Chapter 16. What I Could Teach Tiger Woods

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their Bethel headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation

Warning:  Chapters 14 through 19 contain sexually explicit narratives, told in the language of the street as I learned to speak it.  I discuss these adventures, not in a spirit of narcissism or exhibitionism, but in the wider context of a former Jehovah’s Witness  who was seeking new meaning and purpose after leaving a cult-like church that had defined every aspect of my existence virtually from birth.  I was determined to experience life for the first time on MY terms, and I was going to draw my conclusions from first-hand experience, not hear-say or the value judgments of others.  If you have been following from previous chapters, we pick up the thread here as I enter the dating scene in earnest at the age of 36.  I share my observations and conclusions more or less in the order in which I formed them, and they evolve over time, as you will see.

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Eventually of course, I moved beyond sheer anatomical curiosity.  I was still nervous about sexual activities and unsure of myself, but I was also developing a sense of annoyance and sometimes downright anger and frustration with the dating game.  It was obvious we were all, men and women, constantly negotiating, and the Grand Prize was either sex or the resources it could be traded for.  It was equally obvious that the women made the decision as to whether or not it happened.   Feminists who loudly bemoan what they perceive as male dominance and women’s victimhood overlook this one single indisputable fact:  women control the pussy in the world, and that is power.  Real power.  And like youth itself, this kind of power is wasted on the young.  Most young girls seem to be trying to find out what it feels like to be in love and they are trying out their emotions on their boyfriends, which really confuses the boyfriends, who are trying to find out what it feels like to get laid.  The boys end up thinking the girls are nuts.  And the girls think the boys are obsessed with sex.  Neither gender has enough information, or they wouldn’t be so surprised at the behavior of the other.

A woman’s beauty is a major source of her power.  This is not about vanity or a male-dominated culture.  Quite the opposite:  in cultures where women are truly powerless, such as in certain Islamic countries, women are veiled and covered from head to toe to deprive them of the power of their looks.  In a free society, women spending a lot of time on their appearance is a survival tactic, and this one, believe me, is not vestigial!  Pretty women  receive advantages throughout life:  babies like them better, and so do men, who are often just bigger babies.  We will pay their way, change their flat tires, and open their doors.  Women  will spend endless hours on their hair and cosmetics, not to mention plastic surgery in order to attract men, tempt men.  Male lust for women is a  source of great female power.  It is nature’s way.  Should it surprise men then that women don’t give away the goodies for free?

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Chapter 14. The Door of Dionysus

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation

Warning:  The following six chapters contain sexually explicit narratives, told in the language of the street as I learned to speak it.  I have made no effort to be politically correct in the telling of this story; and I seek neither approval of my choices nor the expiation of guilt.  This is a little hard to explain, but I felt like the church deacon who preached fire and brimstone sermons about sin, but was secretly curious what it would feel like to experience it.  I was determined to find out for myself, and I did, often with my heart pounding from both fear and excitement.  With the exception of divorce, my experiences were always consensual.  The results varied.  Sometimes I experienced a sense of compulsiveness, and sometimes a sense of the bizarre.  Sometimes I wondered why I was in certain places doing certain things, and sometimes I was surprised at the conclusions I drew.  Sometimes I laughed–usually at myself.   I cared not what judgments I might receive from others; I cared a great deal about my own judgments. No longer would anyone, any culture, any institution, group, or person, stand between me and reality.  I wanted to experience what was out there on my own:  I wanted TO KNOW.  I cared about other people’s feelings, but I no longer considered their wants, wishes, traditions, and expectations a blank check on my life.  I was now responsible for my life and happiness; they were responsible for theirs, and our lives interfaced where our interests overlapped.  For those who may wonder:  in toto, I have very few regrets.  I learned a lot that I could have learned in no other way that I know of.  That does not mean, however, that with the benefit of the rear view mirror, I would not skip some parts a second time around.  Like Dionysus of Greek legend, I was grateful to have gotten this far, eager to be freed from my former self, and in search of both ecstasy and meaning.

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By the time I had opened my first branch office in another city, I had over a hundred employees and had also been married 13 years.  Not only were both of us virgins when we married, my wife, Barbara,  was the only woman I had ever kissed.  I had never been around girls in a social context, and I was both mystified and intrigued by their differences.  When my wife and I went on our honeymoon, it took us all night the first night to figure out what to do and to get the job done.  For the next week we hardly ever left the cabin we had rented for our honeymoon.  Our sex life was routine and healthy for as long as we stayed at Bethel, Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters in New York City.  Our paradigm was that marriage was forever.  I don’t think any thoughts of adultery or promiscuity ever crossed our minds once during that time.  I was a ‘golden haired boy’ at Bethel, and my wife had selected well in the minds of her family and friends.

I can remember only once, at Bethel, when I worked in the Service Department and was assigned a temporary secretary named Eva who was drop-dead gorgeous, that I felt distracted and uncomfortable.  I was both disappointed and relieved when after two weeks her assignment was changed.  I didn’t know what to do with the unfamiliar  emotions I felt with her around.

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Chapter 9. Starting Over: From Rags to Regulators.

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation. 

During the last few weeks at Watchtower, I began preparations for entering the outside working world.  Since I loved to write, I sought a job as a writer.  It took no time at all to discover that writers with  phD’s were falling out of trees.  My first obstacle was how to explain how I had spent the last nine years of my life.  Life in a monastery?  A waiter, bookbinder, letter writer for Jehovah’s Witnesses??  How to explain why I left?  To have children?  On the outside, people didn’t have to quit their jobs and relocate in order to start a family.  What was I qualified to do?  How much did I have to earn to survive, to support a wife and possible child?  I had no idea about any of the above.  I had never bought a car, established credit, learned a trade, or gone to college.  I was twenty-seven years old.  During the few disastrous  job interviews before we left Brooklyn, I did learn the short answer to why I left my last “position”:  “Career redirection.”   My first lesson in spin control.  Substance and unnecessary detail were not nearly as important as a few words that created a brief image.  I also learned a quick lesson right out of law school:  Never answer a question that hasn’t been asked.  Also,  never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer.

Suffused with early rejection and a sense of impending disaster, Barbara and I decided to move to Youngstown, Ohio where she grew up.  Her parents encouraged us to stay with them until we got on our feet.  Our timing was impeccable.  Unknown to us, Youngstown Sheet and Tube, a steel company that was a pillar of the economic community was about to announce its closing, the first in a string of dominoes due to fall in quick succession and ultimately to devastate the local economy.  Unbeknownst to us, the biggest business in the Youngstown area appeared to be organized crime, and the economy was so bad even they were leaving town.  With tens of thousands thrown out of work, we came to Youngstown like two immigrants just off the boat and looking for work.  And like first-generation immigrants, because of being sequestered for over nine years in near-monastic existence, we couldn’t speak the language of the new world in which we found ourselves.  I couldn’t even begin to comprehend their thought processes.  It was massive culture shock, and we were too ignorant and innocent to even feel sorry for ourselves.

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Chapter 8. It All Falls Apart

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation. 

My star continued to rise, and soon I was requested to rewrite some of the lectures composed by some of the lesser talents in the Writing Department.  By this time I felt quite free about inserting much of my own philosophy in my writing.  After all it was all going to be reviewed and censored by others anyway.  So I lent my voice to the cacophony of dissent.  I wrote an article published in the Awake! magazine about the etymologies of words, and offered to write an article for the Watchtower   entitled “Are You a Thinking Christian?”  It bothered me that so much of the membership seemed to follow the route of least resistance and looked for a higher authority to tell them what to do when faced with the slightest conflict in their life.  They seemed incapable of abstracting principles from concrete situations and forming independent conclusions.  When I submitted my Abstract for the article, I received a letter in return from the Writing Department strongly admonishing me to build my article around prayer, meeting attendance, and regular door-to-door field service.  Only then did I realize the organization had a vested interest in the membership conforming to policy, and the last thing they needed was for them to become independent minded.  Later still I came to realize that the intended title of my article was in itself something of an oxymoron.  Not entirely however:   there were quite a few of us in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas who were attempting mightily to reconcile faith and intellectual integrity.  I never wrote the article.

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Chapter 7. From Manufacturing to Amanuensis

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation. 

During this period of time, there were several other interesting developments.  My boss, Ralph Lindem, who was a very kind man who struggled mightily with his management responsibilities,  was bumped upstairs to Purchasing, and was replaced by John Adams, who was in his early thirties and very bright.  John quickly shuffled the deck of bindery leadership, put some young, bright men who were very loyal to him in charge of various departments, and in no time at all had the bindery humming.  Production improved quickly, and in contrast to his predecessor who had put in such long days, John was often to be found in the Bindery Office reading the New York Times, with his feet propped up on the desk, an impertinence Ralph Lindem would never have dreamed of.  When the Factory Overseer, a soft-spoken Swede named  Max Larsen  would wander by, John showed respect by putting his feet down, but he did so unapologetically.  This took chutzpah because, to me at least,  Max Larsen always conveyed the impression of an iron fist in a velvet glove.  Maybe John just knew how good he was at his job.  One of many business lessons I learned from John Adams was never to confuse activity with results.

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Chapter 5. Sex in the City

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation. 

So at the age of eighteen, I left home to do missionary work in Oil City, PA, where I learned it was possible to be poorer still and hungry.  We learned to buy food at school supply warehouses in No. 10 cans and this would save a lot of money. The only problem was we were broke after buying three cases of food, one each of corn, peas, and beef stew.  We ate corn, peas, and beef stew for weeks for every meal.  To this day it is hard for me to eat beef stew.  Sometimes the only food in the house was jello, and we would eat that until it was gone.  

None of us were doing very well at finding jobs.  Oil City was a very old, depressed town.  I went to the local Holiday Inn to apply for a job as a janitor.  The Inn Manager said he had a janitor but needed a Night Auditor, and asked me if I had any experience.  I said no, but I was a fast learner.  He hired me for $1.65 per hour and I went to work that Saturday night.  It was an awful night.  I had no comprehension of auditing, and I knew that everything in the front desk posting machine had to balance by 8 a.m.  To make matters worse I had to operate the switchboard, one of those old fashioned ones with the cords that plugged in.  The Harlem Globe Trotters were staying in the Inn that night and the switchboard was going crazy.  In no time at all, I had the switchboard all tangled up and a lot of frustrated house guests.  In desperation, at midnight I woke up the Inn Manager and he came down and cleaned up the mess.  A few weeks later I and my two roommates all got a job bandagging truck tires.  This is like recapping, only when you do it to truck tires it is called bandagging.  I got that job by faking a British accent during the interview with Bruce Taylor, the owner of Penn Aire Tire.   A few days later when Bruce visited me in the plant he inquired what had happened to my accent.

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