Monkey Business (27 page)

T
he dream. Was it worth it? Was big money by thirty the goal, or would we rather enjoy our lives? Could you have both and still
be an investment banking associate? You can be rich at thirty, forty, or fifty, but you can’t recapture your youth. You can’t
buy time and you can’t buy happiness. Time marches on. The DLJ annual report said “Have fun.” We weren’t.

During our first few months at DLJ the dream was still alive and well in our minds. We didn’t take notice of the sorry state
of our lives. We didn’t realize that we no longer had a life at work and a life outside of work. All had become one. At some
point, though, as the numbing months of toil rolled on, our views began to change. For Troob, the change was gradual—a nagging
periodic sense that he was missing something, that something wasn’t right. Troob was still in his relationship with Marjorie,
his beauty from Chicago. Things had been rocky
for them at times, but I could tell that he wanted to make it work. He had taken it to the next level, and was now professing
his undying love for her. He was worried because he had seen Slick and other colleagues break off their impending engagements
due to the pressures of the job. His life was deteriorating and it bothered him. He was a guy who used to work out every day.
He had once been lean and mean. Now, when he put a swimsuit on, he looked like a big pink piece of Spam in a can. His negative
feelings, only occasional at first, began recurring with increasing frequency until the dull buzz couldn’t be ignored any
longer.

Things were different for me. The feeling was more than a nagging sense; it was an epiphany. It was a thunderbolt from the
blue.

I am a man. Like other men, I have needs. I need women to tell me that they like me, I crave the company of women. I desire
their pleasures.

When my classmates and I began our journey through the web of DLJ, most of us had significant others. We were all fresh out
of business school. We had all landed sought-after positions as investment bankers with the mighty DLJ. We all had high opinions
of ourselves. We had taken a giant first step toward establishing ourselves as players in the financial fast lane. For most
of us, an indispensable square on that quilt of plenty was our significant other. As our first year wore on, however, the
devotion to the job that was required of us began to wear on many of these heavenly matches. One after another, my classmates
got dumped, thrown out, and had engagements broken off by mates who concluded that a
healthy paycheck wasn’t nearly enough compensation for a partner who was never there.

Not me. I didn’t have a girlfriend to begin with so there was nobody there to dump me. I had become quite accustomed to pleasuring
myself, and while my classmates searched for enough free time to make it to the gym to work out, I had no need for such common
pursuits. Due to my natural ardor, and my need to satisfy that ardor through self-gratification, I was now sporting some of
the strongest forearms in the banking division. Popeye had nothing on me.

It wasn’t long after my banking career began that an irrepressible urge for self-gratification at the workplace first hit
me. I haven’t seen many published statistics on this sort of contemptible behavior, but I think that most people have enough
self-control to resist whatever urges may traverse their loins. Unfortunately, while most people can waylay their needs for
several hours and, upon returning home, achieve momentary nirvana, the task isn’t so easy for a lecherous young banker. If
the urge to indulge hits at 4
P.M
., chances are that there are another good ten hours of work ahead before you’re going to be able to take care of business.

At least that was how I justified it to myself the first time I slunk into the DLJ men’s room in search of pleasure.

The problem with breaking a taboo is that, once you’ve broken it, there’s no turning back. My forays into the men’s room became
more and more frequent, my lust for life more unquenchable. I was a super sperm dynamo and nobody was going to stop me.

One thing led to another. I became emboldened. One
night, in the wee hours of the
A.M
., the urge settled in as I sat at my desk. I was so tired. I didn’t want to move. Just one lone act of passion couldn’t hurt.

I poked my head out into the corridor. It was 3
A.M
., there was nobody around. I can do it just this once, I convinced myself, then never again. It’s not like it’s going to
take me long to close the deal. What are the chances of getting caught? Who’s even around to catch me? I didn’t care if I
was going to go blind and get hairy palms. I was out of control.

And so the action for satisfaction began. I didn’t get caught. It didn’t take long. And when the dirty deed was finished,
I sat back to bask in the momentary glow of a job well done. I craved a cigarette, but had none. It was during this moment
of reflection that I had my epiphany.

In my pre-performance haste to ensure that none of my colleagues were still around, I’d forgotten about the thousands of potential
spectators who lay directly across the street. My life was DLJ. Only the DLJ people mattered. Others were irrelevant.

One entire wall of my office was glass. It looked out onto two adjacent office buildings. At 3
A.M
. most of the offices in my building were dark. Any offices that were still lit up at 3
A.M
. demanded the attention of anybody who happened to be looking out a window in one of the adjacent buildings. To break it
down, I was spanking off on a Broadway stage and everybody in the two adjacent buildings was my audience. Did any of my neighbors
watch my performance? Was it worthy of a Tony? I don’t know. If they did, their image of investment bankers must have been
permanently disfigured. It was 3
A.M
., I
was sitting at my office desk, and I’d just finished spanking. I was worthless and weak. There was no longer any life outside
the office. That was my epiphany, and it was the beginning of the end of my life as an investment banker.

My public stroke-a-thon in the office might not, by itself, have been enough to turn my career tide against investment banking.
I might have surveyed my sorry display but concluded that my perversities were mine alone and would persist regardless of
the career venue in which I was placed. Fortunately, I was able to look around at DLJ and see the remains of age-old bankers
who had probably once been like me. I could see the guys who’d been bankers for twenty years, had never been married, and
were as perverted as Pee-Wee Herman in a raincoat. Banking was their life, and banking had been their death. I could see these
people, and take hope that maybe it was banking that had made them the way they were. If it was banking, I reasoned, escape
might provide me with an opportunity for redemption.

The textbook example of one of these filthy career bankers was Kirk Flynn, aka Captain Kirk. He was a senior vice president.
He was a pervert. He was a teacher. He was a friend. Most of all, though, he was my eye-opener—the guy who made me realize
what I didn’t want to become.

Everybody, everywhere has a friend or relative who they keep quiet about. Usually, it’s because that person says and does
things that are so incredibly egregious, outrageous, and patently unacceptable that their behavior is inevitably going to
end up serving as a source of total embarrassment. What most people fail to admit, even to
themselves, however, is that they enjoy that person’s company. The next time that the drunk guy at the party calls the pompous
bastard’s wife a fat pig, open your eyes. The signs of public outcry that follow generally mask twinkling eyes and barely
concealed signs of genuine mirth. After all, chances are good that the pompous bastard’s wife is indeed fat, and chances are
even better that if she wasn’t a bitch the drunk guy wouldn’t have called her out on it. It’s just that nobody else has the
nuts to say it.

Captain Kirk was the drunk guy at the party. He was like my perverted uncle who has to stay out back in the woodshed during
Thanksgiving dinner. He was a good guy to go out on a weekend bender with, but his real intrinsic value lay in his filthy,
lecherous mind.

The Captain was a senior vice president in the Consumer Technology Group. We worked on more than a few deals together.

I had heard rumblings regarding Captain Kirk’s reputation while I was still a summer guy at DLJ. Kirk was a lifelong DLJer.
After twenty years with the firm, he was a member of the Old Guard. He’d been a senior vice president for as long as anyone
could remember. He had a few clients of his own, but not enough to get him the bump to the next level. He had long ago stopped
fretting about the fact that he was never going to get promoted to managing director, though. He didn’t care anymore.

Captain Kirk was forty-seven, long since divorced, and he was as horny as a bullfrog.

Often, when people met the Captain, they’d wonder why he wasn’t married. Occasionally, the brave ones would ask him outright.
He never minced words.

“Why the fuck would I want to be married?”

“Don’t you ever want to have kids?” they’d usually follow up.

“Kids? My sister’s got three kids. She lives an hour away from me. I can visit the kids anytime I want. Meanwhile, I can keep
on fucking the twenty-five-year-olds.”

There was no question that Kirk loved the ladies. Demonstrating that love was a Captain Kirk specialty. Many of the women,
whether they were social or professional acquaintances, were treated to the lip-smacking Captain Kirk kiss upon introduction.

The Captain knew that he wasn’t supposed to be smooching his female colleagues. As long as they would tolerate it, though,
he’d keep it up.

Captain Kirk’s sexual peccadilloes weren’t limited to occasional indiscretions with the female employees. The fire in his
loins burned far too bright for that. When it came to the lust in his heart, the Captain was like a bull in a china shop.

Captain Kirk’s lack of technical knowledge was mythical. This was a man who worked in the Consumer Technology Group, yet he
had to write step-by-step directions on the plastic casing of his computer monitor so that he wouldn’t forget how to activate
his automated stock quotation system. The Internet was a foreign concept to Kirk. He didn’t know what it was, he didn’t know
what it was capable of, and he would have gone on in perpetual blissful oblivion if it hadn’t been for an offhand comment
I made to him in the hallway one afternoon.

The Captain and I were walking to a conference room to meet with the management of SharpSound, a manufacturer
of high-end audio speakers. I was giving the Captain a primer on the Internet.

“Kirk, did you know that with DLJ’s new high-speed Internet connection I can download full-motion porno videos off the Internet
while I’m sitting at my desk? It doesn’t cost a penny.”

Free porno! That was enough to grab his attention.

“What’re you talking about, John?”

“It’s like this, Kirk. If I get bored, I click my mouse a few times, and before you know it I’m watching first-class porn.”

We had reached the conference room, and Sharp-Sound management was waiting. I could see that the Captain had many questions
to ask me, but they’d have to wait.

We were halfway through our pitch with SharpSound and I could see that the Captain was having a difficult time focusing on
the business at hand. He was still thinking about those dirty videos. Fortunately, he knew Sharp-Sound management well. They
were a longtime client of his, and they were well versed in the particulars of his fetishes. So it really came as no huge
surprise when, during a momentary lapse in the conversation, Kirk suddenly blurted it out.

“John knows how to get free porno on the Internet!”

Nobody said anything. We all looked around at each other. I smiled.

“Kirk’s just learned of the power of the Internet. He’s looking forward to exploring its offerings,” I offered up to everybody.

Everyone laughed.

Captain Kirk beamed at me. I was his protégé, and my client management skills were coming along fabulously.

Following our meeting, the Captain and I headed back toward my office.

“John, you’ve got to show me some of that porno. I won’t believe it till I’ve seen it.”

We hunkered down in my office in front of the computer monitor. I began to introduce the Captain to the wonders of free porno,
Internet-style. I pulled up a long list of potential fantasy sites and directed Kirk to take his pick. His first selection
was a dandy: “Asian Babe Extravaganza.” We accessed the site, and within seconds we were staring at leggy Asian women giving
us private beaver screenings. The Captain couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Oh my God. This is incredible. Can I do this on my computer? Can you show me how to do this?”

“Absolutely, Kirk, we all have access now. Technology’s a beautiful thing. This is going to change the complexion of the next
generation.”

A voice spoke up behind us: “What are you guys looking at?”

I turned, and there was Diane, one of my associate classmates. She was Asian, she was female, and I wasn’t sure that she’d
appreciate the gynecological specimen so prominently displayed on my monitor. I made a lame effort to stand up and conceal
our evil goings-ons, but it was too late. The beaver had been witnessed.

“Well, well, well, Diane. Look’s like we’re caught in the act!” the Captain proclaimed. “Boys will be boys, you know.”

Diane looked at me. Diane looked at the Captain. It
wasn’t a battle worth fighting. She sighed, turned, and left.

I thought about the whole thing later. It was pretty damned funny. Looking at porno on the computer with the Captain was a
decent job perk. I thought about it a little bit more later that night, though, and I started to worry. It wasn’t that I felt
guilty. As far as I was concerned, the PC Nazis and their sexual harassment allegations were mostly a crock of shit cooked
up by overzealous trial lawyers to generate free business for themselves. What I worried about was becoming like Captain Kirk.
I thought that the Captain was funny because he was still so damned horny at the age of 47 and he didn’t give a fuck what
anybody thought. That didn’t mean that I wanted to be like him. Forty-seven and never having been married because investment
banking had consumed my life. Forty-seven and still spanking the monkey in my office at 3
A.M
. That was scary. What was I becoming? I began to think that maybe it wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t living the dream. I wasn’t
having any fun. Maybe there was more to life than whatever the hell I was running after.