The Life

by Geno Petro

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I know a guy who makes stupid money. He doesn’t even call it money. He calls it trump.

“I make sick trump,” he once told me. (Stupid money.)

“I have a Hot Mess at home,” he continued. “And she’s sick, too.” (An attractive girlfriend with a drinking problem.)

“It’s ill.” (Troubling.)

According to this guy, a derivatives trader at the Chicago Merc, if you don’t make 30/40 (million per year) you’re not a Whale. (A sick big spender with a lot of trump and at least one Hot Mess at at least one sick home.)

“30/40 is the magic number. You can buy all the whores in Sin City with that kind of trump.” (Duh. Even I figured that and I don’t really have a head for math.)

Not surprisingly, he met his own Hot Mess at the Paris Las Vegas. They were doing ice block Southern Comfort shots (don’t ask) together at a Whale’s private party and decided to hook up for the near, if not immediate, domestic future. He shipped her and her Two Brats back east to Chicago. This guy trades farm futures so I would imagine he knew what he was getting into. Although not risk aversive, he has assured me on more than one occasion that he is not yet a Whale. He’s more than a Chump certainly, but definitely not a Whale.

A Chump is a million dollar a year guy. You are either a Chump, a Whale, or Bank in his world (The Life). Bank trumps Whale. Then Chump. Everyone else is Home Depot. Wonderful.

“No offense,” he tells me, “but the average Joe Home Depot in this country is living paycheck to paycheck. They couldn’t care less when the market goes apeshit. (Apeshit means apeshit. Think about it.) They squawk like they do care but they got no real skin in the game. Bullshit 401K pennies maybe. They got no trump. Joe Home Depot can always find another Home Depot with matching funds to bag nails and pay the bills. A Chump, however, is ruined in an apeshit scenario. The Life is over for him. I know of at least 20 guys at Lehman who lost everything. No bonuses. No job. Eliminated. Home Depot.” He slices his own throat ear to ear with his index finger. A secret trading sign for something scary, no doubt.

I met this guy at an open house last year. He walked through the door, looked around and declared, ‘I may buy this.’ It was 1.7 million at the time. Every few months he’d amble back by to chew the fat with me on Sundays and see if the price came down at all. It always did. He eventually bought something down the street on a short sale from some unlucky Chump he knew from the Merc. He dropped in again last weekend. I’m now listed at $1,450,000, 424 days on the market.

“You still got this Talking Moose?” he asks. (A big, unsold energy sucking McMansion.)

“Yeah,” I say. “You still in The Life?”

“Oh yeah,” says he. “It’s apeshit.”

I look at him and wonder what it is like to make enough money to buy my own house (of which I have 29 years left on a 30 year mortgage) for cash each and every month. He always wears a Bears football jersey or a Cubs T-shirt. He always has a baseball cap on and running shoes. He’s fat. He’s rich. He’s 20 years younger than me. He’s always just coming back from Vegas.

“My Hot Mess tried to burn the house down last week so I flew her ass and her two brats back home.” I wonder if they all went First Class or if he made the Mess and her Two Brats torture each other (and everyone around them) back in Coach?

“Ann Taylor fired her for insubordination and she went apeshit.” I silently question why such a place would even hire her in the first place. I picture Courtney Love, whiskey breathed and all viked up (Vicodin), selling plaid skirts to grandmothers. (Or is that Talbots?)

“She was making French Toast and lost it over the Viking,” he says sadly. He misses the drama, I can tell.

“That’s a metaphor,” I say to him. “Paris burning.” He just looks at me. He doesn’t know what a metaphor is. He thinks in algorythms. That’s why he’s rich and I publish to thin air.

“Yeah, ” he finally agrees. “She’s definitely a beast.” Close enough.

After he leaves the open house (my only visitor) I walk into the bathroom, one of 4.5 in my big Talking unsold Moose, and study myself in the mirror before closing up for the day. A fairly happy man looks back at me. I think about lying under a huge carved block of ice and gulping brain freeze shots of sickening sweet liquor as it somehow makes its way from top to bottom. I haven’t had a stiff drink in a decade but I instantly gag at the syrupy thought. I think about the last time I went to Vegas, four years ago now, spending thousands and smoking the maximum amount of cigarettes a human being can intake in a row for 3 days straight before exiting the air conditioned marble morgue into the 115 degree white hot glare, leaving a half-full pack of Marlboro Lights in a planter at the Bellagio, quitting for good once and for all. With a majority of the Deadly Sins now out of my life I only occasionally grapple with Envy. Envy and perhaps Greed. I think of all the whores in Vegas (how many could there possibly be?) and whether or not any of them saved a spot for my Sunday buddy’s Hot drunken Mess and her Two Brats. For some reason, the notion of Lust doesn’t cross my mind, that Deadly Sin fairly well under control anymore. It’s the trump that dominates my thoughts this day. That sick, sick trump and where it all goes when the market goes apeshit…