Bigger Swinging Dick

The alarm clock buzzed continuously for 14 minutes until Salvatore Gaudio decided to get up and walk across his bedroom to do something about it. During the 5 feet walk from his bed to his desk, Salvatore thought "Should I snooze? Nah, you snooze you lose," and decidedly turned off the alarm. This was his rationale behind placing the alarm clock out of arms length from his bed. Every morning he had to force himself to either get up to turn that shit off or sleep with the heinous sounding buzzer.

The red LED digits now read 6:15 am, "It's fucking good to be up early," Salvatore exclaimed. He quickly hit the shower and began his daily Patrick Bateman routine, starting with a deep pore cleanser lotion, a water activated gel cleanser, a honey almond body scrub, and on the face, an exfoliating gel scrub. In the shower, he chuckled to himself thinking how he used to rewind the borrowed American Psycho DVD numerous times to get the exact routine down. He thought back to those frugal days in college and smiled. Now Salvatore no longer had to borrow DVDs from friends or shop at second-tier New Jersey malls. He was living his dream life working for a Wall Street company and making more money than all of his college friends from the SUNJ. However, Salvatore only let those memories sink in for a minute before realizing he had to get ready for work soon.

He stepped out of the shower to his dressing area, preparing for the hardest decision he will have to make for the day; Kenneth Cole or Banana Republic? Since it was a Friday, he thought he'd wear his "going out" shirt in case he decided to meet up with his friends straight after work. He picked a dark purple shirt with grey diagonal stripes and a pair of flat-front pants, both from Kenneth Cole. He was sick of seeing the old men in banking wearing pastel colored Brooks Brothers and pleated pants that only made them look fat. Salvatore represented the new generation, the hip generation, and the generation that bangs cocktail waitresses from Crobar. After his outfit was picked and fitted, Salvatore began putting on his square-toed Kenneth Cole shoes. He loved those shoes; not only does the square toe design provide ample room for his feet, but the rubber soles make intense squeaking noises in the cafeteria causing the Aramark ladies to notice him and give him extra mashed potatoes.

Salvatore looked at his newly acquired Fossil watch and noticed it was 7:26 am. This is still a little too early to get to work so he went down to the local Starbucks to get some breakfast. While waiting in line for his venti sugar free vanilla non-fat extra-ice blended latte, he again thought back to his SUNJ days.

It was 2006, his senior year at college. Salvatore had just read the Bonfires of the Vanities and thought Wall Street is where he wanted to be. He wanted the lifestyle described by Tom Wolfe, the success of Gordon Gekko, and the sophistication of Patrick Bateman minus the blood. Salvatore still remembers vividly walking to his school's career fair and impressing the regional representatives with his 3.6 GPA and his three summers working as a Bank of America teller. He still remembers the intense multi-round interview process where he had to think of his three best qualities. Shit, he still remembers sweating profusely when asked to quote Credit Suisse's stock price on 4/3/2006 (it was $51.46). Not only did he demonstrate he was capable of the job requirements, he impressed them with his intellect and received numerous offers from different banks. Of course there were the usual banks like Bank of America, Credit Suisse, UBS, and Wachovia but Salvatore aspired to achieve more. He held out on all four offers waiting for the top bank in the world to get back to him.. *Goldman Sachs*. Finally when the HR lady called him to let him know that he got the job, Salvatore remembers jumping up and down with joy and yelling "Goldman Sachs! Goldman Sachs! Goldma…"

"Excuse me?" said the young Indian barista.

Salvatore immediately crashed back to reality and realized he was subconsciously chanting "Goldman Sachs" aloud. A little embarrassed, he snapped sharply at the daughter of an immigrant, "Is my drink fucking ready yet?"

"Sorry sir, its coming right up!" said the young lady in flawless English.

Sal shot back, "O yea, I don't want those clear plastic cups you use for cold drinks. I want it in a regular cup without a sleeve." He didn't want a sleeve or the clear plastic cups in fear of people mistaking his Starbucks drink for a generic black coffee. Salvatore does not want to seem like he gets his coffee at a regular deli like the older Italian American generation or at Dunkin Donuts like college kids. He wanted to portray a sophisticated image because he did after all, work for Goldman Sachs. When his drink finally arrived, he was delighted to find that Starbucks started using red cups for the holiday season. Red was a brighter color and attracted more attention, he loved it. Salvatore expressed his thanks towards the sub-continental employee and headed towards the PATH station.

During the 15 minute PATH ride, he looked around and laughed to himself, "Fucking service industry and IT employees." He felt like the biggest swinging dick on that particular PATH car. Salvatore was bold enough to hog up two seats and no one dared to confront him. Just in case someone tried to ask him to move over, he was ready to dish out aggressively "Shut the fuck up and go get me my dry cleaning" to the eastern Asian lady standing in front of him or "Fuck you, go fix my Outlook Ankit!" to the burly Indian man eyeing one of the seats. Finally when he arrived at his station, Salvatore got out of the train and started walking towards his office at a leisurely pace, stopping every 25 feet or so to sip his designer drink. Around 8:15, Salvatore arrived at 30 Hudson with plenty of time to spare so he decided to go to the lounge and catch up on some water cooler talk, all while showing off his red extra large Starbucks cup.

When he stepped into the lounge area, the air smelled ethnic and the place looked like the mess hall of the French Foreign Legion; there was multi-cultural shit going on everywhere. In the far corner were two Spanish guys chatting about futbol and Manchester United. The Indians dominated the center of the room with their fragrant kati rolls and rice puttu. In the near corner, there was Pham and another analyst from Vietnam. Although they demonstrated a full grasp of the English language, the two continued to quack along in their native tongue like dying ducks. Figuring its only polite to say hello to the nearest coworkers, Sal walked over and said "Hey! There's Lloyd and his Chinaman friend. Yobo say oh!" Both of the 5'5" Asians stopped their conversation and looked at Sal with a confused look.

"What the fuck are you saying Sal?" demanded Pham.

"I said 'Yobo say oh!' which is hello in Asian," replied Salvatore.

Pham was furious when he realized that Sal mistook him for Korean and decided to call his language "Asian". He wanted to seem tough in front of his space efficient South Vietnamese buddy so he said "You're an idiot, Asian isn't a language. You were speaking Korean. Korea is fucking in the Northeast corner of Asia. I'm Vietnamese and my name is not fucking Lloyd."

Salvatore decided to mess with Pham for a little longer and shot back "Oh! I'm so sorry Miss Saigon. I didn't realize you were so sensitive. Should I say sorry or are you going to kung pow my ass?"

Without waiting for a response, Salvatore left the fuming Asians to think of a clever comeback. It was 8:30; time for work. Sal loaded up his computer and started preparing for the day's work ahead.

"FUCK!" His Excel was fucking up again. Why didn't the numbers add? He called up IT and demanded them fix the problem. The IT technician tried to remain level-headed as he explained that Sal had to check the Automatic button in the Calculations Options screen. Once he clicked it, the model began updating with new values. Just as Sal was about to hang up, the IT guy said "Maybe you should remember this so you don't call us again. This is the third time you've called with the same problem on your Excel."

"That's why we pay you asshole! To fix computer problems! Fucking back office…" :Click: Sal hung up on Seven Eleven.

Finally, with all his shit taken care of, Salvatore began working. At about 11:00 am, his phone started to ring. He started to sweat as he never got calls on his office line unless the fat Crobar waitresses couldn't get a hold of him on his cell phone or something was wrong at work. In the split second before he picked up the phone, Salvatore began playing horrible scenarios in his head: maybe someone was pregnant, maybe his hair stylist cancelled, or maybe his vacation home in Belmar was flooding!

"Hello? Is this Salvatore Gaudio?" asked the voice on the phone.

"Yes it is" replied Salvatore

"You fucking moron, I asked you to cover my short positions on my pharmaceutical stocks yesterday. Where the fuck have you been? I needed that shit done when the markets opened! You just cost Goldman $4 million which reflects badly on my year end bonus. You fucking ginnie, you better have a good explanation for this."

Oh shit! During his earlier rant against IT, Sal forgot to turn on his Microsoft Outlook and that's why he wasn't getting any of the emails. He didn't know how to tell the senior trader of his mistake so he decided to blame everything on IT. "I'm sorry, our email systems been down…"

"Fucking public school Guido kids from Jersey. Nice excuses jerkoff. This is fucking Wall Street, we can replace Jersey City Operations people like you in a minute. Get your ass back to middle office and process my fucking trades!!"

:Click: