Old School Banking

As you may have heard, I've just been recruited for a key investment role by another firm.

My new home is a small New York City-based trust company founded by hard-drinking WASP financiers, whose corporate culture, I can now report, has been happily transported to West Coast offices. Longwing brogues are de rigueur. Facial hair is verboten. Gents' jackets are to remain on at all times. And don't forget cocktails at half six. This sort of thing.

You don't need me to list for you the perks of a new job offer. I can disclose, however, that they do include lavish lunches and dinners with eager headhunters, who, in my experience, seem to vary widely between dull betas and cute and willing blonde fillies, the latter providing an opportunity to charm my way into both bank and panties.

Chaps of my background, experience, and impeccable profile are in stiff demand at the moment. The recruitment process is a bit like courting a new girl. The bank for its part sets out to determine with unblinking eye whether the applicant can provide the necessary assets, networks, and expertise to increase revenue. The aspiring banker, for his part, decides if said bank will put out and provide a home in which he can thrive.

When it comes to marriage, as you know, I'm a bit of a traditionalist. So parlous is the idea of marrying a modern girl, however, that one is tempted to demand a dowry. It's the same in banking, where it appears in the form of a hefty signing bonus. Or, as it is sometimes called in the industry (for reasons that elude me), the money shot.

Forgive me if I appear to honour the occasion in excessive, yet private, style.

California Beachside

Polo Club Set

orbis non sufficit

Bermuda Shorts and Tassel Loafers

Montherlant On Love

"I have heard it said that one loses a woman by loving her too much, that an affectation of coldness, from time to time, brings better results. And so on. I shall play no such tricks with you... Let love be truly love—that is, let it be peace—or let it not exist at all."

Henry de Montherlant, Les jeunes filles (1936-1939)

The Perfect Suit (BBC)

The King's English (Kingsley Amis)

'But what does shine throughout is Kingsley’s love of his language. He is exact, but not pedantic. Even when making minute points about the letter of the law, he is really talking about its spirit. Amis’s approach reminds me of the best sort of guide to a great city. He has plenty of learning derived from formal study, but he also knows the place like the back of his hand. He loves the city’s perfections, but also its oddities, and even, because they make him laugh, its defects. He loves its past, but lives vigorously in its present. Rome, or Paris, or London cannot be defined: rather, they can be known – the more intimately the better. So it is with English.'

"Mind your bad English, Kingsley Amis 'don't like it'", by Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, 4 July 2011

Hemingway Loafers

Finca Vigia, San Franciso de Paula, Cuba



Waugh On Praise

'A man desires praise that he may be reassured, that he may be quit of his doubting of himself; he is indifferent to applause when he is confident of success.'

Alec Waugh

The English Gentleman: Golf and Tennis

Games like golf and tennis are not taken seriously by gentlemen although they sometimes play them for the sake of the exercise. They do not have the same approach to these games as lesser mortals. In the case of golf, for instance, a gentleman is never seen with one of those vast leather bags filled with gleaming clubs, some of which are adorned with little wooly hats. Instead he has a thin canvas bag with half a dozen assorted clubs, some of which have wooden shafts which he calls his 'knockers.' With these he hits the ball great distances and has the knack of hacking the ball out of the most appalling rough onto the green. He is altogether a maddening person to play against.

The same applies to tennis, for which he dresses in long once-white trousers, now yellowed with age. In mixed foursomes he plays with great courtesy, serving underhand to the lady even if she is a Wimbledon player. Most of his best shots are played off the wood, which has a demoralising effect against even the most expert opponents. When he wins he is so sporting about it and goes on so about the luck of the game that most people feel like wringing his neck.

Douglas Sutherland, The English Gentleman (1978)

Lollies

Huntington Beach



Reap The Wild Tweed

Hunting Kit

Admiral Cod On Tour: Santa Barbara

Freedom In Living

All around me I hear the sound of those bemoaning their misfortune to have been born in interesting times. It's feeble sentiment, wishing things were otherwise. They're not. There's no turning back the clock. We move forward. The only sensible approach is a 'yes-saying' to life, to fortune, and a readiness to ride the tiger. The chaos brings with it certain opportunities, that, if one has been prudent, can be assumed to one's advantage. Like a bird of prey, I've done precisely that.

The advent of the InterWebs has meant an acceleration of information exchange. The quality, however, is lacking. Even the most moronic among us have it in their head that somehow their opinion matters. Many say, but few actually do. Screen time is no substitute for life. From an appropriated corner of reality we can make flesh-and-blood connections and achieve success in the field, enlarging as we go our infinite existential universe. There is freedom in living. We patrol the space beyond the borders, frontier scouts scaling the wall of time and being.

Schmiß

For The Love Of Success

Last weekend I nailed a young brunette hottie 12 years my junior.

We met at a wine bar in Newport Beach. Bored and companionless for the evening, I had decided to go out on my own. I stood at the bar, drinking cabernet sauvignon, watching a recording of the Germany-Greece football match from earlier in the day. I can appreciate good wine--I was practically raised on the stuff--but I'm just not that into it. Still, female wine drinkers can be an amusingly superficial, silly lot and wine bars tend to attract a certain kind of young woman. Years of hitting the upscale bar scene alone or with a friend or two have made me extremely confident in this environment.

Surrounded by an orbit of flirtatious women in tight clothing, whose interest in me was as obvious as their perfume was strong, I noticed her sitting with another girl at a nearby table. When her friend momentarily got up and left, I walked over, smiling, wine glass in hand. She looked like a much younger version of the actress Marisa Tomei. I said something that made her laugh, ordered her another glass, and then said we should get two seats at the bar where I could watch the end of the game. Her friend returned briefly, and then said her goodbyes. Later, over a bottle of pinot noir, we discovered shared tastes in politics, movies, and sex. She was recently separated, she told me, and lived nearby with a roommate.

She tried to spring a jealousy shit test on me. When she started chatting with two young men at a nearby table who had been staring at her, I merely laughed and gently encouraged her. They were friendly chaps and the conversation soon turned to Euro 2012. When one of them made a suggestive remark to her, she rubbed my back and replied: "No, he doesn't get jealous". Which is true. From that moment she couldn't take her hands off me, slowly rubbing her hips on my thigh or stroking my large, tanned forearms.

At my place she stood in the library, glass of water in hand, admiring the books, framed prints, and various exotic souvenirs, occasionally asking a question about one item or another. We soon kissed, undressed, and went upstairs. She smelled deliciously of coconut body oil. In between bouts of sweaty sex, where I pounded her into the bed, she discussed her failing marriage. She made a comment that I found very interesting: "I don't want a man to feel as if his happiness depends on me." Obvious, of course, but the reminder alone was worth the soaked, stained sheets. It is something that all men, expecially single men, should take to heart and be reminded of now and then. One's happiness does not depend on a woman, but rather on achieving success in other arenas, at the office, on the sports field, in the studio, or in battle. Satisfaction comes from manly accomplishment. Stay focused and take your own side first. Put yourself above all--and women will, too.

That was several days ago. I haven't contacted her since. I did find an elastic hairband of hers on the floor behind the bed, which I disposed of in case certain interested parties found it. But last night, as I was draining the last cocktail of the evening and getting ready to head upstairs to bed, she texted me: "I've been thinking about Friday night. I want more of what you've got". Stay tuned.

Croquet Style

Thor Steinar Bikini Original

ne plus hésiter

"Ne plus hésiter, ne plus reculer devant rien. Aller jusqu’au bout de toute chose, quelle qu’elle soit, de toutes mes forces. N’écouter que son impérialisme."

Jean-René Huguenin, Journal (1964)

Porterhouse Blue: Present Economic Circumstances

Sir Godber Evans: Don't you find this a little indulgent? Particularly in the present economic circumstances.

Dean: Oh, we never bother with "present economic circumstances".

Senior Tutor: We find that they tend to go away after fifty years or so.
 
Porterhouse Blue (1987)

Reds Don't Surf !

N is for Nationalist

Bahamas

Underwater Stalking: Pressure At One-Atmosphere

It's tourist season in Laguna Beach. Time to abandon the main beaches. Hordes of dowdy out-of-towners pick over the tide pools like hungry shorebirds hunting sandcrabs. Whole families of exotic foreigners congregate on the boardwalk in formal clothes watching the tanned beach-volleyball players. The rocky coves, inaccessible to our bloated visitors, are far less crowded at this time of year.

I met my chum Grant on a Saturday morning to go spearfishing. The sky was overcast as it usually is at this time of day. The sport is illegal in Laguna Beach at the moment, but we sneak in anyway, using a friend's beachfront home in a gated community as our launch site. (Fuck the hippies). So far, so good.

Grant broke up with his girlfriend a couple of weeks ago. He was drunk and called her on her chick-bullshit in an expletive-filled diatribe. She was a hottie, for sure, but it was a long time coming. His frustration with her had been building for several months, he explained, and now it came flooding out in a torrent of hot relief, like a virgin on his wedding night. Three days of angry phone calls, emails, and texting ensued. And now, peace.

On the rocky beach we put on Riffe camo wetsuits over our Quiksilver boardshorts. The water temperature was still in the high 50s, requiring at least a 3mm suit. Our guns lay beside us on the pebbles. Mine was a mid-handle teak Riffe. I favour the mid-handle model for its comfort and maneuverability, although it may be excessive for shallow reef dives. Grant's was a state-of-the-art Cressi Comanche 75cm.

He was mostly quiet. I could tell he was still bothered by what had gone down. I'm not here, I told him, to give advice on girls. So what can I say? Let's go kill some fish.

We waded into the surf. The shore break was heavy, making it difficult to stay upright. We put on our split fins, mask, and snorkel and then swam about sixty yards out where the new kelp beds broke through the surface. Visibility was about 10 to 15 feet. I could see large bat rays sweeping along the sandy flats. A school of sand bass moved away from us on our left. A constant surge swept the kelp back and forth. We hovered above the rocks seeking sheepshead and calico bass. We had decided on one fish each. After about 30 minutes Grant managed to spear a bass. I was content to leave empty-handed this time. It was getting cold, so we headed for shore.

"No sign of him today", said Grant, referring to the white shark he and some buddies had seen in these waters two months ago. "As big as a horse", was how they described it.

On the beach we peeled off the top half of our suit. It was getting a little warmer now. Grant put his fish in a plastic Albertson's bag. Just off shore we could see a pod of SCUBA divers moving across the cove like ridiculous turtles.

He smiled. "Okay, dude, let's go do some fish tacos and watch surf vids on my 40 inch."

"Sounds good to me".

We passed some tide pools and started climbing the hillside. I once found a small octopus stranded in one of these pools, squeezed in between some rocks.

"Why did you do it?", I asked him later.

He thought for a minute. "I just wanted to see if I could", he replied.

Within a few days of the break-up, he told me, he was fucking two local girls that he kept on the side for emergencies. In fact, throughout their relationship, he had a stash of other girls (including a hot escort whom we both know well) that he regularly tapped into as the needs arose. And arose they did, with a vengeance.

Palm Springs Tennis Club

© Slim Aarons ca. 1970



Life Is Its Own Answer

“I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I’ve got what amounts to a religion, now. It’s learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how to hear music and how to read a book. What does your civilization offer?”

'—And the Moon Be Still as Bright,' The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury (1950)  

Autobahn (Kraftwerk)

Vert d'Absinthe