Текст книги "The Wolf of Wall Street "

Автор книги: Jordan Belfort

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Текущая страница: 35 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

CHAPTER 38

MARTIANS OF THE THIRD REICH

The place seemed normal enough, at first glance.

The Talbot Marsh Recovery Campus sits on a half dozen immaculately landscaped acres in Atlanta, Georgia. It was only a ten-minute limo ride from the private airport, and I’d spent all six hundred seconds plotting my escape. In fact, before I’d deplaned, I gave the pilots strict instructions not to take off under any circumstances. It was me, after all, not the Duchess, I’d explained, who was paying the bill. Besides, there was a little something extra for them if they stayed awhile. They assured me they would.

So as the limo pulled into the driveway, I scoped out the terrain through the eyes of a prisoner. Meanwhile, fat-Brad and Mike the Glandular Case were sitting across from me, and true to their word there wasn’t a cement wall, a metal bar, a gun tower, or a strand of barbed wire anywhere in sight.

The property gleamed brilliantly in the Georgia sunshine, all these purple and yellow flowers and manicured rosebushes and towering oaks and elms. It was a far cry from the urine-infested corridors of the Delray Medical Center. Yet something seemed a bit off. Perhaps the place was too nice? Was there really that much money in drug rehabs?

There was a circular drop-off area in front of the building. As the limo inched toward it, fat-Brad reached into his pocket and pulled out three twenties. “Here,” he said. “I know you don’t have any money on you, so consider this a gift. It’s cab fare back to the airport. I don’t want you to have to hitchhike. You never know what kind of drug-addicted maniac you’ll run into.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked innocently.

“I saw you whispering in the pilot’s ear,” said fat-Brad. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that if someone’s not ready to get sober, there’s nothing I can do to force him. I won’t insult you with the analogy of leading a horse to water and all that crap. But, either way, I figure I owe you the sixty bucks for making me laugh so hard on the way here.” He shook his head. “You really are one twisted bastard.”

He paused, as if searching for the right words. “Anyway, I’d have to say that this has been the world’s most bizarre intervention. Yesterday I was in California, sitting in some boring convention, when I got this frantic call from the soon-to-be-late Dennis Maynard, who tells me about this gorgeous model who has a zillionaire husband on the verge of killing himself. Believe it or not, I actually balked at first, because of the distance, but then the Duchess of Bay Ridge got on the phone and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Next thing I know we’re on a private jet. And then we met you, which was the biggest trip of all.” He shrugged. “All I can say is that I wish you and your wife the best of luck. I hope you guys stay together. It would be a great ending to the story.”

The Glandular Case nodded in agreement. “You’re a good man, Jordan. Don’t ever forget that. Even if you bolt out the front door in ten minutes and go straight to a crack den, it still doesn’t change who you are. This is a fucked-up disease; it’s cunning and baffling. I walked out of three rehabs myself before I finally got it right. My family ended up finding me under a bridge; I was living as a beggar. And the real sick part is that after they finally got me into rehab, I escaped again and went back to the bridge. That’s the way this disease is.”

I let out a great sigh. “I’m not gonna bullshit you. Even when we were flying here today—and I was busy telling you all those hysterical stories and we were all laughing uncontrollably—I was stillthinking about drugs. It was burning in the back of my mind like a fucking blast furnace. I’m already thinking about calling my Quaalude dealer as soon as I get out of here. Maybe I can live without the cocaine, but not the Ludes. They’re too much a part of my life now.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” said fat-Brad, nodding. “In fact, I still feel the same way about coke. Not a day goes by when I don’t get the urge to do it. But I’ve managed to stay sober for more than thirteen years. And you know how I do it?”

I smiled. “Yeah, you fat bastard—one day at a time, right?”

“Ah,” said fat-Brad, “now you’re learning! There’s hope for you yet.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “let the healing begin.”

We climbed out of the car and walked down a short concrete path that led to the front entrance. Inside, the place was nothing like I’d imagined. It was gorgeous. It looked like a men’s smoking club, with very plush carpet, rich and reddish, and lots of mahogany and burled walnut and comfortable-looking sofas and love seats and club chairs. There was a large bookcase filled with antique-looking books. Just across from it was an oxblood leather club chair with a very high back. It looked unusually comfortable, so I headed straight for it and plopped myself down.

Ahhhhhh…how long had it been since I’d sat in a comfortable chair without cocaine and Quaaludes bubbling around inside my brain? I no longer had back pain or leg pain or hip pain or any other pain. There was nothing bothering me, no petty annoyances. I took a deep breath and let it out…. It was a nice, sober breath, part of a nice, sober moment. How long had it been for me? Almost nine years since I’d been sober. Nine fucking years of complete insanity! Holy shit—what a way to live.

And I was fucking starving! I desperately needed to eat something. Anything but Froot Loops.

Fat-Brad walked over to me and said, “Ya doing okay?”

“I’m starving,” I said. “I’d pay a hundred grand for a Big Mac right now.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Mike and I need to fill out a few forms. Then we’ll bring you in and get you something to eat.” He smiled and walked off.

I took another deep breath, except this one I held in for a good ten seconds. I was staring into the very heart of the bookcase when I finally let it out…and just like that, in that very instant, the compulsion left me. I was done. No more drugs. I knew it. Enough was enough. I no longer felt the urge. It was gone. Why, I would never know. All I knew was that I would never touch them again. Something had clicked inside my brain. Some sort of switch had been flipped and I just fucking knew it.

I rose from my chair and walked over to the other side of the waiting room, where fat-Brad and Mike the Glandular Case were filling out paperwork. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the sixty bucks. “Here,” I said to fat-Brad, “you can have your sixty back. I’m staying.”

He smiled and nodded his head knowingly. “Good for you, my friend.”

Right before they left, I said to them, “Don’t forget to call the Duchess of Bay Ridge and tell her to get in touch with the pilots. Or else they’ll be waiting there for weeks.”

“Well, here’s to the Duchess of Bay Ridge!” fat-Brad said, making a mock toast.

“To the Duchess of Bay Ridge!” we all said simultaneously.

Then we exchanged hugs—and promises to keep in touch. But I knew we never would. They had done their job, and it was time for them to move on to the next case. And it was time for me to get sober.

It was the next morning when a new type of insanity started: sober insanity. I woke up around nine a.m., feeling positively buoyant. No withdrawal symptoms, no hangover, and no compulsion to do drugs. I wasn’t in the actual rehab yet; that would come tomorrow. I was still in the detox unit. As I made my way to the cafeteria for breakfast, the only thing weighing on my mind was that I still hadn’t been able to get in touch with the Duchess, who seemed to have flown the coop. I had called the house in Old Brookville and spoken to Gwynne, who’d told me that Nadine had dropped out of sight. She had only called in once, to speak to the kids, and she hadn’t even mentioned my name. So I assumed my marriage was over.

After breakfast I was walking back to my room when a beefy-looking guy sporting a ferocious mullet and the look of the intensely paranoid waved me over. We met by the pay phones. “Hi,” I said, extending my head. “I’m Jordan. How’s it going?”

He shook my hand cautiously. “Shhh!” he said, darting his eyes around. “Follow me.”

I nodded and followed him back into the cafeteria, where we sat down at a square lunch table, out of earshot of other human beings. At this time of morning the cafeteria had only a handful of people in it, and most of them were staff, dressed in white lab coats. I had pegged my new friend as a complete loon. He was dressed like me, in jeans and a T-shirt.

“I’m Anthony,” he said, extending his hand for another shake. “Are you the guy who flew in on the private jet yesterday?”

Oh, Christ! I wanted to remain anonymous for once, not stick out like a sore thumb. “Yeah, that was me,” I said, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that quiet. I just want to blend in, okay?”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he muttered, “but good luck trying to keep anything secret in this place.”

That sounded a bit odd, a bit Orwellian, in fact. “Oh, really?” I said. “Why’s that?”

He looked around again. “Because this place is like fucking Auschwitz,” he whispered. Then he winked at me.

At this point, I realized the guy wasn’t completely crazy, perhaps just a bit off. “Why is it like Auschwitz?” I asked, smiling.

He shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Because it’s fucking torture here, like a Nazi death camp. You see the staff over there?” He motioned with his head. “They’re the SS. Once the train drops you off in this place, you never leave. And there’s slave labor too.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I thought it was only a four-week program.”

He compressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head. “Maybe it is for you, but not for the rest of us. I assume you’re not a doctor, right?”

“No, I’m a banker—although I’m pretty much retired now.”

“Really?” he asked. “How are you retired? You look like a kid.”

I smiled. “I’m not a kid. But why’d you ask me if I’m a doctor?”

“Because almost everyone here is either a doctor or a nurse. I’m a chiropractor, myself. There are only a handful of people like you. Everyone else is here because they lost their license to practice medicine. So the staff has us by the balls. Unless they say you’re cured, you don’t get your license back. It’s a fucking nightmare. Some people have been here for over a year, and they’re stilltrying to get their license back!” He shook his head gravely. “It’s complete fucking insanity. Everyone’s ratting each other out, trying to earn brownie points with the staff. Really fucking sick. You have no idea. The patients walk around like robots, spewing out AA crap, pretending they’re rehabilitated.”

I nodded, fully getting the picture. A wacky arrangement like this, where the staff had that much power, was a recipe for abuse. Thank God I’d be above it. “What are the female patients like? Any hot ones?”

“Just one,” he answered. “A total knockout. A twelve on a scale from one to ten.”

That perked me up! “Oh, yeah, what’s she look like?”

“She’s a little blonde, about five-five, unbelievable body, perfect face, curly hair. She’s really beautiful. A real piece of ass.”

I nodded, making a mental note to keep away from her. She sounded like trouble. “And what’s the story with this guy Doug Talbot? The staff talks about him like he’s a fucking god. What’s he like?”

“What’s he like?” muttered my paranoid friend. “He’s like Adolf fucking Hitler. Or actually more like Dr. Josef Mengele. He’s a big fucking blowhard, and he’s got every last one of us by the balls—with the exception of you and maybe two other people. But you still gotta be careful, because they’ll try to use your family against you. They’ll get inside your wife’s head and tell her that unless you stay for six months you’re gonna relapse and light your kids on fire.”

Later that night, at about seven p.m., I called Old Brookville in search of the missing Duchess, but she was still MIA. I did get a chance to speak to Gwynne, though; I explained to her that I’d met with my therapist today and I’d been subdiagnosed (whatever that meant) as a compulsive spending addict, as well as a sex addict, both of which were basically true and both of which, I thought, were none of their fucking business. Either way, the therapist had informed me that I was being placed on money restriction and masturbation restriction—allowed to possess only enough money to use in the vending machines and allowed to masturbate only once every few days. I had assumed that the latter restriction was enforced on the honor system.

I asked Gwynne if she could see her way clear to stick a couple a thousand dollars inside some rolled-up socks and then ship them UPS. Hopefully, they would get past the gestapo, I told her, but, either way, it was the least she could do, especially after nine years of being one of my chief enablers. I chose not to share my masturbation restriction with Gwynne, although I had a sneaky suspicion it was going to be an even bigger problem than the money restriction. After all, I had been sober only four days now, and I was already getting spontaneous erections every time the wind blew.

On a much sadder note, before I hung up with Gwynne, Channy came to the phone and said, “Are you in Atlant-ica because you pushed Mommy down the stairs?”

I replied, “That’s one reason, thumbkin. Daddy was very sick and he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“If you’re still sick, can I kiss away your boo-boo again?”

“Hopefully,” I said sadly. “Maybe you can kiss away both our boo-boos, Mommy’s and Daddy’s.” I felt my eyes welling up with tears.

“I’ll try,” she said, with the utmost seriousness.

I bit my lip, fighting back outright crying. “I know you will, baby. I know you will.” Then I told her that I loved her and hung up the phone. Before I went to bed that night I got down on my knees and said a prayer—that Channy could kiss away our boo-boos. Then everything would be okay again.

I woke up the next morning ready to meet the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or was it Dr. Josef Mengele? Either way, the entire rehab—patients and staff alike—was getting together this morning in the auditorium for a regularly scheduled group meeting. It was a vast space with no partitions. A hundred twenty bridge chairs had been arranged in a large circle, and at the front of the room was a small platform with a lectern on it, where the speaker of the day would share his tale of drug-addicted woe.

I now sat as just another patient in a large circle of drug-addicted doctors and nurses (or Martians, from the Planet Talbot Mars, as I’d come to think of them). At this particular moment, all eyes were on today’s guest speaker—a sorry-looking woman in her early forties who had a rear end the size of Alaska and a ferocious case of acne, the sort you usually find on mental patients who’d spent the better part of their lives on psychotropic drugs.

“Hi,” she said in a timid voice. “My name is Susan, and I’m…uhhh…an alcoholic and a drug addict.”

All the Martians in the room, including myself, responded dutifully, by saying, “Hi, Susan!” to which she blushed and then bowed her head in defeat—or was it victory? Either way, I had no doubt she was a world-class drizzler.

Now there was silence. Apparently, Susan wasn’t much of a public speaker, or perhaps her brain had been short-circuited from all the drugs she’d consumed. As Susan gathered her thoughts, I took a moment to check out Doug Talbot. He was sitting at the front of the room with five staff members on either side of him. He had short snow-white hair, and he looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. His skin was white and pasty, and he had the sort of square-jawed, grim expression that you would normally associate with a malevolent warden, the sort who looks a death-row inmate in the eye before he flips the switch on the electric chair and says, “I’m only doing this for your own good!”`

Finally, Susan plowed on. “I’ve…been…uhhh…sober…for almost eighteen months now, and I couldn’t have done it without the help and inspiration of…uhhh…Doug Talbot.” And she turned to Doug Talbot and bowed her head, at which point the whole room rose to their feet and started clapping—the whole room except for me. I was too shocked at the collective sight of more than a hundred ass-kissing Martians trying to get their licenses back.

Doug Talbot waved his hand at the Martians and then shook his head dismissively, as if to say, “Oh, please, you’re embarrassing me! I only do this job out of a love of humanity!” But I had no doubt that his happy hit squad of staff members were making careful notes as to who wasn’t clapping loudly enough.

As Susan continued to drizzle, I began craning my head around—looking for the curly-haired blonde with the gorgeous face and the killer body, and I found her sitting just across from me, on the opposite side of the circle. She was gorgeous, all right. She had soft, angelic features—not the chiseled model features of the Duchess, but they were beautiful nonetheless.

Suddenly the Martians jumped to their feet again, and Susan took an embarrassed bow. Then she lumbered over to Doug Talbot, bent over, and gave him a hug. But it wasn’t a warm hug; she kept her body far from his. It was the way Dr. Mengele’s few surviving patients must’ve hugged him, at atrocity reunions and such—a sort of extreme version of the Stockholm syndrome, where hostages come to revere their captors.

Now one of the staff began doing a bit of her own drizzling. When the Martians stood this time, I stood too. Everyone grabbed the hands of the people on either side of them, so I grabbed too.

In unison, we bowed our heads and chanted the AA mantra: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Now everyone began clapping, so I clapped too—except this time I was clapping with sincerity. After all, in spite of being a cynical bastard, there was no denying that AA was an amazing thing, a lifesaver to millions of people.

There was a long rectangular table at the back of the room with a few pots of coffee on it and some cookies and cakes. As I headed over, I heard an unfamiliar voice yelling: “Jordan! Jordan Belfort!”

I turned around and– Holy Christ!—it was Doug Talbot. He was walking toward me, wearing an enormous smile on his pasty face. He was tall, about six-one, although he didn’t look to be in particularly good shape. He wore an expensive-looking blue sport jacket and gray tweed slacks. He was waving me toward him.

At that very instant, I could feel a hundred five sets of eyes pretending not to look at me—no, it was actually a hundred fifteen sets of eyes, because the staff was pretending too.

He extended his hand. “So we finally meet,” he said, nodding his head knowingly. “It’s a pleasure. Welcome to Talbot Marsh. I feel like you and I are kindred spirits. Brad told me all about you. I can’t wait to hear the stories. I got a few of my own—nothing as good as yours, I’m sure.”

I smiled and shook my new friend’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you too,” I replied, fighting back the urge to use an ironic tone.

He put his arm on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said warmly, “let’s go to my office for a while. I’ll drop you off later this afternoon. You’re being moved up the hill to one of the condos. I’ll drive you there.”

And just like that, I knew this rehab was in serious trouble. I had the owner—the unreachable, the one and only Doug Talbot—as my new best buddy, and every patient and staff member knew it as well. The Wolf was ready to bare his fangs—even in rehab.

Doug Talbot turned out to be a decent-enough guy, and we spent a good hour exchanging war stories. In fact, as I was soon to find out, virtually all recovering drug addicts share a morbid desire to play a game of “Can You Top the Insanity of My Addiction.” Obviously, it didn’t take long for Doug to realize that he was seriously outmatched, and by the time I’d gotten to the part where I’d cut open my furniture with a butcher knife he’d heard enough.

So he changed the subject and began explaining how he was in the midst of taking his company public. Then he handed me some documents, to illustrate what a terrific deal he was getting. I studied them dutifully, although I found it difficult to focus. Apparently something had clicked off in my brain insofar as Wall Street was concerned too, and I failed to get that usual rush as I looked through his papers.

Then we climbed into his black Mercedes and he drove me to my condo, which was just down the road from the rehab. It wasn’t actually part of Talbot Marsh, but Doug had a deal worked out with the management company that ran the complex, and about a third of the fifty semiattached units were occupied by Talbot’s patients. Another profit center, I figured.

As I was getting out of his Mercedes, Doug said, “If there’s anything I can do for you, or if any of the staff or the patients aren’t treating you right, just let me know and I’ll take care of it.”

I thanked him, figuring there was a ninety-nine percent chance I would be speaking to him about that very issue before the four weeks were out. Then I headed into the lion’s den.

There were six separate apartments in each town house, and my particular unit was on the second floor. I walked up a short flight of stairs and found the front door to my unit wide open. My two roommates were inside, sitting at a circular dining-room table made of some very cheap-looking bleached wood. They were writing furiously in spiral notebooks.

“Hi, I’m Jordan,” I said. “Nice to meet you guys.”

Before they even introduced themselves, one of them, a tall, blond man in his early forties, said, “What did Doug Talbot want?”

Then the other one, who was actually very good-looking, added, “Yeah, how do you know Doug Talbot?”

I smiled at them and said, “Yeah, well, it’s nice to meet you guys too.” Then I walked past them without saying another word, went into the bedroom, and closed the door. There were three beds inside, one of which was unmade. I threw my suitcase next to it and sat down on the mattress. On the other side of the room was a cheap TV on a cheap wooden stand. I flicked it on and turned on the news.

A minute later my roommates were on me. The blond one said, “Watching TV during the day is frowned upon.”

“It’s feeding your disease,” said the good-looking one. “It’s not considered right thinking.”

Right thinking? Holy Christ!If they only knew how demented my mind was! “Well, I appreciate your concern over my disease,” I snapped, “but I haven’t watched TV in almost a week, so if you don’t mind, why don’t you just keep out of my fucking hair and worry about your own disease? If I want to engage in wrong thinking, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“What kind of doctor are you, anyway?” asked the blond one accusingly.

“I’m not a doctor, and what’s the story with that phone over there?” I motioned to a tan Trimline phone sitting on a wooden desk. Above it was a small rectangular window in desperate need of a cleaning. “Are we allowed to use it or would that be considered wrong thinking too?”

“No, you can use it,” said the good-looking one, “but it’s for collect calls only.”

I nodded. “What kind of doctor are you?”

“I used to be an ophthalmologist, but I lost my license.”

“And how about you?” I asked the blond one, who was definitely a member of the Hitler youth. “Did you lose your license too?”

He nodded. “I’m a dentist, and I deserved to lose my license.” His tone was entirely robotic. “I’m suffering from a terrible disease and I need to be cured. Thanks to the staff at Talbot Marsh I’ve made great strides in my recovery. Once they tell me I’m cured, I’ll try to get my license back.”

I shook my head as if I’d just heard something that defied logic, then I picked up the phone and started dialing Old Brookville.

The dentist said, “Talking for more than five minutes is frowned upon. It’s not good for your recovery.”

The eye doctor added, “The staff will sanction you for it.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “How the fuck are they gonna find out?”

They both raised their eyebrows and shrugged innocently.

I smiled a dead smile at them. “Well, excuse me, because I got a couple a phone calls to make. I should be off in about an hour.”

The blond one nodded, looking at his watch. Then the two of them headed back into the dining room and plunged back into their recoveries.

A moment later, Gwynne answered the phone. We exchanged warm greetings, then she whispered, “I sent you down a thousand dollars in yersocks. Did ya get it yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe it’ll come tomorrow. More importantly, Gwynne, I don’t want to put you on the spot anymore with Nadine. I know she’s home and that she won’t come to the phone, and that’s okay. Don’t even tell her I called. Just answer the phone each morning and put the kids on for me. I’ll call around eight, okay?”

“Okay,” said Gwynne. “I hope you and Mrs. Belfort patch things up. It’s been very quiet ’round here. And very sad.”

“I hope so too, Gwynne. I really hope so.” We spoke for a few more minutes before I said good-bye.

Later that evening, just before nine, I received my first personal dose of Talbot Marsh insanity. There was a meeting in the living room for all the town house’s residents, where we were supposed to share any resentments that had built up during the day. It was called a ten-step meeting, because it had something to do with the tenth step of Alcoholics Anonymous. But when I picked up the AA book and read the tenth step—which was to continue to take a personal inventory and when you were wrong, to promptly admit it—I couldn’t imagine how this meeting applied to it.

Whatever the case, eight of us were now sitting in a circle. The first doctor, a dweeby-looking bald man in his early forties, said, “My name is Steve, and I’m an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a sex addict. I have forty-two days sober.”

The other six doctors said, “Hi, Steve!” And they said it with such relish that if I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn they’d just met Steve for the first time.

Steve said, “I have only one resentment today, and it’s toward Jordan.”

That woke me up! “Toward me?” I exclaimed. “I haven’t said two words to you, pal. How could you possibly resent me?”

My favorite dentist said, “You’re not allowed to defend yourself, Jordan. That’s not the purpose of this meeting.”

“Well, excuse me,” I muttered. “And just what is the purpose of this crazy meeting, because for the life of me I can’t figure it out.”

They all shook their heads in unison, as if I were dense or something. “The purpose of this meeting,” explained the Nazi dentist, “is that harboring resentments can interfere with your recovery. So each night we get together and air any resentments that may’ve built up during the day.”

I looked at the group, and every last one of them had turned the corners of his mouth down and was nodding sagely.

I shook my head in disgust. “Well, do I at least get to hear why good old Steve resents me?”

They all nodded, and Steve said, “I resent you over your relationship with Doug Talbot. All of us have been here for months—some of us for close to a year—and none of us has ever gotten to speak to him. Yet he drove you home in his Mercedes.”

I started laughing in Steve’s face. “And that’s why you resent me? Because he drove me home in his fucking Mercedes?”

He nodded and dropped his head in defeat. A few seconds later the next person in the circle introduced himself, in the same retarded way, and then he said, “I resent you, too, Jordan, for flying here in a private jet. I don’t even have money for food and you’re flying around in private planes.”

I looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement. I said, “Any other reasons you resent me?”

“Yes,” he said, “I also resent you for your relationship with Doug Talbot.” More nodding.

Then the next doctor introduced himself as an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a food addict, and he said, “I have only one resentment, and it is also toward Jordan.”

“Well, gee willikers,” I muttered, “that’s a fucking surprise! Would you care to humor me as to why?”

He compressed his lips. “For the same reasons they do, and also because you don’t have to follow the rules around here because of your relationship with Doug Talbot.”

I looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement.

One by one, all seven of my fellow patients shared their resentments toward me. When it was my turn to speak, I said, “Hi, my name is Jordan, and I’m alcoholic, a Quaalude addict, and a cocaine addict. I’m also addicted to Xanax and Valium and morphine and Klonopin and GHB and marijuana and Percocet and mescaline and just about everything else, including high-priced hookers, medium-priced hookers, and an occasional streetwalker, but only when I feel like punishing myself. Sometimes I take an afternoon massage at one of those Korean joints, and I have a young Korean girl jerk me off with baby oil. I always offer her a couple hundred extra if she’ll stick her tongue up my ass, but it’s sort of hit or miss, because of the language barrier. Anyway, I never wear a condom, just on general principles. I’ve been sober for five whole days now, and I’m walking around with a constant erection. I miss my wife terribly, and if you reallywant to resent me I’ll show you a picture of her.” I shrugged. “Either way, I resent every last one of you for being total fucking pussies and trying to take your life’s frustrations out on me. If you really want to focus on your own recoveries, stop looking outward and start looking inward, because you’re all complete fucking embarrassments to humanity. And, by the way, you are right about one thing—I amfriends with Doug Talbot, so I wish you all good luck when you try ratting me out to the staff tomorrow.” With that, I broke from the circle and said, “Excuse me; I gotta make a few phone calls.”

My favorite dentist said, “We still need to discuss your work detail. Each person in the unit has to clean an area. We have you down for the bathrooms this week.”