something fun to do, which typically means something without their families. I’m still feeling resentment toward Julia over the dinner with Oliver and Sybil. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is but I feel it. On an intellectual level, I know the healthy thing to do is go tell her I feel resentful and try to address it directly. On an emotional and every other level, I’m repelled at the idea of that kind of conversation with her. It makes me uncomfortable and I’m not sure I even want to admit to her or to myself that a dinner with Oliver can make me feel resentful. Anyway, a Thanksgiving night work event gives me an excuse to do something away from home with Chappy.
When we buy or sell in and out of positions, we often put the trade through Chappy, who will find the other party in the transaction for us, sometimes keeping us or the other party anonymous so the rest of the Street doesn’t know our positions. Chappy never takes a risk on a position; they don’t actually buy anything themselves, they just broker two parties together and take a piece of the transaction. We put a lot of trades through Chappy, so they like to make sure we’re properly entertained and don’t take our business to another brokerage shop. We spread it around to a few shops, but it’s human nature to give a little back to the guys who just sprung for a nice dinner. And even more so if that dinner is followed by a lap dance and cocaine.
Doing drugs can form a bond between men. The way couples can build on the foundation of the first big laugh shared or the revealing of a secret, when men get high together it is an intimate act, revealing in its own way. The person has shared something with the other, knows something about the other as though they are part of a special club that likely doesn’t include even a person’s wife, kids, or parents.
We meet at Bistro 18 on Prince Street in SoHo. Jack Wilson runs the desk at Chappy that covers our products. Jack is my age and played baseball at Syracuse. We have a few college friends in common since I know some of the lacrosse players from there. He has black hair with premature gray evenly set around his head instead of just at the temples, and I think he’ll be completely white-haired in ten years. He’s about five seven, average build, but his face and neck are swollen from alcohol. The way cookie dough flattens when baked, his features have melted down to be almost flat and unrecognizable. There is enough left to see that it had once been a good-looking face but this now just makes him look unnatural and worse.
He’s very jolly, always backslapping and laughing too loud, head roving around and eyes active, constantly searching for the next excuse to bark another laugh and slap another back. He brought with him his schlep, Tyler Atwood, who goes by Woody. I have William with me. Woody and William are about the same age and regular abusers of the Chappy expense budget. They make the rounds to the strip clubs and massage parlors together, but in this area there is no one like Jack. He makes no pretense of doing actual office work but delegates it to Woody and others. He focuses entirely on forging that special bond of coke and strippers with as many on Wall Street as possible. The more people that join the Jack Wilson Club, the more money he makes.
He’s out to the morning hours four or five times each week. He knows the best coke dealers, and as their best customer, they all know him and give special treatment. They’ll meet him anywhere, anytime, with whatever he wants. If Jack’s with a group, everyone is taken care of. If he runs out, the dealer will send someone to stand on the corner outside the restaurant to deliver more.
Most strip clubs require that you pay real cash for play cash to give to the girls. Monopoly money that the girls cash back in with management at the end of the night. Keeps them honest, I guess. I heard Jack was recorded as having spent the second-largest amount of money in some club last year. First was some billionaire from Moscow.
“Hey, Jack.” His face is looking even puffier and more engorged than when I last saw him. He and Woody are leaning against the bar, vodka drinks in hand.
“Nick, how ya doing, my man? Looking good as always. Haven’t seen you in a few. How ya been? Everything good?” Jack has a way of asking multiple questions in his greetings, none of which requires a response.
“Everything’s good.”
“Good to see you, William!” Jack gives him a push and a laugh.
“Hi, Jack. Good to see you.” William is a little starstruck. We’re the customers, the Chappy guys have to entertain us, but Jack is a sort of legend. No one goes at it harder, and William and his friends have been repeating Jack Wilson stories for the last few years to the point they’ve created a demigod for themselves.
“Cocktails on the table, boys.” Jack turns to the bar, where six more vodka sodas are already poured. Two to me, two to William, and one more each to Jack and Woody so there isn’t a free hand among us. “Michael!” Jack calls to the headwaiter and they exchange nods and we walk to our table in back.
We drop into our seats, go to work on our drinks, and survey the restaurant. For an old New York restaurant known for its steak, this place always has pretty girls, and usually a few doubtful ladies loitering by the bar. “William, I hear you’re engaged.” Jack shakes his head. “You stupid bastard.”
“Yeah, I guess it was time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time to get married. She was ready and I’m okay with it. I caved on this one. She’s talking about kids, but I’m not caving on that.”
“No? Never?”
“No way. Never.” William’s emphatic.
“So, you just decided to screw the same woman for the rest of your life?”
The table is quiet for a moment, appreciating the question. Jack has a point. “Well, I just didn’t want anyone else screwing her.”
“Her little sister is just as hot,” Woody says. “When are you setting me up?”
“Not a chance. I have enough to deal with right now.” Apparently William isn’t completely devoid of common sense.
“Yeah, what’s up?” I ask. I know it isn’t anything from the office monopolizing his time.
“Wedding planning. I’m getting pulled into more of it than I thought I would.”
“What kind of stuff?” asks Woody, inquiring about a foreign land.
“You can’t imagine how much. The place, the menu, the invitations, the kind of silverware, napkins, and chairs, the centerpieces, even the kind of doily under the drinks. That’s just part of it. There’s transportation and hotels, photographer, videographer, flowers, minister. All I want to do is the band.”
“Are you guys planning this yourselves?”
“No, we have a guy. Flaming guy. We still need to see stuff and make all the decisions. Every time I show a hint that I don’t care about something, she gets pissed.”
“Let me give you some advice, William,” I say. “Don’t tell her it doesn’t matter to you. They don’t care what your opinion is. Only that you have an opinion. Just pick something, then get out of bounds. She’ll probably pick something else, but she’ll appreciate that you offer an opinion.” I don’t totally believe this, but I do about fifty percent of the time, and it’s safe advice.
“Spoken like the only married man at the table,” laughs Jack.
“Only six years, but I’ve learned some survival techniques.” And I realize they were just that. Julia and I have been only surviving.
“William, you should listen to your boss. A wise man.” Jack makes a toasting motion with his glass. “Did you act like a gentleman? Did you ask her father’s permission to marry her?”
Woody rocks back in his chair, laughing with a hand over his mouth. “William, tell the story. You have to.” Apparently Woody has heard the story already and it’s a good one.
“I did ask.” William looks at the center of the table, smiling. “I’m going to need a bump before I tell this one. Anyone have a white bag?”
“Of course, young man.” Jack reaches in his pocket, then slides in plain view across the table a small ziplock cellophane bag the size of a fifty-cent piece, the kind a store would put earrings in. This one is packed with chalky white cocaine.
“Be right back.” William puts it in his pocket, pushes back from the table, and walks past the bar to the staircase leading to the men’s room upstairs.
Aside from the good food and great-looking women, Bistro 18 is mainly popular for having a perfect cocaine bathroom. Most restaurant bathrooms in New York have a few urinals and a couple toilets and there are people coming in and out of there like Grand Central. There’s no privacy in the room and you can’t snort a bunch of coke up your beak with that going on. Snorting is a loud, obnoxious sound, even to other coke users and especially to nonusers, and it attracts a lot of attention. The best bathrooms have a single stall and a lock on the door. That way you can make yourself comfortable in private. You don’t need to cut up lines the way they do in the movies. You just dip in the tip of an apartment key and lift out a pile, maybe the size of a mini chocolate chip, and wedge it up the nostril.
William is back in less than five minutes. “Okay. Yes, I did go to ask for permission.” We’re all leaning forward, already small bursts of laughter happening in anticipation of this debacle. “Keep in mind, they live in Arizona, so I don’t see them much. We’ve met only a couple times before this.” He takes a drink, enjoying the effect of his pauses. “So we fly out there. Jen knows I’m going to do this, so she goes out shopping with her mom, and her dad and I stay home at their place for some alone time watching college football. We’re all set with our beers and the game on, having some nice guy-bonding time, and I can’t figure out any smooth transition so I just go right in. I tell him I love Jen, I want to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her.” He takes another sip. Woody bursts out laughing, which makes the rest of us laugh wondering where this is going. William is a good storyteller. He’ll have a nice career as a salesman.
“Her dad looks stunned, and I think a little alarmed. After at least a full minute of looking right at me, he says, ‘Well, I’m concerned about this.’”
“So he has a pulse,” says Jack.
“He then proceeds to rake me over the coals with an interview. Keep in mind, he’s withholding any sort of ‘yes, you have my permission.’ He says, and I quote, ‘Tell me about yourself.’”
“Jesus, I hope you didn’t.” Jack is loving this story. Nothing gets him energized like this, like a dog being fed a strip steak, eating it down so fast he’s barely chewing.
“So I told him I smoke, I drink too much, I do cocaine, I like strippers, love hookers, I think his other daughter is pretty hot, and I’d kinda like to nail her too.”
Silence. We sit looking at William, blinking. Woody snickers, still with his hand over his mouth. I look at William, my face expressionless except my eyebrows are as high as my forehead can pull them, trying to decide if it is possible that he said those words.
“Are you serious?” Jack looks at William with awe. An almost impossible expression for his face.
“No. But I wish I had. The guy was such an ass.”
“What did you really say?”
“I just told him where I’m from, where I went to school, I work hard and career is important, I want kids, and family is most important.”
“Was he buying it?”
“Not really. He said he’s concerned about my drinking and my quote unquote nightlife.”
“You’re famous in Arizona now?”
“Jen must have told her parents a few things. She’s close with her mom. I guess when we argue, she talks to the mom, then the mom talks to the dad.”
“So how did it wrap up?”
“Well, I was getting pissed. I didn’t count on the third degree. I would tell him it’s under control but he kept pushing, so finally I told him, look, this is just a courtesy. I don’t appreciate getting grilled.”
“Jesus. And you’re still getting married.”
“At the end he let it go. He said of course they’d support our decision to get married. So then we watched the game in total silence for two hours until Jen and her mom got back.”
“You’re off to a beautiful start. I’m sure he’ll give a lovely toast at the wedding.”
Appetizers and more drinks arrive. Jack and Woody make trips to the men’s room. Coke doesn’t inhibit the drinking but it does knock back the appetite. Probably why Jack’s whole body isn’t fat, just his face.
William asks, “Hey, Nick, what’s the deal with that guy Fred Cook who keeps coming around the office to talk with you? Guy looks like a real douche.”
I turn to William. “Watch it, twerp.”
“Doesn’t he work in the risk group?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s worried about all the crap you guys are slinging around?” Jack asks. Jack is a drunk but he also has a lot more sophistication about the markets than William or Woody.
“I suppose he is a little.”
“He should be. Mortgage market is overheated. Everyone has a story about their dog walker buying a mansion. And the credit default market is just creating more leverage. Getting so there’s more insurance on bonds than actual bonds.”
“That feels true. I’m mainly doing CDS trades instead of the bonds,” says William.
“We’re just moving this crap around and around and around. There’s no way this paper’s as good as where it’s priced. If the insurance ever actually gets pulled in, the whole thing is screwed.” Jack actually looks a little distressed.
“Careful, Jack, don’t put that in an email,” I say. “We’ve been warned about that. Verbally warned. Email is like signing, notarizing, and filing a statement with the SEC.”
William seems like he’s barely paying attention. “Things always wind up and then unwind, that’s just the way it goes.” He speaks like a kid who has never had anything catch up with him in his whole life yet.
Jack seems to recognize that he is not playing his usual role as the reckless one. “That’s an awfully long view of the world, four years out of college.” He takes another drink. “Maybe you’re right, though.” He seems to want to change the conversation, and so do I.
“That hostess looks good to me,” Jack says looking across the room with intent as though trying to read the lettering on a billboard that is just out of range. I hadn’t noticed on the way in, and the three of us turn in unison to see a hostess that is decidedly not hot. She’s a bit overweight but not so much that she won’t wear skintight pants and a tube top that accentuates her potbelly. Her hair is weirdly punked out, her nose is hooked, and she has layered on eye shadow that is one shade more heinous than interstate blue.
“Jack, what are you talking about?” Woody has genuine concern in his voice, like a relative at the bedside of a sick and delusional man.
“What do you mean? You would turn that down?”
“Yes, I would turn that down.”
“Come on. She’s sexy.”
“She has a big ass and an ugly face.”
“She has nice shoulders. You can see the muscle definition in her traps. Makes me want to rub them.” I’ve seen this before with Jack. He manages to find a single redeeming feature in an otherwise unattractive woman. It isn’t always the shoulders. It could be the chest, legs, or lips. He’ll lock on to that feature and want to sleep with the woman. There’s some flattery in there for women unaccustomed to it, but when I look at Jack’s glare, I know this makes him more greedy than generous.
“You need help, buddy.” Woody shakes his head, unable to generate any feeling of sexual attraction for the hostess.
William is also frowning and looking confused. “Jack, let’s get out to a strip club after dinner. We’ll go up to Scores. We need to recalibrate your settings.”
“Man, I got busted by my girlfriend a couple nights ago,” says Woody.
“For what?” Clearly it could have been any number of things.
“For going to Scores. She knows I go but she doesn’t like it so I usually don’t tell her. She thinks I go a couple times a year when I absolutely have to for work. I just tell her I’ve been out drinking.”
“How’d she bust you?” William sees an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others.
“The stripper glitter.”
“Stripper glitter?”
“The what?” Jack and I get this out at the same time. We’ve been around a while and haven’t heard this one.
“You know. The lotion with the sparkles in it that they rub all over themselves. Makes them glitter when they dance around. I got home early enough that night that Beth was still up. I gave her a kiss and when I looked down she was glittering! At the same time she looked up and saw I was glittering. It was all over my face and neck and arms. Jig was up.”
Stripper glitter. Jack and I can add that to our vocabulary. A contribution from the next generation of lap dancees. The glitter lotion must be a new thing. I’m getting old.
“Right. That goddamn stripper glitter. It’s hard to get off.” William purses his lips, trying to solve the riddle.
“Nick, you haven’t been, you must be dying.” Jack tosses the white bag over the table and it lands on my fork.
“Thanks.” I shove it away in my pant pocket and head for the men’s room. I climb the spiral staircase feeling the coke like stones in my pocket. Closing the bathroom door behind me and locking in my solitude gives me a fleeting feeling of comfort and safety, until I pull out the bag and put it on the ledge of the sink. I lean over, hands braced on either side of the sink well the way a person does when he might throw up, and I stare down at the little white bag.
Ten years ago I did blow without thinking much about it. Just isolated moments that did no harm. Of course I knew it wasn’t great. You just need to hear yourself snorting to know something isn’t right. But I didn’t have the knowledge then that it isn’t an isolated moment, that there is a cumulative effect, that it can spread like a cancer through the rest of your life. I was innocent of that then. A kid having fun who didn’t know better, maybe shouldn’t know better. Now I do know better. Doing it now means more.
I try to imagine William and Woody with a few years more on their twenty-six. They could be like Jack. Like me. Something better or worse. I’m not just on the outside looking in at them. I’m right in the mix. It occurs to me that during their private minutes in the men’s room tonight when the sound of their snorting reached their own ears, they may have had the same thoughts, made similar comparisons to me. I’m not just a spectator holding tickets to the circus. I’m a clown who can’t leave his dysfunctional circus family because he can’t remember who he was before becoming a clown.
I unlock the cellophane bag, dip in my key, lift it to my nostril, and listen to my violent inhale.