Unknown

Captured by Ann

I know that the title I have chosen for this series of accounts can be misleading. It gives no explicit indication about what the reader will shortly encounter. So I will tell you. It is my story-the account of my private life. For the first time really, it is the melding of my public persona with the full reality of how I have chosen to live, to indulge my imagination and to achieve the realization of the fantasies of my youth.

I have little illusion about how the reader will judge me. Self-indulgent may be the most generous description I can hope for. But at one level of reality I don't care and at another level of reality, I clearly do. The part of me that wishes to share my story with the reader is not inhibited by concerns about others' judgments; the part of me that maintains the buffers that shield my lifestyle and identity from the rest of the world acknowledges the consequences of flouting norms of behavior.

Well so far I have been a bit abstract and I am anxious to start but a bit of biographical data is necessary.

I am forty-three years old. I am also quite wealthy. My father was a founder of a household-familiar kitchen appliance manufacturer. When I was twenty-two and a second year law student, the business was sold to an even larger public company and my family became that entity's largest single group of stockholders. A year later I inherited all those holdings. I have sold much of the stock I inherited and have invested the proceeds fairly diversely. The last time I looked (and I look reasonably often) I have about $115 million invested in publicly traded securities, about $26 million in cash and cash equivalents and about $65 million in less liquid inv estments. That my sound like a lot of money. It is, but it is not so much money that I have a highly visible public profile. You would be surprised at how many private fortunes in the U.S. exceed mine.

Access to wealth of course is one thing that makes me different-it is also what makes my life as I live it possible. Here is how it began. Beginnings – June 1977

I graduated from law school in 1976 and that fall joined a large corporate law firm in New York. After about six months, I knew I was not cut out for this regimented practice. First, I was beginning to spend a lot of my time managing the investments I was starting to make.

Second, I did not need the salary I was earning as a new lawyer and I did not need the possibility of advancing in the profession as the means to secure my future.

Third, I was not crazy about the work. The problems I dealt with were dictated by the needs of my firm's clients- not by what appealed to me. Fourth, I hated the loss of autonomy that working for the law firm dictated. I decided that I wanted to be my own boss, to set my own schedule and spend full-time managing my investments.

But I also knew that there would have to be some regimentation in my life. There was a period when I was in college when I lacked the discipline to go to class and my grades had really deteriorated. Once I got into the routine of forcing myself to go to classes, to go to the library for study, all on a schedule, my grades rebounded. I knew that I could not leave myself the option of not having a set of obligations each day. That meant to me that I would rent an office, employ a staff, and plan on showing up at work every day.

I hardly knew where to begin. I knew I had to rent an office, furnish it and hire the people who would work with me. I started with a first step. I rented a suite of offices for a short-term (six month) period. I believed that I would use that time to get my systems in place.

My next step then was to hire an executive assistant. I contacted a placement agency and described what I was looking for. I wanted someone more than a secretary; someone who could take charge of the day to day business of running my office; someone who would hire and supervise other clerical and support staff; someone who could do the leg work on furnishing the office; I envisioned the quintessential, efficient, all purpose gal Friday and that is what I described to the agency. There would be no problem in filling the position I was assured, and I was promised a stream of pre-screened applicants to interview the following week.

The first handful of candidates were hardly impressive, however. Many of the candidates lacked polish. Others seemed overly concerned with being assured that they could leave promptly at 5:00 p.m.; others did not seem to have the experience or the references to give me confidence that they could fulfill the job's requirements. Then I met Ann.

Ann showed up for her interview precisely at 2:00 p.m.-the scheduled hour. Since I had yet to hire anyone to help me, I was particularly annoyed at the inconvenience of juggling late applicants appearing in my unattended reception area while I was conducting interviews in my office. Ann was about my age, perhaps a year older than I was and extremely impressive by any standard. The first standard I noticed was her appearance. Ann had shoulder-length dark brown hair framing a fair and flawless complexion. Her eyes were brown and she was about 5'6" tall. She had a wonderful figure, at least to my tastes, which meant that she was considerably busty and simultaneously thin waisted. I took note of these things as we talked about her experience (she was managing the New York office of a French chemical manufacturer) and the position I was seeking to fill. My eyes lingered at her chest, I thought discretely, as I noticed the outline of the lace of her bra visible through the translucent fabric of her blouse. We talked a good bit about the position and about my reasons for starting up t he management company. I described my vision of what I hoped to achieve and talked about the role I had in mind for my assistant. Ann said she was interested and I was about to offer her the job, when she said there was one problem-the pay was too low.