“Listen,” I said in a tone a father would use with a daughter, “there’s a lot to be thankful for, sweetie. I’m not saying you don’t have grounds to be upset, but you have to look at this as a new beginning, not an end. We’re still young. Maybe we’ll take it easy for a few months, but after that it’ll be full steam ahead.” I smiled warmly. “Anyway, for now we’ll work out of the house, which is perfect, because I consider you a part of my family.”
Janet began snuffling back tears. “I know. It’s…it’s just that I was here since the beginning, and I watched you build this from nothing. It was like watching a miracle happen. It was the first time I ever felt”—loved? I thought—“I don’t know. When you walked me down…like a father would…I…” and with that, Janet broke down, crying hysterically.
Oh, Jesus! I thought. What had I done wrong? My goal had been to console her, and now she was crying. I needed to call the Duchess! She was an expert at this sort of thing. Perhaps she could rush down here and take Janet home, although that would take too long.
Having no choice, I walked over to Janet and hugged her gently. With great tenderness, I said, “There’s nothing wrong with crying, but don’t forget that there’s a lot to look forward to. Ultimately, Stratton’s gonna fold, Janet; it’s only a question of when; but since we’re leaving now,we’ll always be remembered as a success.” I smiled and made my tone more upbeat. “Anyway, Nadine and I are having dinner tonight with my parents, and we’re bringing Channy along. I want you to come too, okay?”
Janet smiled—smiled at the thought of seeing Chandler—and I couldn’t help but wonder what that said about the state of our own lives, when only the purity and innocence of an infant could bring us peace.
I was fifteen minutes into my farewell speech when it dawned on me that I was giving the eulogy at my own funeral. But on the brighter side, I also had the unique opportunity of witnessing the reactions of all those attending my burial.
And just look at them sitting there, hanging on my every word!So many rapt expressions…so many eager eyes…so many well-formed torsos leaning forward in their seats. Look at those wildly adoring stares from the sales assistants with their lusty blond manes and their delectably plunging necklines and, of course, their incredibly loamy loins. Perhaps I should be planting subliminal suggestions deep inside their minds—that every last one of them should burn with the insatiable desire to blow me and then swallow every last drop of my very manhood, for the rest of their natural lives.
Christ, what a fucking pervert I was!Even now, in the middle of my own farewell speech, my mind was double-tracking wildly. My lips were moving up and down, as I went about the process of thanking the Strattonites for five years of undying loyalty and admiration, yet I still found myself questioning whether or not I should’ve banged more of the sales assistants. What did that say about me? Did it make me weak? Or was it only natural to want to bang them all? After all, what was the point of having the powerif you didn’t use it to get laid? In truth, I hadn’t exploited that aspect of the power as much as I could have, or at least not to the extent Danny had! Would I come to regret that one day? Or maybe I’d done the right thing? The mature thing! The responsible thing!
All these bizarre thoughts were roaring through my head with the ferocity of an F-5 tornado, while self-serving words of wisdom gushed out of my mouth in torrents, without the slightest bit of conscious effort. And then I realized that my mind wasn’t actually double-tracking (which it always did), but it was triple-tracking, which was truly fucking bizarre.
On track three there was an internal monologue, questioning the decadent nature of track two, which was focusing on the pros and cons of getting blown by the sales assistants. Meanwhile, track one was humming along uninterrupted, as my words to the Strattonites came tumbling from my lips like tiny pearls of self-serving wisdom, and the words were coming from…where? Perhaps from the part of the brain that works independently of conscious direction…or maybe the words were pouring out from sheer force of habit. After all, I’d given how many meetings over the last five years?…Two a day for five years…So with three hundred working days in a year, it translated into 1,500 working days, times two meetings per day, which equaled 3,000 meetings in total, minus whatever meetings Danny had given, which were probably ten percent of the total, subtracted from the gross number of 3,000 meetings, and the number 2,700 came into my mind just like that, but the tiny pearls of self-serving wisdom had continued tumbling from my lips as I did the math…
…and when I snapped back into the moment, I found myself explaining how the investment-banking firm of Stratton Oakmont was sure to survive— sure to survive!—because it was bigger than any one person and bigger than any one thing. And then I felt the urge to steal a line from FDR—who in spite of having been a Democrat, still seemed like a reasonably okay guy, although I’d recently been informed that his wife was a dyke—and I began explaining to the Strattonites how there was nothing to fear but fear itself.
It was at this point that I felt compelled to reemphasize how Danny was more than capable of running the firm, especially with someone as sharp as Wigwam at his side. But, alas, I still found myself looking at a thousand rolled eyeballs and an equal number of gravely shaking heads.
So now I felt it necessary to cross over the line of good judgment. “Listen, everyone: The fact that I’m being barred from the securities industry doesn’t stop me from giving Danny advice. I mean—really! Not only is it legal for me to give Danny advice, but I can also give advice to Andy Greene, Steve Sanders, the owners of Biltmore and Monroe Parker, and, for that matter, to anyone else in this boardroom who’s interested in hearing it. And just so you know, Danny and I have a tradition of eating breakfast and lunch together, and it’s a tradition we have no intention of breaking just because of some ridiculous settlement I was forced to make with the SEC—a settlement that I made only because I knew that it would ensure Stratton’s survival for the next hundred years!”
And with that came thunderous applause. I looked around the room. Ahhhh, such adoration! Such love for the Wolf of Wall Street! Until I locked eyes with Mad Max, who seemed to be blowing steam out of his fucking ears. What was he so fucking concerned about, anyway? Everybody else was eating this shit up! How come he couldn’t simply join in the cheer? I resisted the urge to draw the obvious conclusion that my father was reacting differently because he was the only person in the boardroom who actually gave a shit about me and he was somewhat concerned at watching his son jump off a regulatory cliff.
For the sake of Mad Max, I added, “Now, of course, this will only be advice, and by the very definition of the word it means that my suggestions don’t have to be followed!” to which Danny screamed from the side of the boardroom: “Yes, that’s true, but why on earth would anyone in their right mind not follow JB’s advice?”
Once again, thunderous applause! It spread through the boardroom like the Ebola virus, and soon the entire room was on its feet, giving the wounded Wolf his third standing ovation of the afternoon. I held up my hand for quiet, and I caught a pleasant glimpse of Carrie Chodosh, one of Stratton’s few female brokers, who also happened to be one of my favorites.
Carrie was in her mid-thirties, which at Stratton made her a virtual antique. Nevertheless, she was still a looker. She’d been one of Stratton’s first brokers—coming to me when she was flat broke, on the balls of her perfect ass. At the time, she was three months behind on her rent, and her Mercedes was being chased by a repo truck. You see, Carrie was another in a long line of beautiful women who had made the sad mistake of marrying the wrong man. After a ten-year marriage, her ex-husband refused to pay her a dime in child support.