While in public high school, we lived in a condominium complex in Alexandria, Virginia, where I got a job as a paperboy for the Alexandria Gazette. My delivery route consisted of four eighteen-story buildings and before I started, I usually stopped by the in-house convenience store and bought two packs of triple Twinkies. Since the guy behind the counter was a buddy, I also picked up the latest issue of Hustler or Playboy—the choice, depending on which had the hottest cover.

           Most of my customers were older, retired folks, and picky about the time the paper hit their door. Mr. Lawrence, in particular, was a crotchety old WW I veteran who never tipped me at collection time. He claimed my delivery times were not consistent enough. He did pay for his subscription but he left me high and dry. Stiffed for a fourth time in a row, I thanked him for being my best tipper.

           “How’s that?” he asked.

           “Oh, you just are, Jacques.”

           “That’s Mr. Lawrence to you, young man,” he quibbled.

           “Yes, sir, Mr. Lawrence,” I replied.

           “What’s gotten into you today? Why are you acting all happy and go lucky?” he asked in his gruff voice.

           “Nothing; no special reason. It’s just like I said—you’re my top tipper.”

           “I don’t tip anybody,” he snarled. “People ought to be happy with whatever their company pays them! Now, go on young man—I need to read my paper.”

           “Yes, sir, Mr. Lawrence. I look forward to seeing you next time.”

           “You’re a peculiar lad,” he said, shaking his head as he slammed the door.

           What he didn’t know was that I was in charge of subscriptions and cancellations, so I had taken the liberty of canceling his subscription. Since I always had extra newspapers, his subscription fee became pure tip money. Unfortunately, stinginess and a surly manner were not Mr. Lawrence’s most offensive qualities. That honor rested with his appearance: he had more hair growing from his nostrils, ears, and back than the legendary Sasquatch—a fact I remember only too well.

           Mr. Lawrence often enjoyed the amenities of the community center; namely, the indoor swimming pool and the hot-water Jacuzzi. When he sat in it, all you could see was this massive flotilla of hair—extending a good six inches from his body—on top of the water. It was so grotesque that every time he got in, everyone else got out. One day, he saw me emerge from the weight room and head for the Jacuzzi, where he was already soaking.

           “Young man,” he snapped, “the sign says ‘Shower before Entering’!”

           “Old man,” I replied, “did you read the other side of the sign?”

           “There is nothing on the other side,” he retorted.

           “Yeah, but if there was, it would say, ‘Shave before Soaking’! I would offer you a weed whacker, and a hedge trimmer for that nose of yours, but I wouldn’t want you to get electrocuted.”

           As I got in, he got out—him and the trail of hair that dragged along behind him.

           Only a short while removed from Miller School at that time, I was still haunted by the fact that the only real-life sexual images I had up to that point in my life were of other boys and a grown man. The havoc it wreaked on both my conscience and my soul was barely tolerable; I saw myself as polluted—tainted goods so to speak. I instinctively knew that I was at a critical juncture in my life regarding my sexuality. In response, I frequently immersed myself in pornographic magazines, attempting to supplant those images with ones of sexy, naked women. Armed with the latest centerfold issue—after finishing my newspaper route one day, I journeyed up to the observation deck on the roof of one of the buildings.

           The privacy enabled me to exercise reassuring feelings of desire, passion, and sexual impulses toward women; while masturbation, I instinctively knew, would be the catalyst, the psychological glue and physical bonding agent that would permanently link those emotions to females, and put to rest the fear that a dormant seed of homosexuality had been covertly planted in my psyche as a result of having been sexually molested by maleficent males.

           Eventually, the observation deck, in addition to being my preferred choice for tossing eggs, airplanes, and snowballs onto people and cars nineteen stories below, also became my regular reading place. That was where, for example, at the age of sixteen, I read my father’s copy of Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich. Although my father applied the book’s more cursory ideals of positive thinking to his career, I was drawn to the more abstruse principles behind “Autosuggestion,” “The Subconscious Mind,” and especially “The Mystery of Sex Transmutation.” Referred to by Sigmund Freud as part of Leonardo da Vinci’s “genius” and by Thoreau as “the beginning of genius” (from the chapter, Higher Laws, in his classic book, Walden), I used sex transmutation as not just a remedy for healing my sexual dissonance, but moreover—as proclaimed by ancient Eastern philosophers—as a means of unlocking higher intelligence through esoteric knowledge, provided I could orgasm without ejaculating my semen—the ultimate exercise in mental control.

           So, with the latest issue of Hustler in one hand and Think and Grow Rich in the other, I came to realize the inexplicable link between abstract visualization (sizzling sex with hot looking women) and harnessing the emotional fuel, the strongest of which is sexual desire, required to fertilize those thoughts and bring them to their physical manifestation—in this case, the loss of fear of being attracted to males and forever cementing my attraction to females. Critical thought, I knew, was potent; critical thought, when fertilized by the fire of sexual desire, I had discovered, was powerfully potent! Only without applying sex transmutation to achieve a specific intellectual or philosophical purpose, left unbridled, as I would experience years later, the resulting tidal wave of sexual intensity can obliterate the soul and render a man a reprobate—irrespective of an adherence to any religious, moral, or ethical code.

           When it was raining—as a source of entertainment—I would frequently ride on the elevators—no, not in the elevators but on top of them. That, or hang out in the elevator shaft. Instead of reading on the rooftop, on those days, I wrote graffiti throughout the elevator shafts and eavesdropped on important conversations. In fact, I was awestruck at the range of issues people would talk about—anything from marital problems and secret lovers planning their next rendezvous to world affairs. I once heard a top-brass Pentagon official discussing a behind-the-scene deal for the release of the hostages in the Iran Contra affair. One time, a guy had to pee so badly that instead of bolting to his condo, he whizzed right through the crack and down the elevator shaft. Good thing I was above him and not below him!

           Eavesdropping was especially rewarding when, a couple engulfed in the throes of passion, stopped the elevator at every floor—prolonging their final destination—in an attempt to finish what could only be coined a “quickie.” What made it even more taboo was knowing that they were secret lovers married to other spouses, and in one instance, the two cheaters only lived nine doors away from each other on the same floor! In fact, one married Don Juan had secret lovers scattered throughout the entire complex. What he didn’t know though, was that his wife was stroking more than just tennis balls during her private lessons with the racquet club pro.

           If I was really bored and wanted to pull out all my tricks, I would make ghostly sounds or mimic the theme from Friday the 13th, and totally freak people out. Sometimes I whispered things like, “Don’t go back in your office . . .” or “You’re going to die today . . .” or “Your husband is having an affair.” Once in a while the person would shout back, “Who is that?” But, more times than not, scared out of their wits, they simply stopped the elevator at the next floor and got the hell off.

           Whenever I was broke and needed a sugar fix, I would go “bottom fishing” in some elevator shafts. Better than a metal detector on a beach, I always found something—loose change, keys, and even jewelry.

           Yes, living in a condominium complex as a teenager required an inordinate amount of creativity to keep from being bored to death. On one wintery day, I was playing ice hockey with a few friends on the small ice skating rink. It was bone-chilling cold for D.C. and there was a ton of snow on the ground, having just been walloped by a Nor’ Eastern that dumped over 24 inches. As we were playing, an old man shouted from his balcony, “Hey you kids stop playing hockey! You’re going to ruin the ice for the rest of us.” “How so?” I hollered back. “Your sticks, that’s how.” “Destroy the ice?” I replied. “Are you kidding me? That’s what it’s made for!” I shouted. “Don’t give me any lip young man, or I’ll call the security guards and have you and your buddies removed,” he hollered back. “You boys think you own the whole damn community center!”

            Not unlike Mr. Lawrence, this guy was notorious for giving teenagers a hard time. So, in retaliatory fashion, I got my buddies to help me fill an oversized, industrial-strength garbage bag with snow, and drag it onto the service elevator and down the hall to his condo. At that point, my buddies chickened out and scrammed, leaving me holding the bag—pardon the pun—and I piled every bit of the snow against his door. When he opened it, all I heard was, “Son of-a-bitch!” as he plowed through the snow, and started chasing me. “You’re joking,” I hollered, looking back at him as I ran down the hall. “I’m not CPR certified,” I chuckled, “and just to forewarn you, I’m taking the stairs up, not down.” Thinking I had dodged him after I darted into the stairwell, to the old geezers’ credit, he gave chase. “You’ve got to be kidding’,” I said, looking back at him as I raced up the stairwell two steps at a time. “Eighteen stories is a long way and you’re only on the fourth floor. Are you sure you want to do this?” I politely asked him, as I momentarily stopped on the seventh floor. “You’re not getting away with this young man,” he bellowed, gasping for breath as he hunched over the railing. “I’m reporting you to security; what is your name?” “Jacque,” I replied. “Jacque what?” “Jacque Lawrence.” “Well Mr. Lawrence,” he said in a stern tone, you can expect a visit from security, shortly.” “Oh no, not security!” I replied sarcastically.

           The next day, I was waiting in line to pay for that day’s Twinkie fix when old Mr. Lawrence walked into the convenience store. He told me he was none too pleased that he got a visit from security, accused by another homeowner of having dumped snow at his door and bolting for the stairwell. “Well hell Mr. Lawrence,” I chuckled, it sounds like you could be a lot of fun; we ought to hang out some time.” “Do you have my paper in that bag?” he grumbled. “Yes sir…yes I do,” I said, grinning from ear to ear. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I have to wait until you deliver it to my door.” “No sir…no I’m not,” I politely replied, as I handed him his paper. Puzzled, he again hit me with his favorite phrase, “What’s gotten in to you today?” “Nothing,” I replied. “I just like to take care of my top tipper.”

           When I wasn’t conducting elevator shenanigans, rooftop rituals, or being chased down the hall by WW I veterans, I spent most of my leisure time shooting pool. It didn’t take me long to get pretty good—in fact, I began parlaying my $30 in newspaper tips into $100, or more. That was my first experience at betting, and I have to say that, even then, I liked it.

           I got so good at shooting pool over the next three years, that my primary source of income came from parlaying my little paychecks from part-time jobs into “real” cash by taking advantage of the adults who were trying to take advantage of me. No, I wouldn’t say I was a pool shark—I didn’t need to be. The people I played with had prestigious jobs at places like the Pentagon and offices on Capitol Hill, which enabled me to take advantage of their egos and profit from their pride.

           My method was simple: after I beat them a first time, most would opt for a double or nothing bet that they would finish me off in the next game. That’s when I really took em’ to the cleaners. Revenge, I quickly surmised, was toxic to their logic and ability to reason. Worse than pride, it was a colossal character flaw—one that, if exploited by a formidable opponent, could take a man down faster than a swan dive off the Empire State Building. What I lacked in wisdom at that age, I more than made up for in sagacity.

           Not one for complacency, especially when it came to making a few extra bucks, my entrepreneurial spirit kicked into overdrive one day. I was at a friend’s house when the doorbell rang.

           “Good afternoon, sir,” a Boy Scout said to my friend’s father. “We’re raising money for our troop by painting address numbers on curbs for $2. Would you like to have yours done?” “Sure!” he replied, as he pulled the money from his wallet without hesitation. “Here’s two bucks.”

           At first glance, I thought, what a mundane way to make a couple of bucks. But, as I watched them work, my mind started crunching the numbers. With nothing more than a set of four-inch stencils, glossy white paint, flat black paint, along with a few pieces of scrap cardboard for shielding, these guys weren’t making money—they were making a killing!

           At two bucks a pop, about twelve houses an hour, minus chump change for costs . . . that was at least $23.00 an hour—roughly ten times the $2.35 an hour I was making at the time, working as a cashier. Three days later, I had my father drive me to Fisher’s Hardware in Springfield, Virginia and later that afternoon, I was in business with a brown grocery bag filled with two cans of paint, a set of four-inch brass stencils, a few pieces of cardboard, and a vinyl bank bag to carry the loot I was about to rake in. Only, instead of charging two bucks per house, I charged five. After all, my sales pitch went, if the house belonged to an older person, Wasn’t it important that the police department and rescue squad be able to find their house in a pinch? What if they had a heart attack? On the other hand, if a teenager answered the door, I asked them, What if their parents were out of town and they were throwing a keg party after dark? Oh, yeah, they reasoned, it would be worth five bucks for partiers to be able to find the place. And so, people paid it.

           My first weekend, I made a whopping $300! In my senior year, at the age of eighteen, I was going to school with a wad of cash; my buddies were still stocking shelves and running cash registers. Sick of seeing me with so much cash, they finally cornered me, and I let them in on the business. I started thinking bigger, even considering ways to leverage myself by setting them up and taking a piece of their action. But that would have required an honor system and, unlike Christian school, these guys were no choirboys!

           In just a few weeks, they were showing up on Monday mornings with the same amount of money as me. Having grown accustomed to being the “King of Cash,” that was a blow to my ego, which drove me to think even bigger. But, with a closing rate of 20 percent and all of us hitting the same number of houses, the only solution was to improve my presentation and close more homeowners. To do so, I devised a less-than-honest sales pitch and I hit the mother load! After hearing the new pitch, some people just gave me ten and sometimes even twenty bucks. In some cases, I didn’t even have to paint their curbs. Life was good . . . damn good.

           Come that Monday morning, the guys boasted about their typical $300 weekend; but I busted their chops when I pulled out a $900 wad! I was once again the King of Cash. As expected, they demanded to know how I made so much more money.

           “Face it dudes,” I told them, “I’m just a hell of a lot better looking!”

           “Yeah, right, you hose-bag. How in the world did you make $900?” they insisted.

           With tens of thousands of homes in the area, I figured, Awe . . . what the hell? I couldn’t hit them all myself anyhow. And, so, I spilled the beans . . .

           I had earlier joined the high school’s D.E.C.A. (Distributive Education Clubs of America) Chapter because, as you’ve likely gathered by now, if anything could get me out of school, I was on it like white on rice. Well, D.E.C.A. not only allowed me to get out of school early but it also enabled me to receive school credits—Definitely, my kind of club! But, while brainstorming techniques for improving my closing ratio, I realized I could take advantage of another D.E.C.A. benefit: chapters from various schools periodically competed against each other and on rare occasions even got to travel overseas for international competition.

           So, after calculating the odds and probabilities of my not-so-truthful pitch and determining that the risk-to-reward ratio weighed heavily in favor of reward, my new and improved sales pitch (which, granted, stretched the truth just a little bit . . . okay—maybe a lot) was this: I told homeowners that I was in the D.E.C.A. club of T.C. Williams High School and that we were raising money to travel to Germany for a marketing competition—hence my closing rate jumping to an astounding 70 percent and the occasional instance when they offered an outright contribution without having to paint their curb.

           My buddies, whose eyes had lit up like a slot machine out of control, suddenly thought I was smarter than the collective brain-power of our entire debate team.

           That next Monday morning, I was headed for school on the Alexandria Metro-Bus when the driver suddenly freaked out. Only fifteen minutes earlier, he had shared a joint, along with half of the riders (the other half was doing either angel dust or speed), and even a non-smoker like me couldn’t help but get half way stoned from all the secondhand smoke. As the driver popped a breath mint, he told everyone to crack the windows.

           Why? We wondered. The answer was dead ahead—waiting at the drop-off were a couple of cops, some teachers, and a few guidance counselors. We quickly opened the windows and I cracked open my American Government textbook—not to study, of course, but— to help fan out the smoke. When the bus stopped, a cop came aboard and walked straight to my seat.

           “Are you Kevin Lehmann?” he asked.

           At that moment, my heart started beating faster than a pacemaker on overload. Why would a cop need to board the bus—and why for me? With nowhere to hide, I looked him squarely in the eyes and said, “Hey man, I don’t do drugs.”

           “Just come with me,” he said, as he escorted me off the bus and into the principal’s office. It turned out I hadn’t calculated one consideration into that risk-to-reward ratio: I underestimated the repercussions of the unlikely act of knocking on the wrong door. In my own defense, I ask you: in all the tens of thousands of houses in that area, what were the odds of knocking on your D.E.C.A. teacher’s father’s door?

           The guilty culprit was Joey P and two other knuckleheads I got started in the business. He’d knocked on a random door, gave the homeowner the pitch, and the next thing you know, an entourage of public servants is waiting for me on Monday morning. I couldn’t believe I’d been ratted out—I had let these yoyos in on a cash cow . . . and this was how they thanked me. The cops leaned on him just a little bit, and he’d folded faster than a house of cards!

           In lieu of being arrested, since I was eighteen and already enrolled in the Marine Corps under their Delayed Entry Program, I agreed to drop my cash cow, curb-painting business and to stomach a one-week suspension from high school. I’d almost made it to graduation without being suspended or expelled . . . close, but no cigar!

           But none of that really bothered me—being ratted out didn’t irritate me half as much as the situation. No, what upset me most was the irony: The cop who boarded the bus had walked through a cloud of pot smoke and a maze of drug-hazed eyeballs to get to me, the curb-painting criminal. Where was the justice in that?

           Shortly before graduation from high school, my eleventh grade D.E.C.A. teacher told me I was the smartest student he had ever seen and asked me why I didn’t apply myself academically and opt for college instead of the Marine Corps. My reply was “College is for cowards and the Marine Corps is for men.” Moreover, I told him that I hated school with a passion and saw college as a drain on both my entrepreneurial and my patriotic spirit. What was the truth? I was still harboring a lot of anger and resentment over what had transpired in foster care and Miller School. That, and the fact that I never felt wanted, really wanted in my new home.

           There was this child-like intuition that I was cramping my parents’ style at times, a third wheel so to speak, and the physical beatings and belt whippings by my mother and father over the years—while not every day—eventually took their toll and strained our relationship. My father, with a hot temper and a short fuse, was quick to pull the trigger and beat my sister and I—sometimes to the point of bruising the back of our arms and legs—with a hard rubber hose or a thick leather belt. In the instances where my behavior did call for disciplinary action, it was never so bad as to justify corporal punishment. What made those whippings even tougher to endure was the fact that my father was my hero, my knight in shining armor that I loved deeply and unconditionally. After all, he could have thrown my sister and me completely under the bus and left us at the mercy of the state for the rest of our childhood. Besides, at that time single father’s with full custody of two children were an anomaly and hardly attractive to single women.

           A lack of trust and episodes of humiliation also contributed to our strained relationship. For example, when my father came to pick me up after being expelled from the Christian school, I was nervously waiting for him in the parking lot. Knowing he had a hot temper and a short fuse, I didn’t know how he would react. When he got out of his 1967, Carolina-blue, VW Bug—unlike those foster home years where he would embrace me with loving arms and a warm smile—he had the look of a Gestapo commander in Hitler’s, Third Reich. Holding a thick leather belt that he had taken off and folded in half, he started lashing my face and my head before I could even get a word in edgewise. He accused me of not only smoking the joint, but then lying about it when I was confronted by the senior pastor. When I denied both smoking and lying about it, he wailed on me that much more. Now fifteen, I was more than big enough to fight back. Every ounce of me wanted to jack my father up against the car and beat him to a pulp. Yet, my heart was silently crying out, “I love you Dad . . . why are you doing this to me, especially in front of the other kids?” I had learned to rationalize my father’s erratic outbursts at an early age. In my eyes, he could do no wrong, even if it meant being an outlet, a whipping post on which he could unleash his own deeply rooted anger and rage.

           No matter the reason, whether it was growing up under the tyranny of Nazism and constantly seeking shelter from the bombing raids of the allied forces, fights with my new stepmother, or stress related sales pressure, I instinctively knew—even as a young child—that it wasn’t me, but my father’s own demons that he was trying to shake. “Now, Kevin,” he would often claim in his thick German accent, “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it’s going to hurt you.” “Oh, really?” I would often say. “Maybe we should trade places so you won’t have to feel so much pain.”

           But at seventeen, I had finally put an end to it once and for all. I had gone to a rock and roll club with a few buddies in Annandale, Virginia one Friday night. It was the first of only three times that I had ever gotten drunk while in high school. Except I wasn’t drunk, I was completely shit-faced. I had never drunk whiskey before, and here I was downing shots of Jack Daniels like they were Buttery Nipples. In fact, I got so wasted that I fell right out of my buddy, Tom’s, CJ-7 on the way home. He hit a pothole doing about 30 mph, and I bounced right onto the pavement. I was so inebriated I didn’t feel a thing. When we got back home, he dropped me off at the front entrance of the condo and left me to fend for myself. I got on the elevator and hoped and prayed all the way up that my parents were in a deep sleep. When the elevator opened, I staggered down the hallway, barely keeping my balance until I reached the door. When I stuck the key in the lock, I couldn’t get it opened. Fearful that I might wake my parents up, I fumbled with it as quietly as I could. Then suddenly, the door swung open.

           “You’re not my mother,” I slurred, as a different woman stood in the doorway.

           “You’re Kevin, aren’t you?”

           “Oh shit! Who are you?”

           “I believe you live in the condo right above us; this is the eighth floor.”

           “Huh?” I slurred, as I stood there looking at three silhouettes of the same woman.

           “How did the elevator screw that up?”

           “It looks to me like you might have accidently pushed 8 instead of 9,” she said in a sweet voice. “The stairwell is just a few feet down the hallway, do you need help getting home?” “Oh, no ma’am, I’m fine,” I told her, as I staggered towards the stairwell with one hand on the wall to keep from toppling over. When I got to the stairwell, I couldn’t make it up the one flight of steps before I hurled my guts out. I’m sure I had alcohol poisoning as I lost control of all of my bodily functions and watched in amazement as a pile of puke ran off the edge of the steps, splashing the handrail all the way to the bottom, eight stories below. Thank God, unless you were a paper delivery boy or there was a fire, you didn’t have to endure the lingering stench that hung around for a week, even though I doused it with buckets of water the next day. I eventually made it to my door and even enter the condo without waking my parents. Staggering to the bathroom, I managed to throw my clothes—drenched with every possible bodily secretion—into the tub. Butt-naked, and completely disoriented, I crawled to my bedroom and immediately passed out.

           In what seemed like only a few minutes later, I awoke the next morning to my father wailing on me with a leather belt from head to toe. Instantly cured of any potential hangover, I jumped up, snatched the belt, grabbed my father’s arms and told him that was the last time he would ever hit me. Unfortunately, the toxicity from all the pent up animosity and resentment over the years, coupled with the fact that I had contemporaneously protected him from the ugly truth of what happened at Miller School, had already taken its toll. The ability to maintain my composure in pressure packed situations, including high stakes gambling, was developed all the way back to foster care. I had learned to compartmentalize my emotions and play the role of a chameleon at a very early age. Unfortunately, it was out of necessity for survival, especially psychological survival.

           Why did I really choose the Marine Corps over college? By the time I graduated, I was a human powder keg just looking for a place to explode. Frankly, I wanted to kill someone, anyone, or die a hero trying; the Marine Corps seemed the perfect fit and my father was only too happy to see me join.

           Over the next few weeks, I continued my entrepreneurial inclinations by taking advantage of a “Bring Two and Get Promoted” recruiting campaign—I convinced two buddies to join with me; doing so guaranteed my promotion to PFC at graduation from boot camp. One couldn’t cut Parris Island for more than two weeks; the other, an unsung hero, by the name of James Knipple. Ironically, he would be the one to die a hero, killed in the terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 23, 1983.

           Before my impending appointment with Parris Island, though, my father—in a rare father/son only trip—took me on a short jaunt to another island, the Grand Bahama Island, and the city of Freeport.

           A trip for the ages, it was there that my instant love affair with casino gambling first began.

Continue to Chapter 5 »