“Wolf of Wall Street” memoir: Rehab scandal.

So seeing the movie made me pick up the 1^st of 2 “Wolf of Wall Street” memoirs. 

I’m going to get the 2^nd, which starts out with him being busted, but the 1^st (Jordan Balfort, The Wolf of Wall Street, 2007) had this striking passage about his time in rehab, from the days when he was finally getting his sexual energy back after getting all the cocaine and Quaaludes out of his system (p. 482-483).

Each day we were given a few hours of personal time, to go to the gym and such, and I quickly insinuated myself into a small cadre of kick-ass [rehab patients who were doctors]...

It was about a ten-minute car ride to the gym, and I was sitting in the right backseat, wearing a pair of gray Adidas shorts and a tank top, when I popped an enormous woody.  It was probably the vibrations from the four-cylinder engine, or maybe it was bumps in the road, but something had sent a couple a pints of blood to my loins.  It was a huge, rock-hard erection, the sort that presses against your underwear and needs to be adjusted and then readjusted, lest it drive you insane.

“Check this out,” I said, pulling down the front of my gym shorts and showing the [other rehab patients] my penis.

They all turned and stared.  Yes, I thought, it looked good.  Despite my height, God had been very kind to me in that department.  “Not too shabby!” I said to my doctor friends, as I grabbed my penis and gave it a few yanks.  Then I slapped it against my stomach, which created a rather pleasant ‘thud’.

Finally, after the fourth ‘thud’, everybody started laughing.  It was a rare moment of levity at [the treatment center], a moment between guys, a moment between [rehab patients], where the normal societal niceties could be stripped away, where homophobia could be entirely ignored, and men could be just that: men!  I had a fine workout that afternoon, and the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

Eventually, someone rats him out for anti-social behavior, but that’s not what’s interesting, it’s how assumes his whole cock-thwacking behavior is normal bonding between (straight) guys.

I didn’t mark the page, but there was a brief gay-baiting period at the firm that he ran, and two guys who had blown each other were tagged as queer, but one guy who had another guy blow him was let off the hook because it was excused as a power dynamic thing over his subordinate and it was presented as not reprehensible but even admirable behavior.