Turney Duff's Blog, page 12
October 27, 2014
Fake Business Trips…
I was three years into my career on Wall Street before the acronym F.B.T. had any relevance for me. It stands for Fake Business Trip, and there were two reasons why it didn’t really register: One, I didn’t have a wife or family; two, I wasn’t at a level that required traveling to see clients. I think if I’d suggested to my boss that I needed to go on a business trip, she would have asked me who would be picking up lunch every day before she said “no.”
I was working at Morgan Stanley when I learned this part of the Wall Street rope. It went down like this: I was sitting in Citi (as in Par-tay), our favorite Happy Hour spot, when a senior broker handed me a beer. “I’m taking an F.B.T.,” he said after a sip of his vodka rocks. “Between my clients and my family, I think I’m going nuts.” I’d met his wife and two young kids and thought they were very nice, but I also knew he had a very hectic schedule. He looked at me quizzically. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said. I shook my head no. He took another sip of his vodka, then said: “Let me break it down for you.”
Here are the keys to a successful F.B.T:
October 24, 2014
Where Your Wall Street Boyfriend Is
You met him in the Hamptons this summer on a Saturday night. Well, it was really a Sunday morning because it was 3 a.m., but whatever. He’s great. Super fun, smart and seems to be very driven. You were giddy when he emailed you on that Tuesday. He said it was great to meet you and asked you how your ride home from the Hamptons was. How cute! And you just knew he was your type when you saw the lacrosse photos of him and his buddies at the alumni game. It was sitting on his desk the first night you slept over. He looks exactly like someone you would, or did, date in college.
You know he has an important job, you can just tell. It’s a tricky balance: getting the attention you deserve and not being too needy. He trades stocks or something like that, you’re not quite sure. All you know is…he works on Wall Street and lives on Franklin Street…I mean, really! Can you beat that? All you can do is think about him. “I wonder what he’s doing right now?” you say to yourself dreamily. “If only I had a drone with a camera. Then I could follow his every move.”
Abracadabra baby, here’s what you’d see:
7:32 a.m. Interior. Morgan Stanley. He’s suited up and ready for the day. He’s in a wide open trading floor with rows and rows of desks. “God, he looks sexy,” you think. “His shirt brings out the electric blue in his eyes, look how cute his ass looks in those almost-tight Armani suit pants. I’d like to be sitting on his lap right now.”Computer screens stacked one on top of another rise to midair. The seats around him are occupied by young and old, mostly young. Guys and Girls. He holds a plastic coffee cup in his right hand and logs into his computer with his left. Some analyst named Phil is talking to him through his squawk box, a.k.a. “the hoot,” as he listens to his morning meeting. He swigs the last bit of coffee out of a paper cup with the Parthenon on it.
October 21, 2014
Bad Boy Quiz
I’ve been called a “bad boy” before. I wasn’t ever sure that term really fit me. So I created a quiz to help people figure out what kind of bad boy they are…
October 16, 2014
Halloween Candy Etiquette
See I can write about more than just cocaine and hookers.
They come every year, without fail: the witches, the ghosts and the superheroes who ring our doorbells. They stand there holding pumpkin baskets shouting “Trick or Treat!” and snarling, no doubt, under their plastic faces. You better be prepared. These little monsters (and pirates and princesses) have expectations, and they expect them to be met or else…
Treat Felonies and Misdemeanors
Candy Corn
The number one offense in Halloween candy. According to the National Confectioners’ Association, candy companies will produce nearly 35 million pounds of corny candy this year. So by my estimation, about 30 million pounds will be immediately tossed, and 5 million pounds will be tasted and then spit out. I was shocked to discover that the leading ingredient in candy corn is not toenail clippings. Who knew?
October 15, 2014
Where Wall Street goes to Play
When I was 25 and working at Morgan Stanley, I remember being at a holiday party. I was looking across the dance floor at a group of traders, a generation above me. They were tapping each other’s beer to make foam shoot out of the bottle. I said to my friend sitting next to me, “If I’m ever that 35-year-old who never grows up,shoot me!”
Fast forward 10 years…
October 13, 2014
Stealing Celebrity Cheez Doodles
Summer. 2002. 10 p.m. I’m at Mexican Radio enjoying a little tequila…Okay, fine, a lot of tequila, but I’m with some of my friends so it’s not like I’m getting warehoused alone. I hear ringing. It’s my cell.
“Get your ass up here now,” the voice says.
“Dude, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but stay out of my pocket.”
“Parker! Parker Posey is here,” my friend Russ says.
“Where are you?”
I convince my group to head uptown. It’s not easy. I gotta hear shit about getting a nosebleed above 14th Street and crap like that. My friends are still peppering me with questions as we pile into two cabs in Nolita.
“Hell’s Kitchen,” I tell the cabby. “And step on it.”
The dive bar is perfectly dark. The place smells like a fraternity basement on a Sunday morning. It’s filled with t-shirts and jeans drinking pints of the piss du jour. Mixed in are a few lonely suits looking to catch the next train—they might even be brokers of mine, but I’m not interested. What I’m interested in is sitting at the bar drinking a Bud and eating Cheez Doodles. Apparently Parker is in an off-Broadway show in the neighborhood. She’s yukking it up with a couple of pals. She makes drinking a bottle of Budweiser and eating Cheez Doodles look sexy.
October 9, 2014
I Love New York City
I strategically parked on 31st Street near Kips Bay Movie Theater. I was going to see Gone Girl later, but first I was meeting some friends up on 43rd Street. It was a Monday, one of those warm fall days that makes you think global warming isn’t so bad. I didn’t mind walking the 13 blocks. After getting my ticket from the garage attendant, I headed up Lexington Avenue.
I passed by a bar with a TV that was showing ESPN highlights to a crowd of zero, an old hotel, an even older doorman building and a cleaners. Lexington Avenue doesn’t have the kind of identity that Park, Madison and 5th have. It’s kind of a mishmash of retail, commercial and residential buildings. But it’s not a destination for recent college grads either. If the Avenues were described as states—Lexington would be Delaware. It’s just kind of there.
As I got closer to my endpoint, I gazed across the street to see an old haunt of mine. It was once called the Wetbar; it now has a red sign that just says BAR. It’s still a hotel bar, and from the outside it looks exactly the same. I turned my head and caught my reflection in a glass window. Wow, my hair is long. It looked like an Olympic ski jump in the back. I need a haircut bad. Typically I don’t like to play Russian roulette with my hair, but this was a time for a spontaneous cut. Ironically, on the next block there was a hair salon. I prefer a barber, but I was desperate.
October 8, 2014
10 outrageous stories of Wall Street Excess
On Wall Street we sometimes used the phrase “f– you money.” (I think we stole that term from the hip-hop community.) It’s money spent that is financially offensive to others while perpetuating and maintaining an obscene lifestyle. And while I’m not proud of it I was totally guilty of being that guy…
One of the most outrageous things I ever did was to make it rain at Madison Square Garden.
Back in my hedge-fund-trader days, I was invited to Morgan Stanley‘s luxury box for a Knick’s game. The skybox is nice, but after your fifth visit, you realize it’s just a wet bar with B-minus chicken fingers and some free Budweiser. So to entertain myself, I invited my cousin Ethan and Johnny Hong Kong, a professional drifter/filmmaker to come with me. I told Morgan Stanley I was bringing two interns. We got there just before tipoff.
A Look into the Filthy Rich Guide
I used to be really rich. I made a lot of money on Wall Street, got addicted to coke, lost most of it… Oddly, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and it also means I have a unique window into how wealth makes people act really weird. It’s primarily the reason I was asked to be one of the commentators on The Filthy Rich Guide airing on CNBC. I digress…
Everyone is on their best behavior during a first date—well, at least they should be. Even through the second date charade we only show our best selves, but it’s also a time to offer a tiny glimpse of who we really are. Back in 2004, I’d just had a fantastic first with a girl named Jenn. She looked exactly like, say, a backup singer for Enrique Iglesias would—maybe because she was.
We’d gone to a margarita-infused dinner in Nolita on a blind date and the night ended with a kiss on the cheek. So I called Jenn to see if she might want to come over to my place for a followup. She said yes.
It was a bitterly cold Saturday night in February. The fireplace was crackling in my 2,700 square-foot triplex apartment in TriBeCa. Okay, so maybe I had a leg up. But the setting doesn’t impact this story, promise. The plan was simple: Jenn would come over; we’d hang out and drink some wine, order Italian food (her favorite, which also proved I was listening on the first date), and then cozy up on the couch and watch a movie. And it was all working. The Duraflame went against my Maine upbringing but perfectly set the mood, the food and wine were exquisite, and the conversation was effortless. I was thinking, “I’m the man!”
