The Goodbye Islands: Tongan Redux

By Stuart Gregory

It was another day at the office. The drawers in my desk were slowly creep open and close. It was a particularly windy on this day, I was on the one hundred and third floor of the world trade center tower two. When it was windy, the building had a built in sway factor of up to four feet in either direction. Some people actually got nauseous from the constant swaying, some would leave the building to get a break. Just another day on the bond trading floor of a major investment bank where I worked. My head hurt from last nights imbibing to the wee hours with friends. I was now in the land of relentless harassment and pressure. Lunch at my desk where I was chained for most of the day. If you ordered a salad to make up for last nights bad decisions, you were endlessly ridiculed. I was very lucky to have the seat I was in, The days were long and tedious but worth the rewards.

The city was becoming bloated, glutted, silly with ambition. The buildings were higher, the morals looser, the liquor cheaper. We all drank the kool-Aid. The city was filled with the ethos of the time relishing in frenzy and moneymaking, it was the eighties in New York City.

There are few desires more deeply human than the desire to escape whatever reality you are in. The problem is not the nicer your life is, the more resources you have to escape it, but rather the limits of being a person. You are stuck with you. Its the precondition of existence. I wanted incredible things to happen to me, not the slow burning let down of adulthood. I was becoming too many parts of myself, starting to break apart, an urban sauce over cooked. Its a very demanding environment that is geared toward survival of the fittest. Your energy level goes up, along with your radar and your prowess. It sparks a certain aggressiveness. It breeds insincerity, pretentions, dishonesty, affectation, ostentatiousness and irreverence. Not very healthy on any level.

Thats when the letter arrived. I had applied to the Peace Corps on an insane impulse, not thinking for a second a Wall Street guy would be of any interest to anybody anywhere in any capacity. The country of choice was the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. I had never heard of it. I ran off to the library to find out more about this remote island chain in Polynesia. The Peace Corps had accepted me for a two year stint. I would be working for a missionary who would be overseeing the Prison Fellowship International. This was an organization born out of the experience of Charles Colson, former aide to President Nixon. Convicted for a Watergate-related offense, Colson served seven months in prison. During that time he saw and experienced the difference faith in Jesus makes in peoples lives. He became convinced that the real solution to crime is found through spiritual renewal. He wanted to help men and women turn their lives around Through Christ. In 1979, he founded Prison Fellowship International, extending the mission and work beyond the United States. In 1983, Prison Fellowship International received special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Now it’s the largest, most extensive association of national Christian ministries working within the criminal justice field. The grassroots presence enables it to minister to prisoners and their families in culturally relevant ways. The heart of the ministry is their volunteers, that would be me. What a complete and utter shock to my system. What were they thinking? Im not religious, nor do I have any experience in this field or anything like it. Im a Bond salesman on Wall Street.

The Kingdom of Tonga was an antidote to New York. It was a type of cleansing. A revival. A chance to see life in the simple light of daily existence. Being there required me to learn how to exist in real life without all the usual escapes and distractions. Now all of my exits had been taken away from me. Pulled right out from under me, like the ground itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662902772

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MANHATTAN

New York City Born and Bred

Coming up as a young New Yorker, I formed my impressions of Wall Street from various sources—local lore, film depictions, and my father’s Wall Street job. So, I expected to find an environment that was professional, elegant, and larger than life. And why wouldn’t I? All outward appearances were arranged to give that impression—the attire of the workers, the location of our Manhattan offices, the behemoth clients we served, and the huge sums of money involved.

I envisioned arriving at work each day in a beautiful suit, crisp shirt, fine shoes, and tasteful tie, and greeting colleagues who were intellectual, well read and sophisticated. I expected to find class. What I found instead was the old lipstick-on-the-pig situation.

The Wall Street I discovered inside my office was a betrayal and an affront. On the municipal bonds side of the business where I worked, every day was the same—monotonous and one-dimensional. It was a spectacular failure when it came to living up to my expectations of it, or even its own glamorous reputation.

It was an affront to my sense of decency and respectability. I felt like I had been hoodwinked. Betrayed. Sure, I was working in a financial firm, but the daily realities of work had much more in common with locker-room culture. It wasn’t the clients that were the problem. They were pretty straightforward. They told you what kind of bonds they were looking for and counted on you to locate them.

It was my colleagues who ruined the workday experience. The firm troublemakers made life miserable. They started in on you the second you walked into the office at seven-thirty or eight. Before your morning coffee had even kicked in, you were getting an earful from them.

Look at that tie! Way too preppy! And those shoes! Tassel loafers? Seriously?

Or, You went to boarding school? Come on, Stuart. Really?

There were always two or three instigators who kicked off the mockery. Once they got that ball in the air, they passed it back and forth endlessly. They were relentless, and they spared no one—not even the women. (It would be decades before society took a second look at the treatment of women in the workplace and elsewhere.)

They would focus on the women’s eating habits. You’re eating salad again? Have you ever tasted meat? Or, What’s with all the avocadoes?

One of the two women on our desk had a Southern name, and there was no end to the grief she took over it. Cricket? Seriously? What the hell kind of a name is Cricket?

Cricket was older than I and quite competent. In fact, she understood our business better than I did and was always there to help me navigate difficult issues.

Adding to my annoyance was the fact that these guys constantly butchered the English language when insulting you. I would say to myself, These smug, impudent, brassy, disrespectful gadflies! I’m so sick of their malaprops.

My daily dose of their sophomoric malaprops took its toll. After a while, I began to think of these guys as malaprops themselves. After all, they seemed like props in a strange play in which I was a reluctant participant. And they were certainly malcontented, if not downright malicious. Mal-a-props.

All the senior guys who could have put a stop to the nonsense were segregated on the senior side of the office. They did not oversee us and were not there to witness the shenanigans. Even if there had been someone to complain to about the daily idiocy, I knew better than to speak up. The troublemakers would have labeled me a goody-goody, and the harassment would have ramped up even more.

The constant grating of my colleagues’ taunts and teases was accompanied by the low simmering hiss of envy and desperation. There were only so many big fish to be caught, and of course, the bigger the fish, the bigger the paycheck. So, the scramble was on.

Fidelity. Capital. Trust Company of the West. These were the clients everyone wanted to reel in. In pursuit of the best clients, guys on our floor were willing and ready to shove each other out of the way and knock each other down. If you tried to maintain some sense of decorum, you could find yourself trampled by those more unscrupulous and bloodthirsty than you.

I would tell myself, I’m smarter than these guys, and I’m the one who should be covering that client!

I didn’t want to be a snob, but the truth of the matter was, I truly was operating on a different level than this cast of rough characters.

Not all the guys were obnoxious and mean-spirited. Some of the traders were hilarious, with their harmless jokes about their wives and families. Getting a chance to laugh from time to time provided much-needed comic relief.

There was a handful of Italian Catholic guys in our office who had great stories about the things they used to say to the nuns while growing up and attending Catholic school.

Listening to their stories, I would say, You guys would never have made it in boarding school!

One of the guys told a story about being in a sex ed class taught by a lovely nun. When she finished presenting the lesson to the class, the nun asked, Does anyone have any questions? Or anything you don’t understand?

My colleague’s hand shot up. Yes, sister. I have a question! And he proceeded to ask the nun to explain the most forbidden sexual act that came to his mind. The nun was mortified.

We all had a good laugh over this. Unfortunately, the presence of a few humorous traders was not enough to offset the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard effect of the toxic harassers. Somehow, I had to find a way to land and cultivate clients, sell municipal bonds, and thrive in this environment. I used my own running dialogue (which I kept to myself) to combat the verbal onslaught—not that it did much good. We were jammed in together like players on a basketball court, so it was impossible to get away from it.

I couldn’t even escape into a cubicle. By necessity, the office was set up in an open trading-pit arrangement. It was one huge room filled with trading turrets, desks, and phones attached to long extension cords. Everywhere you looked, there were dashboards with blinking lights, multiple buttons (many of which were never used), and squawk boxes, which were constantly howling offerings. It was like working in a sports venue.

With the phones constantly ringing off the hook, we had to be able to make eye contact with fellow traders across the floor, cover the phone receiver, and ask about their availability to take an incoming call from a client.

A lunch break would have provided a much-needed respite from the cacophony of snickering and snide remarks. Unfortunately, lunchtime was treated as part of the workday, and food was ordered in every single day. Unless you could muster up an ailment that required leaving the building for a doctor’s appointment, you were stuck there from early morning until you left, sometime between four o’clock in the afternoon and six.

This was my Wall Street—a hostile, aggressive environment, filled with infighting. Perhaps if my colleagues had been wearing actual sports jerseys and athletic shoes, it would have had less power to blindside me. But the incongruity of this type of behavior coming from men in suits and ties and high-polish shoes had the effect of knocking me off center on a daily basis. I never got used to it.

In their complete disrespect for propriety, they confounded my inherent belief in the basic goodness of people. I had not been given much cause to harbor faith in people’s best selves, but I did. It was just the way I was wired. I continued to walk with one well-shod foot in front of the other and work hard. My work ethic was solid, but the one-dimensional nature of my work environment wore me down over time. Being a tough New Yorker did not immunize me against the relentless infighting and insult slinging that went on.

The same question kept running through my mind, day in and day out: Was this really the right work environment for me?

I hadn’t realized when I took the position in municipal bonds that Wall Street business was divided into distinct sectors, each of which attracted an entirely different breed of worker. The bond business involved very little cerebral analysis or intellectual discussion and very few balance sheets. So, it was easy to see the allure it held for the jock types with their base mentality. It had more in common with the world of car sales than it did with the rest of the financial sector.

It would take years for me to figure out that it was on the equities side of the business where I would find my like-minded peers—refined, professional, courteous, and sophisticated. Long before I put two and two together and realized that I belonged in equities rather than bonds, I would decide I was completely over Wall Street and was ready for something, anything, else.

Even if I had figured it out sooner, it wouldn’t have been as simple as making a few phone calls. It was one of those Catch-22 situations where you didn’t have a prayer unless you had experience. And you couldn’t get experience because they wouldn’t let you in. The equities business was a tight-knit boys’ club, harder to break into than the most popular fraternity on campus. You couldn’t just walk up to the door of the frat house, give the secret knock, and hope to be accepted into the club.

For a young guy like me, there was no linear path in the door. Fate herself was going to have to open a side door and sneak me in. For the time being, I had to content myself with dreaming of gaining access one day and imagining how happy I would be when that time came. Meanwhile, the equities business remained the prettiest girl in school, the one I longed for but knew was beyond my reach.

I eventually had the financial means to visit Morty Sills, the renowned tailor. This was one of the perks and joys of achieving a certain level of success. All the self-respecting Wall Street salesmen wore suits tailor-made by Sills.

Morty Sills was so revered among those working in the financial world, he was considered a Manhattan institution. He would go on to have a stellar reputation in Beverly Hills, as well. In the movie Wall Street, the Gordon Gecko character (played by Michael Douglas) says to Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) something along the lines of, Never show up in my office like this again! Go see Morty Sills and tell him I sent you to get a suit made.

My father had his suits made at Morty Sills, as did the Forbes and Bush families, as well as other movers and shakers throughout firms like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch. Now, I had reached the level where I could go see Morty at his little shop on 53rd Street. I walked in there with sweaty palms, feeling excited and a little overwhelmed.

Look, Stuart, you’re family, said Sills. So, I’m going to let you buy this on the payment system. If you can pay a hundred a month, I’ll make a nice suit for you, and you can pay it off over the course of a year. I would go with basic gray …. Sills was giving me a good foundation to slowly acquire all the basics.

Perfect, I said. That’s so kind of you. And gray is good! It will go with everything.

Being able to afford a Morty Sills suit made me feel like I had truly arrived. It was a very exciting development in my professional life.

There was a bar set up in the Morty Sills showroom, where neophytes like me who were having their first suit made could have a little adult beverage to take the edge off.

Over the course of six to eight weeks, I went back to Sills’ shop for fittings. And over the next year, I kept up with my payments. I was happy to spend the money to be impeccably dressed in a bespoke suit, the armor of choice in New York City. I knew it would go with everything.

The day I wore my suit for the first time was a Hollywood moment. Having a suit that was made by the tailor to the elite was a visible identifier of my success. Best of all, because my buddies and I would often leave straight from work to go out for the evening, I would also be well dressed for my social outings. (On the weekends when we weren’t going out straight from work, we would follow a nice-casual dress code, with the occasional addition of a blazer.)

Going from my stifling office into the city at night was like climbing out of an old black-and-white TV show and into a full-color production. Manhattan was constantly changing before my eyes and always in wondrous ways. The only constant about the city was its pulse. Over time, some of my favorite restaurants and nightclubs would close—but that New York City energy was a fixture, and always reliable. I really appreciated that constancy and came to count on it.

I was one of those lucky guys who never struggled to attract women or find a date. I was young and well dressed, with a job in finance and money in my wallet.

Women sensed the confidence that working on Wall Street gave me. They were also attracted to my love for New York and its incredible nightlife. All of these elements were working in my favor when it came to dating, and for initiating romance. Of course, my personality, demeanor, and conversation had to carry the day. Thankfully, I never had trouble talking to females or finding my comfort level in social situations. The upside of my challenging homelife was that I adapted easily to any environment.

I always smiled when women were impressed by the fact that I worked on Wall Street. The truth was, their perception of my job and the work were very different. On the transactional side of the business where I worked, the job itself simply wasn’t that complicated. Once you got your foot in the door and learned the ropes, the tasks were easy enough to manage. I worked hard, but it wasn’t rocket science.

Those who couldn’t crack the code quickly enough were shown the door and told that this wasn’t the job for them. Back in the day, firms wouldn’t necessarily push you out; they shuffled you over to a different side of the business where you might thrive.

Interestingly, it was in being pushed off the trading floor at Salomon Brothers and moved over to the land of Quotron (a computer system that provides stock market quotes) that former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg got the inspiration to establish his eponymously named financial giant, Bloomberg Company.

Every workday afternoon as the clock on the office wall signaled the impending end of another miserable day spent among my sophomoric colleagues, a cold beer or two started to sound really refreshing. Given the stressors inherent in my job, I looked to my nightlife for sustenance. I followed the motto exemplified by my father: Work hard, play hard.

My dad, William Hamilton Gregory III, was a partner in an investment bank founded by his father. When Grandpa died at fifty-nine, my thirty-two-year-old father had no choice but to take over the family firm. Neither my father nor my grandfather had envisioned my dad taking over for at least another ten years or so.

Each of the partners owned a piece of the firm. This was an unusual model for an investment bank, given liability concerns. Like many businessmen of the 1950s and ’60s, Dad and his colleagues each had a couch in their office. It wasn’t unusual for them to sleep there when they were in the middle of a deal.

After work, Dad played hard and enjoyed life. He loved going out to fancy dinners and enjoying several martinis, a nice bottle of red wine, and a stinger or two (cognac and crème de menthe) after dinner. He also loved going to a club, especially a piano bar, to listen to music, and having a martini or two.

I always admired the example set by my father. Dad instilled in me a work-hard-play-hard ethic, and I embraced it without hesitation. I found it to be a perfectly sensible way of life. Monday through Wednesday were intense days in the office, so I spent those evenings at home. By Thursday evening, I could safely go out and blow off a little steam without jeopardizing my performance in the office the following morning.

A major component of this work ethic was the fact that, no matter how badly I felt in the morning as a result of playing hard the previous evening, I showed up for work. Calling in sick because I was hungover was out of the question.

Friday night was the big party night. The effects of party night spilled over into Saturday, so I rarely went out on Saturday nights. Then on Sundays, I took the opportunity to lounge around, catch up on sleep, and get my body and psyche prepared for another week of workplace madness.

For my nightlife, I had a core group of wingmen composed of Randy and Will (my downtown friends) and Jon and Brad (my uptown friends). It worked out perfectly, having two wingmen each for uptown and downtown clubbing, and Randy was also my roommate.

We lived on Franklin Street in TriBeCa in an apartment we rented from an artist at a ridiculously low rate. We lived right down the street from Puffy’s, a local bar I loved, and across the street from the Chock Full o’ Nuts Coffee warehouse. In the mornings, the smell of coffee wafted in through our windows.

At this time, there wasn’t much in TriBeCa, just warehouses, meatpacking plants, and the occasional dead body, dumped there by the mob. The area was dangerous and undesirable from a real estate standpoint, but it was very cool and noir, like a page from a Ray Milan novel.

The city was a far cry from today’s Manhattan, with its inflated real estate values and coveted addresses. In fact, there was a mass exodus occurring in those days. The streets pulsated with a dark, frenetic energy, and people fled to outer environs for their own safety. It would have been hard for anyone to imagine that decades later, wealthy oil magnates would buy up entire blocks of the city’s prime real estate.

Even though there was very real peril on the streets, it was a great time to be living in Manhattan. The nightlife in the 1980s was filled with an alchemy that was palpable. It was a boom time that would later be looked back on by historians as a golden age in the city’s after-dark social scene.

Once you made your way over the bridge and into the city, it enveloped you like a hug from an elderly aunt. The tall buildings, and the spaces in between the buildings where the winds whipped up, became like concrete canyons I traveled after dark. And in the years to follow, it would be those concrete canyons that stayed with me in waking and in dreams.

When traversing New York’s concrete canyons, you can get going at such a velocity, it’s hard to stop. That’s the danger. But if you can pace yourself and remember to slow down or extricate yourself from time to time, it’s a fantastic place. The problem arises when you end up in the fast lane and you can’t get off the ride.

When you’re young, it’s hard to properly calibrate. At that age, life was very freewheeling. I felt completely uninhibited. I would think nothing of getting into a cab and going somewhere. As we get older and we mature, we end up with more reservations about things. But back then,