Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (12 page)

A lot of newspapers and news websites liked
my site about magic tricks. There was really no other site like it
at the time.

I was in the right place at the right time
and knew exactly the right thing to do to take advantage of a
unique opportunity with these websites during the early days of the
Internet. I felt like I was winning the lottery every day. It was
crazy. My sites ended up making $1000 a day, $30,000 a month. I was
making all this money without even really trying all that hard.

I think Bill Gates said something along the
lines of: "Always choose the laziest person in the office to do a
difficult job, because he will find the easiest way to do it." That
was me. I always figured out the simplest, shortest route to my
goal.

I designed and programmed all my websites
myself. But I was by no means a good HTML programmer. I had taught
myself the bare basics. Just enough to scrape by by the seat of my
pants and get to my destination on the path of least
resistance.

So when the lawyer was trying to replace me
at the newspaper, I really didn't give a shit. I didn't need that
job anymore at this point, because I was making more money than the
lawyer and all the other people in that office put together. But
the cautious German in me didn't just want to quit a steady job and
rely on free online money. I figured it was a fluke and it couldn't
be like that forever, so it was probably a good idea to hold on to
my day job.

But I was miserable, and when that lawyer
schemed behind my back to replace me, I knew it was time to go and
take my chances with the Internet. I planned a grand exit. On the
Monday when Kenny, my buddy in the graphic department, was going to
start his new job somewhere else, I was going to go right up the
lawyer and tell him that I quit and that he can go shove his stupid
newspaper up his ass.

Monday finally came, but as luck would have
it, the lawyer didn't come in that day. I sat at my desk, waiting
for 2 hours for him to show up, while I was playing games online.
Around 11 am his wife came into the office to check the mail. I was
getting sick of sitting there for no reason, so I decided to make
my grand exit with her instead.

I took a copy of the classified ads. I had
circled the ad for my job. Then I walked up to her, held the page
in front of her face and asked: "What is that? Huh? What is that??
Are you trying to replace me?" I sounded like I was disciplining a
dog who had just piddled on the carpet.

She was startled and didn't know what to
say. Then I told her that I knew she and her husband had put that
ad in the paper to find someone to do my job for less money, and
they didn't even have the courtesy to give me any notice. And now I
was going to quit without notice.

By now she had composed herself, and she was
quick-witted enough to demand that I give her the keys to the
office. I had already cleared out my desk earlier and prepared
everything so I could storm right out the door after telling them
off. But I had completely forgotten about the keys. Fuck! So
instead of making a grand exit, now I stood there like a moron,
fumbling around with my key chain, trying to get the damn keys off.
Not cool. Not cool at all.

I went home and felt like an idiot, because
that did not go as planned. But, oh well, finally I was
freeeee!

When I didn't go to college in Germany and
moved to New York instead, I had nightmares about it for weeks. I
felt like I was being totally irresponsible and that I was ruining
my life. Leaving everything you know behind and moving to another
continent, and facing the great unknown, is scary. It takes a lot
of courage. Don't ever look down at an immigrant who came to
America to make a better life for himself and his family. You have
no idea how much courage that took, until you have walked a mile in
his shoes.

Now, after I quit my newspaper job, I had
the same type of nightmares again. Staying home all day and doing
whatever the hell I wanted seemed so wrong, so irresponsible. A
good German just doesn't do that.

I did learn one thing from all that though:
I never look down on poor people now. I've been there. I've
probably been poorer than most people will ever be. I don't think a
lot of people have stooped so low that they had to eat dog
food.

Capitalism has a dirty little secret: the
system only works, as long as most people are poor, and only a few
people at the top of the pyramid are rich. Think about it: if
everyone was a millionaire, nobody would want to scrub toilets or
flip burgers for minimum wage at McDonald's anymore. Money is only
valuable, if it's rare. If everyone has lots of money, it becomes
worthless. But as long as most people don't have any money, there
are always plenty of people who are willing to degrade themselves
for a few bucks.

Self-righteous Republicans like to pretend
that if someone is poor, it's their own fault, because they are
lazy. But the truth is, the system can only survive as long as most
people are poor. And I know from experience that poor people are
not poor because they're lazy. I worked really really hard when I
drove a cab, and made almost no money. And I worked even harder at
the newspaper, but they didn't pay me all that much either. Now I
was a lazy bum, doing nothing at all, and I was making more money
than I had ever made in my life. That just didn't seem right. I
felt like I didn't deserve it.

It took me a few weeks to get used to my new
life of luxurious leisure. I started to enjoy the fact that I could
sleep as long as I want, and do whatever I want all day long. I
enjoyed the little perks, like being able to go to the mall during
the week, when the stores were less crowded than during the
weekend. And I enjoyed the fact that I didn't have to impress
anyone.

I didn't have to dress for success. I could
literally run around the mall in my pajamas if I wanted to, and not
worry that I may lose my job if a co-worker or my boss saw me like
that. I didn't have to put on a suit and tie to look like a trained
monkey. Suddenly I was no longer worried about what anyone thought
of me. The fact that I had all the money in the world and I didn't
need anybody for anything made me a lot more self-confident. I used
to walk into a room of people and wonder if they liked me. Now I
looked around and wondered if I liked them.

I bought my first brand new car, a Dodge
Durango, all cash. It was my dream car, because when you fold down
the backseat, the back of the car was big enough for me to lie
flat, like in a bed. I figured I'd go car camping at some point and
sleep in the back of the car. I only did that one time though. I
went on a road trip to California. When I got to San Francisco, I
parked the car at the Golden Gate Bridge and watched the sunset,
and the sunrise the next morning. It was beautiful. Other than that
I always stayed in hotels when I traveled. I never did go car
camping.

Having so much money opened up a whole new
world of opportunities. Americans think that drinking beer or
soccer are Germans' favorite past time. But the one thing Germans
love to do more than anything else, is to travel. It's no
coincidence that "Wanderlust" is a German word. That word describes
a strong desire to travel and explore the world. It's something
almost all Germans have in common. It doesn't matter where you go,
whether you visit the Great Wall of China or the Statue of Liberty
or The Eiffel Tower or Fort Myers Beach, you will find German
tourists there.

At first the fact that Donna was an
agoraphobic shut in didn't bother me all that much. During the
first few years we didn't have any money, so we couldn't really go
anywhere anyway. But now that we had all this money, I wanted to
travel with her. I wanted to show her Europe, take her to the
places where I grew up, and go explore new places with her where I
had never been before. But none of that was ever going to happen,
as long as she didn't want to leave the house.

Every time I tried to talk her into going
somewhere, even just to the movies or out to dinner, she got very
defensive and hostile. Just like a drug addict, if you criticize
their drug. She would instantly go to her nuclear option: Divorce.
That was her kill-all argument: "If you have a problem with me not
going to the movies with you, why don't you get a divorce and find
someone better than me?"

She had always been very insecure about
herself. She constantly accused me of cheating on her, even though
I never did. Years later, whenever I met someone new after my
divorce from Donna, and I told them I never cheated on her, they
often acted like that was adorable. Quaint. As if cheating is the
new normal and the fact that I didn't cheat on her was weird. Well,
it's not to me. Loyalty is very important to me.

When I had worked at one of my two newspaper
jobs, Donna often asked me, if I talked to any of the girls in the
office. Well, yeah, of course I did. They were my co-workers. I had
to talk to them as part of my job. But if I said that, she accused
me of having an affair with one of them: "Oh yeah, you talk to your
little girlfriend at work? Why don't you go fuck your little whore
girlfriend?"

And if I said that I didn't talk to any of
the girls in the office, she would continue her probing
interrogation, because she knew I was lying: "Oh yeah, so you're
gonna tell me you are in the office with these girls all day and
you don't say one word to them? Not even good morning? Not even
when you pass them in the hallway, or you have to hand them a
paper? You're lying! You're cheating on me! Why don't you go fuck
your little whore girlfriend?"

There was just no right answer to her
accusatory questions, just like those trick questions they asked
conscientious objectors who refused to join the army in
Germany.

When I drove a cab, and I got home a few
minutes late, she accused me of having picked up and fucked some
streetwalker. She would go on and on and on about it. When I got
home at 2 am in the morning, I was exhausted. The last thing I
wanted to do was argue with Donna all night. So I went to bed.
She'd sit in the living room and wait until I'm asleep. Then she
would storm into the bedroom, slam the door wide open so that it
crashed into the wall, turn on the lights and start streaming at
me.

My heart pounded like crazy when she did
that. It causes so much anxiety when you are ripped out of your
sleep with so much hostility. When she knew I was awake, she would
turn off the light, leave the room and close the door. Then she
would wait a few minutes, and then storm into the bedroom all over
again. It was psychological torture and sleep deprivation.

She knew that I wanted to be nothing like my
abusive alcoholic father, and that I would never hit her, no matter
what. She perceived that as a weakness and exploited it to the
fullest.

Finally, after she had stormed into the
bedroom three or four times in a row to terrorize me awake, I told
her if she did that one more time, I would call the cops. Of course
she did it again, and I really did call the cops. They filed a
domestic dispute report and told her she had to stop doing that or
they were going to take her in.

A few years later, when I didn't have to
work anymore, and I was able to go on little road trips to Boston
or Washington, or longer ones to Canada, California or Texas, Donna
never wanted to come with me, because of her agoraphobia. So I went
on road trips alone, again, but she and I were connected on the
phone 24/7. By now we were using cell phones and we had unlimited
plans. But other than that the 24/7 phone connection was just like
it used to be when I still lived in Germany. It started to drive me
crazy. It was like she was trying to keep me on a leash through the
phone at all times.

One day I drove through a dead spot where my
phone had no signal, in the mountainous forests of the Poconos. She
redialed my phone over and over and over, and left a bunch of
messages.

The first one was friendly: "Hey, sweetie,
we lost connection. Call me back!"

But each subsequent voicemail got more
impatient and belligerent: "Why aren't you answering the phone?
What's going on?"

"Are you ignoring my calls on purpose? Are
you with some girl?"

"Who are you with? Are you fucking her?
What's her name? I hope you DIE!"

Her voicemails escalated from a loving
"Hello sweetie!" to a hostile "I hope you die!" within about 15 to
20 minutes.

And then, when I finally had a signal again
and I called her back, she acted like the biggest bitch for the
rest of the day, for absolutely no reason.

Deep down of course she knew that I really
didn't cheat on her, and I really just lost the signal for a few
minutes. I was in the Poconos a lot, because I didn't think the
Internet fountain of money was going to last forever. It was just
too good to be true. I was sure that sooner or later the money
would dry up. So I wanted to have a back up source of income. I
decided to invest in real estate and started buying lakefront lots
in the Poconos.

The Poconos are a mountain range in
Pennsylvania, about 90 car minutes from Manhattan. It's beautiful.
Donna and I decided to build a house there. At first I was looking
for a modest log cabin. But every builder I talked to tried to sell
me a bigger and better house. The house we actually ended up
building was a 5000 square foot mansion on a 5 acre property next
to a beautiful lake.