The Wolf of Wall Street (55 page)

She shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”

“Well, I’ll tell you that no one in that car was traumatized. It was a moment between guys, that’s all. The only reason they ratted me out was because they want to prove to the staff that they’re cured or rehabilitated or whatever. Anything it takes to get their fucking licenses back, right?”

She nodded. “Obviously.”

“Oh, so you know that?”

“Yes, of course I know that. And the fact that they all reported you makes me seriously question the status of their own recoveries.” She smiled the smile of no hard feelings. “Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that your behavior was inappropriate.”

“Whatever,” I muttered. “It won’t happen again.”

“Fair enough,” she said, handing me a sheet of paper with some typing on it. “I just need you to sign this behavioral contract. All it says is that you agree not to expose yourself in public again.” She handed me a pen.

“You’re shitting me!”

She shook her head no. I started laughing as I read the contract. It was only a few lines, and it said just what she’d indicated. I shrugged and signed it, then rose from my chair and headed for the door. “Is that it?” I snapped. “Case closed?”

“Yes, case closed.”

As I headed back to my therapy session, I had this strange feeling that it wasn’t. These Talbot Martians were a strange lot.

The next day it was time for another roundtable discussion. Once more, all hundred five Martians and a dozen or so staff members sat in a great circle in the auditorium. Doug Talbot, I noticed, was conspicuously absent.

So I closed my eyes and prepared for the drizzle. After ten or fifteen minutes I was soaking wet and half asleep, when I heard: “…Jordan Belfort, who most of you know.”

I looked up. My therapist had taken over the meeting at some point, and now she was talking about me. Why? I wondered.

“So rather than having a guest speaker today,” continued my therapist, “I think it would be more productive if Jordan shared with the group what happened.” She paused and looked in my direction. “Would you be kind enough to share, Jordan?”

I looked around the room at all the Martians staring at me, including Shirley Temple with her wonderful blond curls. I was still a bit confused as to what my therapist wanted me to say, although I had a sneaky suspicion that it had something to do with me being a sexual deviant.

I leaned forward in my seat, stared at my therapist, and shrugged. “I have no problem talking to the group,” I said, “but what is it that you want me to say? I have lots of stories. Why don’t you pick one?”

With that, all hundred five Martians turned their Martian heads toward my therapist. It looked like the two of us were engaged in a tennis match. “Well,” she said therapeutically, “you’re free to talk about whatever you want in this room. It’s a very safe place. But why don’t you start with what happened in the car the other day, on the way to the gym?”

The Martians turned their heads back to me. Through laughter, I said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

Now the Martians looked back at my therapist…who pursed her lips and shook her head, as if to say, “Nope, I’m dead serious!”

How ironic, I thought. My therapist was giving me center stage. How glorious! The Wolf—back in action! I loved it. The fact that the room was half females made it all the better. The SEC had taken away my ability to stand before the crowd and speak my piece, and now my therapist had been kind enough to restore that power to me. I would put on a show the Martians would never forget!

I nodded and smiled at my therapist. “Is it okay if I stand in the middle of the room and talk? I think better when I’m moving.”

A hundred five Martian heads turned back to my therapist. “Please, feel free.”

I walked to the center of the room and stared into the eyes of Shirley Temple. “Hi, everybody! My name is Jordan, and I’m an alcoholic and a drug addict and a sexual deviant.”

“Hi, Jordan!” came the hearty response, accompanied by a few chuckles. Shirley Temple, however, had turned beet-red. I had been staring right into her enormous blue eyes when I’d referred to myself as a sexual deviant.

I said, “Anyway, I’m really not much for talking in front of crowds, but I’ll try my best. Okay, where should I begin? Oh, my erections—yes, that’s the most appropriate place, I guess. Here’s the root of the problem. I spent the last ten years of my life with my dick in a state of seminarcosis as a result of all the drugs I was doing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t impotent or anything like that, although I will admit that there were about a thousand or so times I couldn’t get it up because of all the coke and Ludes.”

Scattered laughter now.
Ah, the Wolf of Wall Street! Let the games begin!
I raised my hand for quiet.

“No, seriously, this isn’t a laughing matter. See, for the most part, when I couldn’t get it up, I was with hookers, and that was about three times a week. So I was basically throwing my money out the window—paying upward of a thousand dollars a pop and not being able to even sleep with them. It was all very sad, and very expensive too.

“Anyway, they usually succeeded in the end—at least the good ones did—although it took a bit of coaxing with toys and such.” I turned the corners of my mouth down and shrugged, as if to say, “Sex toys are nothing to be ashamed about!”

There was great laughter now, although without even looking I could tell it was the sound of female Martian laughter. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked around the room and saw all the female Martians staring at me with terrific smiles on their kind Martian faces. Their Martian shoulders bounced up and down with each and every giggle. Meanwhile, the male Martians were shooting daggers at me with their Martian eyes.

I waved my hand dismissively and soldiered on: “No matter, no matter. You see, the irony is that when I was with my wife I never really had that problem. I could always get it up with her—or at least usually—and if you saw her you’d understand why. But when I started snorting a quarter ounce of coke a day, well, I was having trouble with her too.

“Yet now that I haven’t touched a drug in over a week, I think my penis is undergoing some sort of strange metamorphosis, or maybe a reawakening. I’ve been walking around with an erection twenty-three hours a day…or maybe even more.” A huge burst of female Martian laughter. I looked around the room. Oh, yes, I had them! They were mine now! The Wolf, spinning his yarn for the ladies! Center stage!

“Anyway, I thought some of the men here would appreciate my plight. I mean, it seemed only logical that other people would be suffering from this terrible affliction too, right?”

I looked around the room and all of the female Martians were nodding in agreement, while the male Martians were shaking their heads back and forth, staring at me with contempt. I shrugged. “So, anyway, here’s where the problem started. I was sitting in the car with three other male patients—dickless patients, I’m now thinking—and we were driving to the gym, and I think it was the vibrations from the engine or maybe it was the bumps in the road, but, whatever it was, out of nowhere I got this huge erection!”

I looked around the room, carefully avoiding the blazing gazes of the male Martians—relishing instead the adoring looks of all the female Martians. Shirley Temple was licking her lips in anticipation. I winked at her, and I said, “Anyway, it was just a harmless moment between guys, that’s all. Now, I won’t deny that I yanked on the snake a few times”—a burst of female Martian laughter—“and I won’t deny that I slapped it against my stomach once or twice”—more laughter—“but it was all done in jest. It wasn’t like I was yanking on it ferociously, trying to make myself come in the backseat of the car, although I wouldn’t pass judgment on anyone who did. I mean, to each his own, right?” An unidentified female Martian screamed, “Yeah, to each his own!” to which the rest of the female Martians started clapping.

I held up my hand for quiet, wondering how long the staff would let this go on. I suspected they would let it go on indefinitely. After all, for every second I spoke there was some insurance company receiving a bill for each of these hundred five Martians. “So, to sum it up, to tell you what’s really bothering me about this whole affair, is that the three guys who turned me in, whose names will go unmentioned—although if you come up to me afterward I’ll gladly tell you exactly who they are, so you can avoid them—they all laughed and joked about it while we were in the car. No one confronted me or even hinted that they thought what I was doing was in poor taste.”

I shook my head in disgust. “You know, the truth is that I come from a very dysfunctional world—a world of my own construction—where things like nudity and prostitutes and debauchery and all sorts of depraved acts were all considered normal.

“In retrospect, I know it was wrong. And I know it was insane. But that’s now…
today…
as I stand here a sober man. Yeah, today I know that midget-tossing is wrong and that getting scrummed by four hookers is wrong and that manipulating stocks is wrong and that cheating on my wife is wrong and falling asleep at the dinner table or on the side of the road or crashing into other people’s cars because I fell asleep at the wheel, I know all these things are wrong.

“I’m the first one to admit that I’m the furthest thing from a perfect person. I’m actually insecure and humble, and I embarrass easily.” I paused, changing my tone to dead seriousness. “But I refuse to show it. If I had to choose between embarrassment and death, I’d choose death. So, yeah, I’m a weak, imperfect person. But one thing you’ll never find me doing is passing judgment on other people.”

I shrugged and let out a very obvious sigh. “Yeah, maybe what I did in the car was wrong. Perhaps it was in bad taste and it was offensive. But I challenge any person in this room to make a case that I did it with malice in my heart or to try to fuck up someone else’s recovery. I did it to make light of a terrible situation I’m in. I’ve been a drug addict for almost a decade now, and although I might appear to be somewhat normal, I know I’m not. I’ll be leaving here in a couple of weeks, and I’m scared shitless to go back into the lion’s den, to go back to the people, places, and things that fueled my habit. I have a wife, whom I love, and two children, whom I adore, and if I go back out there and relapse I’ll destroy them forever, especially my children.

“Yet, here, in Talbot Marsh, where I’m supposed to be surrounded by people who
understand
what I’m going through, I’ve got three assholes trying to undermine my recovery and get me thrown out of this place. And that’s really sad. I’m no different than any one of you, male or female. Yeah, maybe I got a few extra bucks, but I’m scared and worried and insecure about the future, and I spend the better part of my day praying that everything’s gonna wind up okay. That one day I’ll be able to sit my kids down and say, ‘Yes, it’s true I pushed Mommy down the stairs once while I was high on cocaine, but that was twenty years ago, and I’ve been sober ever since.’”

I shook my head again. “So next time any of you consider reporting me to the staff, I would urge you to think twice. You’re only hurting yourself. I’m not getting thrown out of this place so fast, and the staff is a lot smarter than you people think. And that’s all I have to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting an erection, so I need to sit down to avoid embarrassment. Thank you.” I waved my hand in the air, as if I were a political candidate on the campaign trail, and the room broke out into thunderous applause. Every last female Martian, every last staff member, and about half the male Martians rose to their feet, giving me a standing ovation.

As I took my seat, I locked eyes with my therapist. She smiled at me, nodded her head, and pumped her fist in the air a single time, as if to say, “Good for you, Jordan.”

The next thirty minutes was open discussion, during which the female Martians defended my actions and said that I was adorable, while some of the males of the species continued their attack against me and said that I was a menace to Martian society.

That evening I sat my roommates down and said, “Listen, I’m sick and tired of all the crap that’s going on around here. I don’t want to hear about how I forget to put the toilet seat down and how I talk too much on the phone or how I breathe too loud. I’m done. So here’s the deal. You guys are both desperate for cash, right?”

They nodded.

“Fine,” I said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Tomorrow morning you’re gonna call my friend Alan Lipsky, and he’s gonna open accounts for you at his brokerage firm. By tomorrow afternoon you’ll each have made five grand. You can have the money wired wherever you want. But I don’t want to hear another fucking peep out of either of you until I leave this place. That’s less than three weeks from now, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Of course they both called the next morning, and of course it greatly improved our relationship. Nevertheless, my problems at Talbot Marsh were far from over. But it wasn’t the luscious Shirley Temple who would complicate things. No, my problems came from my desire to see the Duchess. I’d heard through the Martian grapevine that, under rare circumstances, the staff granted furloughs. I called the Duchess and asked her if she would fly down for a long weekend, if I got approval.

“Just tell me where and when,” she’d replied, “and I’ll give you a weekend you’ll never forget.”

It was for that very reason that I now sat in my therapist’s office, trying to get a furlough. It was my third week on planet Talbot Marsh and I hadn’t gotten myself into any new trouble, although it was common knowledge among the Martians that I was attending only twenty-five percent of the group therapy sessions. But no one seemed to care anymore. They realized that Doug Talbot wasn’t going to toss me and that in my own offbeat way I was being a positive influence.

I smiled at my therapist and said, “Listen, I don’t see what the big deal is if I leave on a Friday and come back on a Sunday. I’m gonna be with my wife the whole time. You’ve spoken to her, so you know she’s with the program. It’ll be good for my recovery.”