The Wolf of Wall Street Read Free Page B

explain how their lovable dad, the very dad who now drives them to soccer games and shows up at their parent–teacher conferences and stays home on Friday nights and makes them Caesar salad from scratch, could have been such a despicable person once.
    But what I sincerely hope is that my life serves as a cautionary tale to the rich and poor alike; to anyone who’s living with a spoon up their nose and a bunch of pills dissolving in their stomach sac; or to any person who’s considering taking a God-given gift and misusing it; to anyone who decides to go to the dark side of the force and live a life of unbridled hedonism. And to anyone who thinks there’s anything glamorous about being known as a Wolf of Wall Street.

BOOK I

CHAPTER 1
    A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
    Six Years Later
    T he insanity had quickly taken hold, and by the winter of ’93 I had this eerie feeling that I’d landed the starring role in one of those reality TV shows, before they came into vogue. The name of my show was
Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional,
and each day seemed to be growing more dysfunctional than the last.
    I had started a brokerage firm named Stratton Oakmont, which was now one of the largest and by far the wildest brokerage firm in Wall Street history. The word on Wall Street was that I had an unadulterated death wish and that I was certain to put myself in the grave before I turned thirty. But that was nonsense, I knew, because I had just turned thirty-one and was still alive and kicking.
    At this particular moment, a Wednesday morning in mid-December, I was sitting behind the controls of my twin-engine Bell Jet helicopter on my way from the 30th Street Heliport in midtown Manhattan to my estate in Old Brookville, Long Island, with enough drugs running through my circulatory system to sedate Guatemala.
    It was a little after three a.m., and we were cruising along at a hundred twenty knots somewhere over the western edge of Long Island’s Little Neck Bay. I remember thinking how remarkable it was that I could fly a straight line while seeing two of everything, when suddenly I began to feel woozy. Then all at once the helicopter was in the midst of a steep dive and I could see the black waters of the bay rushing toward me. There was this terrible vibration coming from the helicopter’s main rotor, and I could hear the panic-stricken voice of my copilot coming through my headset, screaming frantically, “Jesus Christ, boss! Pull up! Pull up! We’re gonna crash! Holy shit!”
    Then we were level again.
    My loyal and trusted copilot, Captain Marc Elliot, was dressed in white and sitting before his own set of controls. But he’d been under strict orders not to touch them unless I either passed out cold or was in imminent danger of smashing into the earth. Now he was flying, which was probably best.
    Captain Marc was one of those square-jawed captain-types, the sort who instills confidence in you at the mere sight of him. And it wasn’t only his jaw that was square; it was his entire body, which seemed to be comprised of squarish parts, unit-welded together, one atop the other. Even his black mustache was a perfect rectangle, and it sat on his stiff upper lip like an industrial-grade broom.
    We’d taken off from Manhattan about ten minutes ago, after a long Tuesday evening that had spiraled way out of control. The night had started out innocently, though—at a trendy Park Avenue restaurant named Canastel’s, where I’d had dinner with some of my young stockbrokers. Somehow, though, we’d ended up in the Presidential Suite at the Helmsley Palace, where some very expensive hooker named Venice, with bee-stung lips and loamy loins, had tried using a candle to help me achieve an erection, which turned out to be a lost cause. And that was why I was running late now (about five and a half hours, to be exact), which is to say I was in deep shit, once again, with my loyal and loving second wife, Nadine, the righteously aspiring