The Wolf of Wall Street (18 page)

There were other benefits too, which, when taken together, all tipped the scale heavily in favor of recruiting the lovely Aunt Patricia into the illicit lion’s den of international bank fraud. Patricia herself had said that the sheer excitement of being part of a sophisticated money-laundering ring would keep her young, perhaps for years to come!
What a pleasant thought that was!
And, in truth, what were the chances of her really getting in trouble? Almost zero, I thought. Probably less than that.

Just then Patricia said, “You have this wonderful gift, love, to be engaged in two separate conversations at once. There’s one conversation that you’re having with the outside world—which, in this case, is your beloved aunt Patricia—and then there’s another conversation that you’re having with yourself, which you alone can hear.”

I let out a gentle laugh. I leaned back and spread my arms on either side of the top wooden slat, as if I were trying to let the bench absorb some of my worries. “You see a lot, Patricia. Since the day we met, when I almost drowned in a toilet bowl, I’ve always felt that you understood me better than most. Perhaps you even understand me better than I understand myself, although probably not.

“Anyway, I’ve been lost inside my own head for as long as I can remember—from the time I was a kid, maybe even as far back as nursery school.

“I remember sitting in my classroom and looking around at all the other kids and wondering why they just didn’t get it. The teacher would ask a question and I already knew the answer before she was done asking it.” I paused and looked Patricia square in the eye and said, “Please don’t take that as being cocky, Patricia. I don’t wanna come off that way. I’m just trying to be honest with you so you can
really
understand me. But since I was small, I was always far ahead—intellectually, I mean—of all the other kids my age. The older I got, the further ahead I became.

“And from the time I was a kid, I’ve had this bizarre internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn’t stop—unless I’m asleep. I’m sure every person has this; it’s just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I’m constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask it a question, it’s programmed to respond, whether there’s an answer or not. I’m constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe
manipulate events
are the more appropriate words. It’s like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess!”

I studied Patricia’s face for some sort of response, but all I saw was a warm smile. I kept waiting for her to respond, but she didn’t. Yet by her very silence her message was crystal clear:
Keep talking!

“Anyway, when I was about seven or eight I started getting terrible panic attacks. I still get them today, although now I take Xanax to quell them. But even thinking about a panic attack is enough to give me one. It’s a terrible thing to suffer from, Patricia. They’re absolutely debilitating. It’s like your heart’s coming out of your chest; like every moment of your life is its own eternity; the literal polar opposite of being comfortable in your own skin. I think the first time we met I was actually in the middle of one—although that particular one was induced by a couple a grams of coke, so it doesn’t really count. Remember?”

Patricia nodded and smiled warmly. Her expression bore not an ounce of judgment.

I plowed on: “Well, that aside, I was never able to stop my mind from racing, even when I was small. I had terrible insomnia when I was young—and I still have it today. But it’s even worse now. I used to stay up all night long and listen to my brother’s breathing, watching him sleep like a baby. I grew up in a tiny apartment, and we shared a room. I loved him more than you can possibly imagine. I have a lot of good memories about that. And now we don’t even talk anymore. Another victim of my so-called success. But that’s another story.

“Anyway, I used to dread the nighttime…or actually fear the nighttime, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. I used to stay up all night long and stare at a digital alarm clock that was next to my bed and multiply the minutes times the hours, mostly out of boredom but also because my mind seemed to force me into repetitive tasks. By the time I was six years old, I could do four-digit multiplication in my head faster than you could do it on a calculator. No kidding, Patricia. I can still do it today. But back then my friends hadn’t even learned to read yet! That wasn’t much conciliation, though. I used to cry like a baby when it was time to go to bed. That’s how scared I was of my panic attacks. My father would come into my room and lie down with me and try to calm me down. My mother too. But both of them worked and couldn’t stay up with me all night. So eventually I was left alone with my own thoughts. Over the years, most of the bedtime panic went away. But it never really left me. It still haunts me every time my head hits the pillow in the form of intractable insomnia—terrible, terrible insomnia.

“I’ve spent my entire life trying to fill a hole that I can’t seem to fill, Patricia. And the harder I try, the bigger it seems to get. I’ve spent more time than…”

And the words started rolling off my tongue, as I began the process of spewing out the venom that had been ripping apart my innards for as long as I could remember. Perhaps I was fighting to save my life that day or, if not that, then certainly my sanity. In retrospect, it was as good a place as any for a man to bare his soul, especially a man like me. After all, on the tiny isle of Great Britain, there was no Wolf of Wall Street and no Stratton Oakmont, both of which were an ocean away. There was just Jordan Belfort—a scared young kid—who’d gotten himself in way over his head and whose very success was fast becoming the instrument of his own destruction. The only question I had was, would I get to kill myself first—on my own terms—or would the government get me before I had the chance?

Once Patricia got me started, I couldn’t seem to stop. Every human being, after all, is possessed with the undeniable urge to confess his sins. Religions were built on such things. And kingdoms were conquered with the promise that all sins would be forgiven afterward.

So for two straight hours I confessed. I desperately tried to rid myself of the bitter bile that was wreaking havoc on my body and spirit and driving me to do things that I knew were wrong and to commit acts that I knew would ultimately lead to my own destruction.

I told her the story of my life—starting with the frustration I’d felt growing up poor. I told her of the insanity of my father and how I resented my mother for failing to protect me from his vicious temper. I told her how I knew my mother had done her best, but, somehow, I was still viewing those memories through the eyes of a child, so I couldn’t seem to completely forgive her. I told her about Sir Max and how he was always there for me when it mattered most and how, once again, it made me resent my mother for not being there like he was at those crucial moments.

And I told her how much I still loved my mother despite that and how much I respected her too, even though she’d drilled into my head that becoming a doctor was the only honorable way to make a lot of money. I explained how I rebelled against that by starting to smoke pot in sixth grade.

I told her how I overslept for my medical boards because I had done too many drugs the night before and how as a result of that I ended up in dental school instead of medical school. I told her the story of my first day of dental school, when the dean got up before the incoming class and explained how the Golden Age of Dentistry was over and if you were becoming a dentist to make a lot of money, then you should quit now and save yourself the time and aggravation…and how I got up right then and there and never went back.

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?”