June 7, 2005 – Accounting for a Man’s Indulgences

June 7, 2005 – Accounting for a Man’s Indulgences

When I wrote of LA in my last entry I described a guy who had begun to indulge his hedonist appetites and to share with those around him especially the advertising buyers. Tickets to a football game at Candlestick Park in a corporate box LA rented or otherwise secured for the event. Dinners at the best restaurants in San Francisco, Dallas, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or other big cities where there were buyers to be swayed away from the competition and over to Design. And always there were the mind stimulants inhaled or swallowed that made those entertained, even more amenable to doing business with us, versus them. LA did not have a monopoly on the practice but the other guys didn’t get to hang out with LA.

When I first met LA while I was still working at the advertising and public relations firm on Waverley Street in Palo Alto and LA was still an editor at Electronics, it was in the company of GS, the writer for the agency. GS seldom got up from his Underwood typewriter to greet agency visitors except when it was an editor he had worked with in the past. GS was Electronics alumni, recruited into the agency for what reason, I will never know. Something must have happened at the magazine that made him want to leave the almost academic world of publishing for the razzle-dazzle, BS-laden world of PR. When LA would come into the office, GS would stop his pecking away at the keys and the two of them would spend time talking. I would learn later that GS was LA’s source of cannabis when in the valley. GS did not indulged but a relative did and GS would be the intermediary.

GS and I had that in common at least, neither of us liked to indulge in banned substances, though he had a taste for beer while I was developing a palate for wine, not a particularly discerning one that could distinguish year and vintner, but rather one that could decide if the bottle was suitable to serve clients or guests. It is the one gift the agency bestowed that I continue to appreciate. I suspect LA recognized in me the square I was when we first met: someone who largely played by the rules and never pushed the envelope of self-indulgence. I have a Catholic upbringing in a military household to thank for that. Never mind, I eventually did emulate LA and paid the price for doing so. Uptight, inhibited guys like me should never attempt to be what they are not, but that’s another story.

When LA became publisher of Design, his sales manager, BL was the man he relied on to drive the sales staff to meet the magazine’s aggressive sales goals. I saw the two of them in action a couple of times as I sat in on dinners following a sales meeting. Once at the Sheraton Plaza Hotel near LAX—the one where the FBI busted John DeLorean on October 19, 1982 for drug trafficking—I joined a dinner. (LA asked me what I wanted to drink. I replied, “a glass of Champagne.” He ordered a bottle of Perrier-Jouet Brut Fleur de Champagne, which he shared with me.) BL was drinking club soda. As I got carried away with my glass of expensive champagne, I watched LA and BL get up and walk just out of earshot of the assembled table of salesmen that were busily drinking and talking among themselves. When the two returned LA took his seat and BL stood before the assembled throng of sales people and with his booming voice lauded the performers individually, recounting solo performances by mentioning particular thorny obstacles overcome in the process. His impromptu speech interrupted by spontaneous outbursts of applause. LA whispered to me that BL was setting the stage for the tough task of setting next year’s sales goals for each of the sales staff. That would happen in the days following the meeting. BL was the man with the carrot and the stick, administered at LA’s discretion. God, I was glad I didn’t work in sales.

BL returned his carrot and stick to LA and retired. Gone was the older man, father figure that I suspect LA had come to appreciate. LA’s real father, still alive and living in retirement with a woman considerably his junior had not shared the professional intimacy that LA and BL had shared. There is something about making money together that builds bonds. In a way, the process is no different than scaling a mountain as twosome. Each has to rely on the other to make the right decisions about each upward advance against the objective. Push too hard or make a mistake and you fall back loosing ground against your objective. But when the chemistry works and the twosome manage to each accomplish the objective they collectively set, there has to be a sense of mutually shared satisfaction that brings the individuals closer together.

The vacuum left by BL’s departure was filled by PM, not much taller than my five foot seven, but with a big frame and a round girth—the result of an Italian love of mangia. While BL had been the voice of moderation and restraint for LA’s self-indulgent hedonism, PM quickly became the voice of excess and no restraint. PM lived as though there was no tomorrow and everything had to be enjoyed this instant. One Christmas, PM invited the entire West Coast sales and editorial staff, about nine of us, to lunch—our annual Christmas party. Lunch was at the Velvet Turtle Restaurant on South Mary Avenue in Sunnyvale near the intersection with Fremont Avenue. It was across Mary from our office, which was on the second floor of a bank building. The lunch began just after noon and was over just before two. Bottles of wine opened before and during the meal, with PM toasting everyone at the table for something. Most of the editorial and administrative staff left shortly after dessert and coffee. The sales staff and PM as well as a couple of guests who joined the meal sometime after we got started, two customers from different companies who PM invited, remained at the table about to order after dinner brandy. The restaurant was empty except for PM and his remaining party. I would learn later that the lunch flowed into dinner and on into the night. PM did not show up for work the following day returning the day after complaining of a terrible hangover. There was a 12-hour period where no one including PM knew where he was.

One of the side effects of PM’s indulgent lifestyle, which besides food and drink also included smoking, was deteriorating health. He had severe neck pain, which had been treated with surgery to no avail. A regimen of drugs that kept the pain bearable, combined with his excess weight, alcohol, and tobacco was a recipe for disaster. PM was not a man to exercise either. I followed the magazine’s Japanese sales representative HM around Tokyo for several days as we visited companies. We rode trains and walked to nearly every appointment. In shape as I was, I had to walk at a faster than normal pace to keep up with HM as we left trains and made our way through the maze of streets in various parts of the city. HM would describe the same visit when he was escorting PM to these same destinations. PM would complain of having to walk any distance shorter than from the street to the lobby of the office they were visiting. When they disembarked the train, if the office they were visiting was more than few blocks from the station, they would take cabs. And when they did walk HM was always getting well ahead of PM and having to wait for him to catch up.

As time went on the neck pain became so unbearable that PM went in for more surgery that one moderately reduced his suffering. Now with neck brace on and a stern warning from his doctor that he was going to kill himself if he did not start exercising, lose some weight, quit smoking, and stop drinking. To his credit, PM made a valiant effort to do all four with modest success with the latter two and little or no success with the first two. PM had this Mercedes 300 four-door sedan that he loved. It had become his legs as he drove it everywhere he went. He had moved back to New Jersey at the request of the latest owners of Design magazine. One day just after the start of the last decade of the old millennium, PM parked his Mercedes on the street in front of his house, got out and began walking to the front door. Halfway up the walkway to his house, he collapsed on the ground suffering a heart attack. He was found laying face down on his front lawn several hours later.