2. Bagel Boy
I was two years old when my father left and three years old when we transitioned from a large house in New Jersey to a small apartment in Great Neck, Long Island. The world as I knew it had turned upside down; we lived in a new town, my dad was gone, my mother worked all day, and it seemed like someone else took care of me every other day. It was a confusing time, with rapidly conflicting emotions.
Looking back, my parents’ marriage, a fast-tracked union facilitated by the Vietnam War during a time of intense geopolitical uncertainty, was doomed from the start. None of that mattered to a toddler; we were one of three divorced families in the town, and my childhood felt anything but normal.
My mother was a kindergarten teacher but took a marketing job in Manhattan to make ends meet. I give her a lot of credit; she insisted that her job be commission-based so that she could set her schedule around the needs of her children. My brother Adam and I shared a room and adapted to life without a father, while our mom balanced her responsibilities. Her income, along with help from my grandparents, afforded us a lower middle-class existence, and for all intents and purposes, we had a loving home.
Our apartment was a few blocks from the railroad station, on the sixth floor and overlooking a park, and while we lived in an affluent town, it wasn’t the wealthiest of neighborhoods. Great Neck was a place where children measured each other by the logo on their shoes and labels on their shirts. That was my first taste of money, having some, but seemingly never having enough.
When I visited friends on the other side of town, I marveled at the sprawling lawns and fancy cars. I asked my mom why we lived with such modest means, unaware of how painful it must have been for a single parent with two young boys to field such questions. Her response was always the same—“If you want more money, get a job.”
My dad had moved to California, and our interaction was limited to infrequent visits, phone calls, and years later, occasional summers. I would stare at the phone on my birthday waiting for it to ring, looking for a semblance of normalcy or an inkling of paternal acceptance. It rarely if ever did, and that affected me in ways that would take years to comprehend.
My dissatisfaction manifested in many ways, which was magnified by the fact that I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age. Starved for attention, I got into fights and lashed out at whoever got in my way. I yearned for validation, and when it didn’t arrive, I drained milkshakes to satiate my hunger. I was overweight and underliked, which is a difficult dynamic for any child to navigate. The Ritalin I was prescribed kept me awake most nights, and I sat outside my mother’s door listening for sounds, hoping she was also awake so she could keep me company.
I didn’t fit in socially, and by the sixth grade, it was clear that changes needed to be made. My mother met with social workers and tried to identify a positive pathway for her youngest child. I was eventually removed from the public system and placed in a school located in Jamaica, Queens, that focused on children with special needs through smaller classes.
While that was a necessary step, I didn’t understand it at the time. I grew more aggressive, got into fights, and rebelled whenever possible. The issue wasn’t intelligence—I received “post high school” grades on many of my mandatory tests—it was behavioral. I knew one thing—I hated the fact I didn’t attend public school and craved normalcy; I just wanted to fit in.
By seventh grade, I realized that if there was going to be a change, it needed to start within. I wrote my dream on a piece of paper—the class schedule at the public school—with a note underneath that read, “Please God, let it be true.” Other students taunted me and my initial instinct was to fight, but I realized that would only push my dream farther away. I focused on change, put my best foot forward for the remainder of the year, and the following autumn, I enrolled in Great Neck South Middle School.
I worked at the local bagel shop at the age of 13, the first job of continual employment that continues to this day, and awoke at 5:00 a.m. on Saturdays to prepare for the mad rush of customers, including many of the families I aspired to emulate. If you want more money, get a job. I’ll never forget the symbolism of that counter, a marble divide representing the chasm between the haves and have-nots as money changed hands for goods and services. Little did I know that I would experience life on both sides of that cash register, and little did I know that I should have been careful what I wished for.
When I was back in the public school system, my ADHD persisted, as did the aggressive tendencies. My mother had the foresight to guide me toward sports so I could channel my energy in a positive direction. I progressed as an athlete—what I lacked in skill, I made up for with effort—and had finally settled into a normalized, somewhat traditional childhood.
West LA Fade Away
The void that was left when my father disappeared was powerful. On the rare occasions that I saw him, he seemed “foggy” and distant, and there was often a funny odor that I wouldn’t place until much later in life.
I visited him in Woodland Hills, California, during the summer a few times as a child. He was in the post-production business, and he evidently made a decent living. He had a home in the hills, a pool in the backyard, and expensive cars in the garage. There were times we connected—times I cherished—but his mood was volatile and our relationship inconsistent. I recall one episode when I was about ten. As we walked through the garage after a swim in the pool, I told him that my biggest fear in life was ending up like him. He took a swing at me as I slipped to the ground; he missed, but I began to cry with hopes he wouldn’t come down with a second shot.
Adam and I were typical siblings; we fought a lot in our youth, but an underlying love rooted our relationship. One morning in Great Neck, I awoke to find him sitting in his bed, crying and petting our cat Valentino. I asked what was wrong and he told me to go back to sleep. When I was at school the next day, his friends told me that he had moved to California, and I returned home to find our mother screaming into the phone at our father.
Adam had made decisions in an attempt to address his own issues—feelings I was unaware of at the time—and returned east at the end of his junior year after my father separated from his wife, one of his six marriages to five different women. Ruby flew out to retrieve Adam after my brother told him that he was scared of our father’s potential reaction; while we were both young, we knew, even at that age, that nobody fucked with Ruby.
After a childhood of trying to find and understand myself, I lost considerable weight when I was 14. Between playing sports, developing friendships, and dating, if we can call it that, I reached an internal equilibrium when I applied myself and was rewarded for my efforts. High school can be a vicious place, particularly in Long Island where you’re often judged by possessions. My self-esteem was fragile—I felt responsible for my father’s absence, like my arrival to the world somehow chased him away. I tried to reconcile my abandonment issues, but the needle kept pointing inward. While I had everything I hoped for at the time—everything I had wished for years prior—something tangible was missing.
My father and I communicated with increased frequency, and as I was about to enter my junior year of high school, I wanted to find out who he was and decided to move to southern California. While my mother wasn’t thrilled with my decision, she understood that it was something I needed to do and a lesson I must learn for myself. I had to answer the questions that continued to plague me.
I packed my belongings and headed west.
The Swing Vote
My father’s energy vacillated from one day to the next and our encounters were random—one moment we were tossing a baseball and trying to recapture lost time, and the next I tiptoed through the house because he was upset and I didn’t want him to hear me. I thought he was moody, but years later I discovered something entirely more disturbing. He suffered from something beyond his control and foreign to what was understood by society at that time.
One evening, my dad pulled into the driveway in a flashy red Ferrari and announced he had been promoted at work. I’ll never forget how much he loved that car. He washed, waxed, and detailed it as if it alone was symbolic of his success. He enjoyed the attention as he drove through town, and I suppose I did as well. I would witness that stretch for status many times when I eventually arrived on Wall Street.
I also bought a car, a red Nissan 200SX, as I was eager to emulate him. My father cosigned the loan with the understanding that I would be responsible for the monthly payments. I worked several consecutive jobs to satisfy that obligation; I worked at a New York Deli at the local mall, managed a Subway down the street from my high school, and traveled to Simi Valley to pick weeds for 50 bucks a day. My mother’s advice played often in my head. “If you want more money, get a job.”
When that wasn’t enough, I sold the baseball card collection that my grandfather had given to me. Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Willy Mays, and a vintage Bob Gibson were a small price to pay for extra cash, or so I thought. I missed playing sports but was willing to make the sacrifice if it meant having wheels. California was a lot different from New York. If you didn’t have a car, you weren’t in the game. It simply wasn’t an option.
One night, in the middle of my senior year, my father walked into my room and told me that he got fired from his job and had to sell his Ferrari. He said he needed my car to go on interviews, but I still had to make the payments. If I didn’t like it, he said, I could follow in my brother’s footsteps and move back to Great Neck. I agreed to his plan, hoping to help him get back on track, or that was my post-rationalization. I suppose the truth was that I didn’t want to be abandoned again, or be banished as the case may be, and I did whatever it took to avoid that outcome.
I finished the school year, worked to make the car payments, and applied to several colleges on the west coast, including UC–Santa Barbara and San Diego State. I also applied to east coast schools such as Boston University and Syracuse. While I enjoyed the California weather, I was a New Yorker at heart, and I wanted to be closer to the other side of my family.
Shortly after graduating Taft High School in 1987, I returned east and worked as a short-order cook in Times Square the summer before my freshman year. I paid close attention to the well-dressed professionals who scurried to work and rarely, if ever, made eye contact with the young man in a white apron behind the counter. As I readied for a fresh start in upstate New York, it was hard to contain my excitement.
My lone goal was to be on the other side of the cash register.