the inquisitive techie

“I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere and you know it’s really hard to hold your breath.
I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared, I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress
Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth but I got me a nice little place in the stars
And I swear I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car
I hid in the mother breast of the crowd but when they said “Pull down” I pulled up
Ooh-ooh growin’ up. Ooh-ooh growin’ up“

Bruce Springsteen – from the song Growing Up.

I moved to New York City with $5 in my pocket.  Yes, five dollars.

It turned out to be one of the greatest adventures I have ever had.

I was so impatient that I left college before even waiting for graduation or the ceremony.  I  flew back to take my finals in my last two classes, remarkably passing them after spending the summer bartending and Disc Jockey’ing at several bars and crappy nightclubs in Buffalo and the beach community of Sunset Bay, NY.

After much work, and with a raw determination to get out of Buffalo for the bigger adventures to be had, I landed a job at a New York Advertising Agency. I was going to be making $15K a year as a media buyer for BMW, in Manhattan.  Forget that an apartment would take most of that Salary every month.  It was the Big Apple, the show, the greatest city in the world.  Forget that I hated the Yankees, I was moving to New York.

I was dead broke, but I helped to control a $200 MILLION budget for global advertising. That’s millions of dollars to each vendor.  And BMW was courted by over 200 magazines each year with lavish parties, lunches, and corporate junkets.  We were expected to go as part of our jobs, and the ante was big for the magazines.  So they worked to outspend each other to garner the attention of we jaded buyers.  It was a great game for us.  And fun to play.

To every magazine in the United States, I WAS A ROCK STAR.  For example, Time Magazine was our biggest vendor by far.  We did over $15 MILLION in advertising spend with them each year.  I think that my sales rep made $2 million a year from my account alone.  He also went on to be the PUBLISHER of Time Magazine not too long afterwards for the massive amounts of money he could bring to the business.

We did $12 million with Sports Illustrated (think tickets to EVERYTHING), $10 each with Newsweek and Forbes.  This was a lot of money.  And people made sure we were happy.  What was a $200,000 party, when the customer list brought in $100 million a year?

So here I was, a cocky Catholic school kid from Orchard Park, who had moved to NYC with $5 in his pocket. And I couldn’t pay my rent.

OK, full disclosure – I lived with my Aunt and Uncle for 6 months – they were complete saints  for tolerating me and my associated ego due to the lifestyle.  The only way I could afford to live there, since I had squandered my summer’s earnings on, well, my summer, was to live with them in their amazing house in Bronville, a bucolic village located a short train ride from NYC, in Westchester county.  Prime real estate.  Think Scarsdale, mansions, Ferrari’s at the mall.  Nice.

Thank you Mike and Judy, I owe you a lifetime debt, as well I as I do to my cousins Maura and Myles, who were as teenagers, I dare say, never more entertained by even any of their other many very colorful family members.  The Duffy’s have all earned their place in heaven thanks to me, by unflaggingly showing their endless patience and grace in the face of my natural state of chaos.  I love you all, the most gracious people I know still.

I had thought I was getting a job, and would be making money.  I had made good money in the past and fully expected to making good money again.  Little did I know  that I would not be making enough to pay for rent, let alone buy food, or clothing.

And I had to wear a suit every day, a nice one too, Brooks Brothers, Ralph Lauren, etc.  Everyone I worked with did, and it was expected.  I liked the look.  Nobody knew we were poor.  Every day was a bit like a costume party.  All dressed up, and being fed food, booze, and more.  Power lunches were common, and deals were done over steaks at The Palm, Smith and Wolensky, Le Circque.

I lived like Mick Jagger.  On my first day of work I was flown in a helicopter for a ride on Malcolm Forbes 250 foot long yacht, The Highlander. It was an August night and I remember sitting on the deck alone later, watching the skyline of New York going on forever.  Holy shit.  This was my first day on my first job out of college.

I was 23 years old, and I spent the next 2 years working for BMW at Ammirati and Puris, one of the most respected agencies in the city.

Some things I did while I was working there:

• ate lunch and dinner at every great restaurant in the city for free.
• slept in Central Park by accident (OK I was 24 years old, think beer and more beer…) after a softball game.  Obviously I lived.
• was flown all over the world on corporate jets and saw great places
• was offered tickets to the super bowl, the masters, US open (tennis and golf), the final four, every concert in town… and went to a ton of them.
• got paid to spend a week at race car driving school and drive really, really fast in race cars that I still have dreams about.
• partied, sang, danced, partied some more, and got drunk with my college friends in every great restaurant and club in the city
• was chatted up by Kathy Ireland and Elle McPherson, the last two SI swimsuit cover models of the day for an hour at a party, because I tried to skip their presentation with my friend Dan.    We were shooed in late to the presentation when they closed the bar on us, and I got the last seat in the room, betwen the two ladies in the front row.  (Elle is one of the nicest women I have ever met, and Kathy one of the dumbest for the record).  We are talking SUPERMODELS HERE people.  Supermodels.  Real ones.
• had full access to a car service car – limo – 24 hours a day
• worked in an office with beer and wine (clients’) stocked in all the refrigerators.

Many of the people I worked with had graduated from Ivy League schools.  This was a hard job to get.  I had sent over 500 resumes, got 15 responses, had 10 interviews to get this job.  When I finally received 3 job offers at the end of my quest I had to pick.

The other offers I got were from Coca Cola and Proctor and Gamble’s ad agencies.  I chose BMW ultimately, because I liked the cars.  I later found a way to borrow them for my use.  I could check them out of the agency motor pool on weekends by calling in favors to my client.  They were just sitting there all weekend after all, as were the gorgeous BMW motorcycles.  I drove $80K cars home to visit my high school sweetheart girlfriend at her college back upstate.

I figured everyone else’s job was like this, because it was for most of the people that I worked with, including my best friend from college, who was doing the same job for another client at another agency.

I came home and had breakfast with my dad one weekend.  He, a retired cop, reminded me how lucky I was, and how different living in NYC was from what I had been doing in Buffalo.  I took his words to heart.  I wrote down a lot of my adventures in a journal.  Maybe I will write a book.  Think of it as a “do they serve beer in Hell?” with all the lawyers replaced by advertising men, and sales reps with endless checkbooks.

After three years I took a better job at a larger ad agency that promised a much larger salary.  I would be working  for a much larger client, Burger King.  I would finally be able to get a real paycheck, as a senior manager and have my own team of flunkies to boss around.

The agency lost the account less than 6 months later, as “BK” looked to trim costs during the George Bush senior led recession in 1990 and 1991.  I was laid off along with 200 other people, as the agency looked to trim costs the very next day.

I soon returned to Buffalo, after bartending for a few months and unsuccessfully trying to find another similar media buyer’s job.

I was no longer a rock star.  But living in NYC was the greatest adventure, in the greatest city in the world, during the most amazing time of my life.

I was in love, I was living adventure after adventure after adventure.  I traveled all over, I got paid to ski, surf, golf, and get drunk at lunch with sales reps.  I went to Europe, met amazing people, and did amazing things.  A lot of them.

Now I live in Amherst, NY.  I work in a 10 x 9 basement office with little direct heat, and work mostly with my dog (except I recently lost custody of him).  I take every adventure seriously now, since they tend to be much smaller.

I see my kids all the time.  I paint when I am not busy enough at work.  I love music, and am always listening to something new, and seeing live music.  I am relatively poor right now due to my recent divorce, and the associated bills, etc.  I actually took a bartending job again to make some extra money again.  Talk about full circle.

I learned something in NYC, even though it was a short adventure, it was an amazing one.  The ride can end quickly, and fortunes change.

My time in New York taught me to enjoy the ride.  To learn to live in the moment. To appreciate great adventures.

I was told to read Thoreau by my dad back then, and mirclulously I did.  This quote, while out of context from Walden to NYC, comes to mind.  The theme fits, and the message is clear.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

Life is a great adventure.  Be a rock star.  You can.  I did.

And it only took $5.

When I was 12 years old, my two aunts who were 18 and 20 years old, were killed by a drunk driver, a man my large Irish family immediately labeled a monster. They attended all of his trials, and made sure he got the maximum penalty for his crime.

Since this was 1976, and drunk driving penalties were still lax, he got weekends in jail for a year. For killing two people. I never met the guy, but he was bad.  I just knew.

I used to build a lot of stuff and often visited this small lumber yard near my house. I would buy scraps for a buck and build birdhouses and other small projects with them.

Eventually, the guys who worked there got to know me and would just give me scraps of wood after a while. The wood was garbage to them, and they would give me boxes of scraps to go.

One day I ran into this guy that had worked there for years. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and when I asked why, he said he had only been working during the week, while I was in school. He then left me to wait on another customer.

Another staff member I knew came over and told me that the boy was involved in a terrible car accident last summer, and had killed two girls. He had been at a party, had just a few beers and hit a car that had run a stop sign.

The kid was someone I had known for years, a normal guy, who had always been nice to me.  I was torn. We all hated him, for what he had done. But I knew he was just like the rest of us, and that it was just a mistake, a horrible mistake.

I walked up to him, and told him who I was. I said “I am Kathleen and Colleen’s nephew.”  He paled, and looked sick. He then walked quickly into the back room.

I left and never went back.

The lumberyard closed a few years later, not long after a bigger lumberyard was built near the expressway.

I never saw that guy again. I wonder if he’s OK.  If he still has nightmares about that night.

He was just a kid.

We all were.