Hella Nation - Evan Wright [112]
Jimmy Kim once told me that Warshavsky knew how to push everyone’s buttons. “But he’s got a button, too,” Kim had said. “Alienation. That’s why he’s always on the phone, surrounded by people. Seth never cuts people off. They cut him off. But not Seth. He can’t stand alienation.” Which, perhaps, is why Warshavsky asked to meet with me several months after his trouncing in our civil suit. (The court had ordered his claims against me to be “withdrawn with prejudice”—a stern dismissal of his suit.) He said he wanted to show me the results of a “five-hundred-thousand-dollar audit” he had commissioned to prove that “there was no intentional double billing” at IEG.
When he pulled up in his Porsche, squeezing it into a rubble-strewn construction zone to avoid the five-dollar parking fee in a nearby public lot, he waved and smiled as if greeting an old friend—not an ex-employee he’d accused of theft and whose fraud allegations had brought on a federal investigation.
His physical transformation was astonishing. When he stepped out of the car, he looked as though his head had been grafted onto the body of a short, powerfully built, barrel-chested man—testament to the massive amounts of HGH and steroids he had been injecting. We went into a Thai restaurant—he recommended the shrimp, fielded a couple of phone calls and made some wheedling small talk. There was a strange disconnect, as if Warshavsky were unwilling to acknowledge the enmity between us. I attempted to bring up the issue of credit-card fraud. “You did a terrible thing to me,” Warshavsky said. “The whole situation with the lawsuit was crazy.” I mentioned the federal investigation. “It’s probably just a fishing expedition,” he said. “Don’t you think?” Warshavsky looked weary. His eyes were bloodshot. His complexion, normally a tanned golden brown, was gray. Even the familiar snort sounded tired, almost like a sigh.
I asked him whether he’d brought along the audit that he had promised would absolve the company of any wrongdoing. But now he said he couldn’t show it to me. He went into a familiar mode, inventing a string of excuses. I asked him who had prepared the alleged audit. “I won’t tell you who did the audit,” he said. “It was a major, major consulting firm.” He started to go on, but I interrupted him and told him he had to be the biggest, most amazing bullshitter I had ever met.
Warshavsky considered what I’d said for a moment and smiled. “I think I’m just an optimist. Like if I say the check is in the mail. It’s because I look at the bright side, and I really believe I intend to send it.” He became silent for a moment, then added, “I never think about why I am the way I am. Something just directs me from inside.”
SCENES FROM MY LIFE IN PORN
In 1995, I was hired as entertainment editor of Hustler magazine at Larry Flynt Publications. I was thirty, divorced and at the end of a screenwriting career that had been flatlining for several years. Not only had I failed as a writer, but I had functioned only marginally in a variety of menial, nobrainer day jobs. On my first day as an assistant location manager in charge of finding an office building for a commercial shoot, I had become lost. As a telemarketer of computer-printer supplies, I earned $61 the first week my employers put me on straight commission. I failed at other jobs simply because I didn’t get out of bed. Before working at LFP, I had found a niche at a Beverly Hills law firm, where I temped in the word-processing department, correcting typographical and format errors in legal documents. It was a dull job, but its focus on minutiae dovetailed nicely with my habit of smoking several bowls throughout the day in the parking garage. Sitting for hours in a white cubicle hunting through densely written two-hundred-page legal contracts