The Wealthy Man’s God & Fried Cod

Andrew:

This is a story about the day I punched a cabbie in the mouth. I did this because I am the kind of crazy that you are only allowed to be if you have graduated from Harvard — or Yale, maybe. That does not matter because I have degrees from both. This lets me be the kind of crazy that is not chemical; it is emotional. And it is very, very rich. Made of money, maybe — how sad. This whole thing is sad. Let me tell you why.

I live in Hudson Yards. That isn’t literal, mind you — my office is located there. And, in all actuality, I live in my office. It’s where I spend most of my time.

I do not live with my wife; she left me. That was my fault, probably. I was the one who chose to sleep with my lawyer. I do not live with my children; they are grown and do not return my calls. I do not know why. I do not live in the brownstone my mistress lives in because she does not live there anymore; she retired from the her practice (she was my bank’s (former) go-to M&A lawyer) after her husband died (cancer, pancreatic, very bad, poor guy) and then she took their dogs to a tiny cabin in the Piedmonts, out in the Carolinas, where she works on “art.” I think she is making stained glass now.

Some days I envy her; some days I do not. I have not texted her in three weeks and that is probably ok. I think we hate each other. I resent her, at least. Maybe she resents me. I do not know why she would, though; she has her stupid art to make her happy and those damn, dumb fucking dogs. They make her happy, too. But me? I have my office, in Hudson Yards. Just my office. But it is at good address— I’ll have you know we paid a premium to make sure of that.

My type of crazy is mostly in Hudson Yards now, if only because the financial district got too over-done and expensive in the 80’s, then mid-town became too over-played and stale by the late 2010’s. Manhattan is funny like that. Maybe my type of crazy will have moved to Spanish Harlem or back down to FiDi in thirty years. I do not know. But what is important is that I was outside of a bar near Hudson yards when I punched the cabbie in the mouth.

I did this because I am crazy — bonkers — and this is because I have no idea what to do because I have already gotten the Right Thing. I have! And I have had it all for some time. Since I was a teenager, even. Seriously: imagine your experience in High School: first kisses, maybe sports, some kind of extracurricular, then college, right? Wrong, for me. I was ambition. I was accomplishment. I was a heat-seeking-missile that my parents trained on the Right Thing. Here, in High School, the Right Thing was an Ivy league School. So I worked, got a good SAT score. And I “made” a non-profit that my parents paid a college admissions counselor to set up so I could give some pencils to some dying kids in Africa or Vietnam or Kyrgyzstan or something — it didn’t matter. We gave them school supplies, we took pictures, the consultant wrote an essay about how it was the most impactful experience of my life, I did good on the SATs, and then I was admitted to Harvard. It is not hard to do.

You can still do it now; you just need to buy your kid a good consultant and a good SAT tutor if you want this. I did this for my kids and two of them went to Brown (disappointing). Another went to Michigan (even worse, disgusting). I wish they took the pursuit of The Right Thing seriously, but I suppose they just came out wrong. Pathetic. I do not know why this occurred.

The Right Thing has been my parent’s gift to me, and has been the guiding star of my whole fucking life. All of it. Every, Single, Second has been about doing the Right Thing— and I have been successful. Harvard was a good example of this. I did not party; I did not fail classes; I did not skip classes; I dated sparsely but even that was limited. I just studied and did well in my courses and occasionally socialized on the weekends before going to bed at a reasonable hour (never after 10:38, on the dot). I did make some friends during this time. They are as follows:

• Brian: he works at my bank with me. I trust he is also crazy, probably. He has also done the Right Thing. He is divorced, but now dates a young woman who worked in PR. I think they are not married yet; maybe they are. She doesn’t work, now that I think about it —so yes, they must be married. She was very interested in him when they first met. He was very lonely so this worked well. Early in their relationship she said she wanted to be a stay at home wife; he said yes. I think this happened because Brian needed a woman to dote on him. This is because of the issue with his first wife — it hurt him. His first wife was, like him, a Texan. Conservative, grew up outside of Dallas. He grew up outside of Houston. Both of them were genuine Oil-Money-Jesus-Freaks — him in the standard male form (doughy, businesslike hair, predilection for khakis and blue blazers with boat shoes, clean shaven to a fault) and her in the standard female form (somewhat too skinny, dyed-blonde long hair, expensive dresses, boring makeup). They had planned to go back to Texas at one point. She had started doing housework at their condo in addition to being a banker herself (they met in business classes at Harvard). She hated it, then started talking about feminist stuff, then left him. She currently lives in Brooklyn and wears mostly black; my understanding is that she is currently dating a European DJ who is several years younger than her. I passed by her recently on the street recently. She now has bags that are conspicuously designer. On a lark, I looked her up on Facebook some time ago — six or seven years now, — and saw that she was a big fan of Hillary Clinton. When she left Brian, it was the only time I saw him break; otherwise he has always been the consummate professional. She paid a man to serve Brian with their divorce papers while he was at work. He screamed “bullshit” when it happened, threw all the papers in his office around, jumped up and down while shouting and throwing things and pounding on his desk, then left the office. He was then gone for three weeks. When he returned, we all pretended like nothing had happened. That was 12 years ago. Him and I were both promoted to Managing Director some time later.
• Arthur: Arthur transferred to Harvard from Penn; he would study with me frequently. He worked in Private Equity after graduation then started dating a woman who worked in Fashion. Eventually the woman, now his wife, introduced him to what I shall broadly call liberal bullshit: yoga, expensive coffees, art galleries, trendy night-clubs, and living in Hoboken. Disgusting. I hate Arthur because he gave into it: he retired at 32 and now teaches Yoga classes somewhere in Vermont. It is upsetting to see a Harvard man become a lay-a-bout bum. It is unbecoming of someone who, previously, had been doing the Right Thing. I have not spoken to Arthur in more than a decade; it shall remain that way.
• Annabeth: I suppose, that, in a way, we are not friends. We have never been friends. We are acquaintances who often run into each other and talk briefly at professional happy hours. We speak only in pleasantries. But she is my muse. We went to both undergrad and law school together; we once matched on a dating app in the early 2010s (when I used them while cheating on my wife). I think she did not know the profile was me — you could not see my face on it. Only my body (good looking back then, in a suit) and job (investment banker) were available to her. I used a fake name too. I often wonder if she knew it was me and did all of this intentionally. I hope so. I wish so. She, like me, is a devotee of the Right Thing. She has never said this, but I can tell. We would see each other studying late at night; we both were on Law Review and would work on cite-checking near each other in the Review’s office in the library (only separated by three or four desks). I have never seen her partying; I believe she has few (if any) friends, like me. I know her academics are beyond compare; she works at a very successful law firm that requires very good grades. I have never been obsessed with her, but during the failing years of my marriage I would often dream of situations where my wife passed on and I was freed to roam about — a widower, not a divorcee, meaning I was sympathetic instead of loathsome — and would eventually speak to Annabeth after meeting her at a bar. She would confess a hidden, long-standing love for me. We would be together and share all of our interests with each other. We would have and raise children who went to Harvard, like mine should have. I have not spoken to her since we exchanged a brief greeting at the last Yale Law alumni event (six months ago). When I think of my interest in her, I feel a sense that I am utterly depraved but also capable of being completely fulfilled one day. It is intoxicating.
• There are also other friends. But I will not elaborate on them or their identities; they are unimportant to this story. Brian and Arthur are, too for whatever it is worth. This is a story about me, being crazy, and Annabeth. Maybe me being crazy at Annabeth.

Can you see where this is going? You probably can, yes.

A divorced, miserable man who hates everyone in his life, who is disgusted by his kids (who are disgusted by him), who has been abandoned by the woman who should have been — and maybe even was, at one point — his salvation. Disgusting. The whole story is disgusting. This is because it is my story I am disgusting and loathsome, and, again: bonkers. Crazy! Mad.

But it is not my fault. It has never been. The people who spurned me have been loathsome, too. I am nothing but a product of my fucking environment and the Christ who’s altar I have worshipped at, the Right Thing, who promised me the world — who gifted me degrees from Harvard and Yale, a job that pays more that maggots like YOU can imagine making in a fucking decade — but also gave me nothing except a feeling of PAIN and loneliness that caused me to yes, lash out, in particular lash out at a cabbie and lash out BY PUNCHING HIM IN THE MOUTH. Bastard.

I lied to you earlier. I spoke to Annabeth yesterday. Yesterday was also the day I punched the cabbie — who, I believe, is a fucking fool — He has to be. Look at how this world works: it is easy to go to Harvard. It is equally easy to make six million dollars last year and to work in Hudson Yards — so how do you end up as a cabbie without being a fucking fool? The fucking cabbie probably deserved it because he is a literal waste of space. He does not know or has never chased the Right Thing. I was charged with assault for this but let us be honest: I deserve a medal for this. He needed someone to tell him he is nothing. So many people, so many of them, need this too. I am a fucking saint.

…

Sorry. I lost track there: my apologies for that digression. I am calm now. I am grateful that you and your firm have agreed to represent me in this matter; I am also finding the ability to write out what happened loosely therapeutic. I will resume telling you my story, here, in this email.

….

Two days ago, I realized something bad was happening. I was, for the first time in a long time, losing.

Let me provide some background to this.

I make money when clients answer my calls and do deals. I do this by calling a lot of people: fund managers, endowment managers, and the like. And sometimes, they call me. Lawyers will call me if their client wants to sell something and traders from funds will call me if they want one of my people to make a derivative for them. I only make money when people pick up the phone or call my phone.

My phone had not rung for the past three days. No calls, no one — not my kids saying hi, not friends inviting me to a country club dinner (that used to happen, long ago!), not some lawyer at xyz-and-abc-llc representing 123-corp who wants me to help them spin off their unprofitable whatever-making branch, nothing. Silence.

And no one had answered my calls! I had placed a lot of calls to a bunch of people: I asked someone’s secretary if they wanted to sell, someone’s assistant if they wanted to buy, did that thirty more times, then nothing came of it. This was fine for one day. One day is just one day, after all. And heck, maybe it was fine for two days too, though it got worrisome at the end. But you know, I went back in the third day and did what a Harvard Man should do: I gave it another go. After all, being good at my job is an essential part of the Right Thing. the Right Thing is generally a principle: in each situation, you must do the best thing available to you. Not the thing you want, or the thing that will make you happy, but the best thing. The thing that makes you better than others. This is why, when it was time to pick from America’s 3,982 degree-granting institutions, I went to the best one: Harvard. Then, when it came time to go to law school because I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of life, it became clear that I should do the Right Thing and go to the best law school, Yale. And then I knew that I should take the best job I was offered while there, which was the investment banking one I have been at ever since I accepted it and where I have vigorously pursued the Right Thing by doing what I always have: completing my assignments on time, doing better than others, and always doing what was Right. What is Right: Not what is easy!

It is so very easy to tell your co-workers that you are skipping out on working on a deal because of some date you planned with your wife or a kid’s softball game. It is harder to do the thing that makes you better — more profitable, in this case — than others, which is to skip those things and get deals done. But the Right Thing is what I have always done. This is what I must do because it is what I know. And it has always worked for me, until the third day.

On that day my phone remained silent. Dead quiet. I called some more people, got put through to their secretaries and assistants and was told to call back later and again, I got nothing. I called harder: I was more persuasive on the phone. I dialed quicker. When I put down the phone I stared at it and waited for it to ring more intently and powerfully than I ever had in my entire life. Nothing worked.

I stopped calling at noon. I called my secretary and asked her to email everyone to tell them I would be out of office for a while. I then closed my door, drew the shades on the internal windows in my office that faced the hallway, then did something unthinkable to me: I lied down on the floor. I just put myself on my back and stared at the ceiling. It was…. liberating. For a brief second, I just sat there, looked at the drop-tile above me, and took a deep breath. I focused on my breathing. And then I began to think: I was not doing the Right Thing at the moment. But if I was, would it matter? No. No, I realized. So I asked myself why. And then it hit me: I am washed up. I am broken, damaged goods. Defective.

Do you know how other people at this bank land deals? People they play golf with. Well, I have not been invited to a country club since 2014. And even that was just a courtesy; I obviously didn’t show up, I had deals to close.

Where else did people source deals from? Well, often people who sent their kids to the same prep school. I am 52 and I know none of those people. 0 — none. My children were born 26 and 24 years ago, respectively. I do not know the names of their childhood friends, nor the people they met at their prep school. We had them because I was a year out of law school and making a lot of money and their mother and I — their mother being another Yale law graduate in my class, who had grown tired of law after a year of it and wanted a break — had the money to have kids.

My wife and I did not yet know that we hated each other. This is because when you are in law school you are too overwhelmed and tired to really understand anything outside of learning the law, which is of course the Right Thing in that situation. You could do otherwise, sure. But someone else would do better than you as a result. That’s an unacceptable outcome.

We started dating because both of us were on law review, both of us worked hard, and we spent a lot of time together, studying. One thing led to another and then we’d get dinner to talk about classes. Then we’d sleep over and walk to the library or class together, then we were married some time after that in a very expensive ceremony that her father paid a lot of money for. I do not remember the name of the church it was in. The entire time our relationship was really just the thing we did outside of work — retrospect, mostly for the sake of convenience. It was born out of our desires to have someone to study with; our kids were born out of a desire to take maternity leave. What a miserable way to come into the world. This thought occurred to me, on the floor, followed by a second one: wasn’t I responsible for that? For them?

Something made me shiver, then panic. I sat up and thought about the one thing I try not to think about.

Ah, wait. Fuck, that’s a weighty thing to just throw out there. Well, if you and your firm are going to represent me, I suppose you need to know this. So let me provide some context:

My wife, before we divorced (and before she found out about the affairs) had ordered me to therapy. She screamed at me about it a lot. Eventually that all got to the point where it was so time consuming that it was stopping me from focusing on work. I decided to go just to shut her up. It seemed like the right call. It was for an hour Monday morning and an hour Thursday morning — and those two hours saved me ten hours of getting yelled at. That’s 8 hours more to work with. But this was a mistake. A mistake of mistakes, because it introduced me to the one thought that I avoid at all costs.

I did therapy for a month. I enjoyed it before we arrived at the thought. That happened when the doctor, a old, wizened psycho-analyst with a thick beard had been grilling me about my childhood. He had been asking how my parents dealt with me when I was sick (by hectoring me to get better, because sickness meant missed school). He asked me how they responded when I would get hurt (by telling me it was my fault and that I need to be smarter to avoid this ), and if I had any hobbies as a kid (school and only school). The final question proved to be an issue. It, more than anything else, led to me punching the cabbie.

The doctor did not accept my answer. He asked me to think back — if there was something else. Something before school. I stopped, and I thought. Then I said “painting”.

“Painting?” he said. I said yeah, and he asked me to tell him about it. I detailed how much I enjoyed it as a kid, how my art teacher would encourage me, but how my parents felt it distracted from school — and, of course, how they’d yell at me if I wasn’t working on school because then I’d have worse grades, which would mean a worse college, which would then mean I would end up at a bad school and lazy and unemployed. Unemployment, they told me, leads to alcoholism. A that would make me like my brother’s father, Lawrence (aka “Larry”). He was a drunk who amounted to nothing. My grandparents nearly spent themselves into poverty trying various rehabs for him before he eventually killed himself. My father was in high school when this all happened; it effected him greatly. Larry was 26 when he died penniless.

At this point my doctor sat back, looked at the ceiling, then looked at me. He paused, grimaced, then said something bad. It was seven years ago, but I still remember every word of it:

“Have you ever considered that all of this — the focus on doing the right things, the focus on school and work and being the best — might just be an attempt to get your parents' approval? It seems like all of this isn’t coming from, well you: the banker, the adult. It seems like it’s being done by a part of your brain that’s still 10, a part of you that’s hoping putting down the painting will make your dad stop being mad about his brother and start being happy with you.”

I asked what he meant. He asked if I really, earnestly, wanted to do the Right Thing. He then asked if I felt like I just did the Right Thing because I had to, not because it made me happy. Then he paused. Because if that was the case, he said, I might get to the point where I’m doing nothing in my life that makes me happy. And I could end up wasting my life accordingly. I stormed out at that point. I was just plain, fucking, angry. Mad. I know one thing; it is doing the Right Thing. At this point I am the living embodiment of it. Do not insult it; if you do, I thought, you are insulting me.

I stayed in a hotel that night. I couldn’t go home to look at my fucking wife. Not after being insulted like this — not after having my whole life pissed on by some old fuck in a tweed jacket. Disgusting.

That night is when I encountered the thought. I was washing my face before bed when I took a look at myself in the mirror; for the first time, I noticed the bags under my eyes. They were deep. Very deep. I had never realized that before.

Christ, what if he was right? What if the fucking doctor was right?

My heart started racing as I thought of it all…. missed birthdays, a college experience characterized by sitting in silence in libraries, the prime of my life spent chained to a desk in Manhattan… all for what? A wife who hates me, kids who barely know me — no. That’s what I said to myself at this point: “no”. I will not engage with this. I have not done the wrong thing; I have done the Right Thing. That is the end of the discussion.

I then spent the next couple years dodging this one singularly dangerous thought. The third day of no calls was the first time I failed.

The thought came to me and I stood up, then looked out my window. I saw a pigeon flying through the air outside. I looked at it deeply; I saw its colors, I saw its motion — for some reason, something in me wanted to paint it and put the light fluttering down onto its flapping wings on to canvas.

I called my secretary again. “Tell everyone”, I said, “that for the next three weeks I am on vacation. If they ask further, inform them it is to deal with a family emergency”. I hung up before she could say anything else.

I went home immediately after this. It was about 2:30; I arrived home, then stood in my condo and looked out my window for six hours. I watched the pigeons fly, planes cross the air, cars roll down the street, and the people walking. It was horrifying. I watched it all for six very long hours because I remember thinking that there is a beautiful world out there — and I have missed all of it for years; every single ounce of it slipped by me unnoticed. Now, I thought, to atone, I must study our world. And paint it.

At the end of the six hours, I began stumbling around my condo. For some reason, I earnestly believed that I had paints and brushes hidden somewhere in there — I ripped apart my couch cushions, overturned my coffee table, threw the plates out of my cabinets as I looked for the brushes. I found, unsurprisingly, nothing. This makes sense; I last painted in 6th grade. Why would I have them?

At this point I, again, sat on my floor. And you know what? I made a mistake. A huge, big life altering mistake. The one that caused me to have to write this letter to you (my lawyer), and to punch the cabbie.

I agreed with the thought. As a result the single, bad thought was then allowed free roam of my brain.

I sat and I wept. I thought about the time I lost; the children I had who, meaningfully, I did not know. The two eldest are twins; one is an author now, published. I have never read his work. My younger daughter now works in broadcasting. I cannot tell you what she was like as a child. I asked myself about my wife: what if I did love her? What if I put in the effort? And my mistress — the bad thought then made me admit something unsavory: I felt pulled towards her. I had for sometime because there was something about her I hated, but you know what? I hated her and her art because she had a freedom that the thought told me I have always wanted but have spent the last 40 years hiding from. Just because of my dad. I hated her because I loved her and wanted to live a life with her where we — not I, but we — had what she had.

Maybe we could have. Her husband was dead now.

Then, as I sat, alone, crying on my floor amongst the scattered couch cushions and smashed plates and open cabinets, I had two other thoughts. The first was that the average American male lives to be 78; I had another 26 years on this earth. At this rate, I would be spending them alone.

Then came the second thought: Annabeth. The fantasies from the end of my marriage played through my mind — a family together, raised well, with someone who knew me. A fresh start.

I messaged her on linkedin at this point; I asked if she would be free to meet at noon to discuss an “urgent matter”. The message detailed that I would like to meet at a local Starbucks.

I then, in a fit of exhaustion, went to bed.

I awoke at 10:30; I have never slept in that late in my life. It felt frightening. But I was still in the hold of the thought, still in my suit from work that I had been wearing since yesterday morning, and, of course, still dedicated to fixing my life. That meant proposing to Annabeth.

I met her at the Starbucks; we had both arrived 15 minutes early. She asked what kind of thing I needed help with, then told me her firm could handle it at commercially reasonable rates. I looked her dead in the eyes, dropped down on my knees, and proposed.

She asked what I was doing. I told her I was proposing, detailed the life we could live together, then waited for a response. She then blinked twice, then said “I have a wife, uh, and we — we don’t really know each other”.

At that point I stood up and silently exited the Starbucks. My life was, now, over. The thought had taken full hold of me and it informed me that the remaining 26 years would be one of misery. Misery, misery, misery, and you know what? It was all my fault. All of it. Christ, Arthur? My Harvard friend who is now a yoga instructor? The thought noted that he realized this shit was a waste of time twenty years ago. How did he get it and I just simply did not? HOW?

I was walking aimlessly at this point — just navigating around Manhattan on foot, thinking of nothing, sweating through my suit, and generally looking unkempt. Then I had another thought: one I had before. I still have 26 years. I snapped out of my fog and looked around me — the first thing I saw? A man in a Knicks jersey. It was at that point I realized I have been in New York for around 30 years and never — not once — seen anything at Madison Square Garden. No concerts, ball games, rodeos, wrestlemanias: nothing.

And then, I thought that I could change this. I looked at the street, then saw a yellow cab dashing by. That was my ticket to the Garden — surely something would be happening there and goddamnit I have a lot of money. I can buy a ticket. I can see it.

I bolted out into the street to stop the cab. It worked, narrowly. The driver almost hit me. I jumped up and down in front of it, screaming “YOU NEED TO TAKE ME TO MADISON SQUARE GARDEN”. The driver laid on his horn at this point, so I shouted louder. Eventually he opened his door, got out, and confronted me.

“I have a passenger back there, man! What the hell are you doing?”

I told him that I needed to go to Madison Square Garden.

He then said I was crazy. I repeated my demand. He repeated that I was crazy, then pushed me and told me to move.

This changed something in me. I do not know why, but my mind moved. The bad thought was still in control, but then something else took over: anger. Anger, pure and simple. Anger at my wife — for leaving me, for pushing me to have kids. Anger at my dad, for hating my desire to paint. Anger at my mom for going along with that. Anger at Annabeth for rejecting me and anger at my fucking former mistress for being happy. And most of all? Anger at myself for causing all of this shit.

I punched that goddamn cabbie in the fucking mouth.

Look, I will level with you. A lot of people saw it. Heck, some probably recorded it. And one of them definitely called the police because they showed up and arrested me pretty quickly. That dumb, cab-driving son of a bitch was still reeling on the ground when they told me to to put my hands up and not move.

But you know what? Spending the night in jail was good for me. I’ve now removed that bad, singularly heinous thought. It is gone and controls me no more. I am now dedicated to doing the Right Thing again. Here, in these circumstances? That means fighting the charges. I will not take a goddamn plea: I did nothing wrong.

Go and give the prosecutor hell, Andrew. Make me proud to be your client.

Best,

X X X