DGAF

DGAF stands for “Don’t Give A Fuck,” and while I enjoy saying the F-word from time to time, if I do an entire essay on not giving an F, I will end up writing the offending word 100 times. Out of deference to my readership, I will abbreviate it.

First, a quote from Anthony Hopkins: My philosophy is: it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I have no power over it. You all might think I am a self-absorbed narcissist. I literally cannot parachute into your brain and change your thoughts. Furthermore, your perception of me has no bearing on my life. I write my newsletters and trade my futures and if people keep buying the newsletters and the trades go well, then the rest of the world can pack sand. Really, the only people in the world who should care what people think of them are politicians, and imagine how much that would suck. I really don’t care if you think I am a narcissist, an out-of-touch rich guy, a fatso, a pussy (if you’ll pardon the expression), a wannabe intellectual, a second-rate musician, an also-ran writer—I have been accused of being all of these things. Don’t care. Don’t care what you think of me. I care what my wife thinks of me, and what my cats think of me, and that’s about the extent of it. I am not quite to the point where I will wear a Speedo to a public pool, but I am getting there. And by the way, to all the old fat guys who wear Speedos to the pool, you are doing it right. Grape smugglers.

Speaking of clothes, a whole book could be written on sartorial preferences and first impressions, and when you get dressed in the morning, you are basically telling the world how much you GAF. If you work at an investment bank and you wear an Eton shirt and Incotex pants and Ferragamo deal sleds, you care very much what other people think about you. If you do what I did, and wear Men’s Wearhouse suits with holes in the ass, you DGAF. Didn’t back then, still don’t. Now, having said that, I am one of the biggest clotheshorses known to mankind. I have 50 jackets, about 30 pairs of jeans, 200 T-shirts, and about 50 button-downs. Also, about 15 scarves and 50 pairs of shoes. This is a luxury: I like walking into my closet and being able to wear endless permutations of outfits, mixing and matching on any given day. It makes me happy. But crucially, I don’t GAF. I dress for myself, and no one else. I mean, look—making a statement with your clothes is unavoidable. Even if you’re not trying to make a statement, you’re making a statement. If you wear a blue button-down and khakis, the statement is that you’re trying to blend in, and not stand out. I go for the aging rock star look. It suits me. Now, I am not too smart, because I was going on TV fairly frequently, and I was “not asked back” to a particular show because I wouldn’t put on a suit and tie. Oh well. The irony is that the jackets I was wearing cost more than a suit. But again! DGAF.

When I am writing, I DGAF. Many people have told me that my writing is “unfiltered.” That it is. There is no filter between my brain and my hands and the keyboard. Well, a little bit of a filter—even I know there are some things you just can’t say—but I am constantly pushing boundaries. I don’t cultivate an image. I’m not trying to be a rebel or a bad boy. It’s always obvious when someone is trying too hard. This is who I am, and as Anthony Hopkins says, I am what I am and I do what I do. My second book was so damn filthy that people wrote Amazon reviews that they threw it in the trash. I was a little surprised by that—aren’t we all adults here? Haven’t we heard it before? But I didn’t care, I wrote the book I wanted to write, and that was that. And it is the book that I am most proud of, and next year will be its tenth anniversary.

I had a friend “break up” with me two years ago. Not going to lie, it hurt for a week or two. And then, I said to myself: I am not in charge of what that guy thinks of me. If he wants to think I am an asshole, there is not much I can do about it. There is a guy from high school who thinks I am an asshole (and I was), and there is not much I can do about that, either. There are probably 100-300 people in the world who really think I am an asshole. Maybe more. And that’s fine! Trite, but true: you can’t please everyone. And one of these days, I am going to die and a bunch of people are going to be glad I am dead. Nothing I can do about it! I get people calling me names on X all the time. Most of them are probably drunk, and I just block them and move on. It wasn’t always this way. When Street Freak came out, there was a journalist at the FT who took a shit on me and the book. What? Someone on the internet doesn’t like me! That ate me up for weeks. Well, Karma being what it is, I got a lot richer and more successful and she got spit out the bottom of the journalism industry. And I probably wouldn’t shake her hand if I saw her in person. But I had no control over what she thought of me, and I have no control over what people write about me. It would be nice if it was nice, but sometimes it’s not. Even a bad book review can be good. The neutral ones are death, and I’ve had my share of those.

One of the things I liked about San Francisco in the late 1990s was that nobody GAF. You could do cartwheels down the sidewalk naked, with a boner, and nobody is going to look twice. The city is full of freaks. And even in the financial industry, people were very nonconformist, riding skateboards to work and such. I remember being at Lehman Brothers in 2001 and one of the converts guys grew a goatee. Someone leaned over to me and said that was probably a career-limiting move. The only guy on the entire floor with a goatee! I took some visitors to the floor in the mid-2000s and they couldn’t stop talking about the fact that everyone wore white or blue shirts—no other colors. Except for the IT guys, they wore burgundy shirts. Talk about conformist! In a lot of respects, working on Wall Street was like being in the military in terms of conformism—perhaps worse. A lot of people who really GAF.

It’s not just Wall Street—writers have a uniform, the tweed coat with leather elbows cliché. Musicians have a uniform. DJs have a uniform, especially the deep house DJs: scoop-neck black T-shirt with skinny jeans. If you’re going to be a writer, you have to look like a writer. If you’re going to be a DJ, you have to look like a DJ. No, you don’t! Pitbull used to wear a freaking suit when he was on stage, like he was coming home from work or something. Say what you want about GG Allin, but that guy did not GAF. And if you don’t know who GG Allin is, don’t look it up. There are a few iconoclasts in my business, Hugh Hendry being one of them. He did a Bloomberg TV interview in his trademark white V-neck T-shirt and it blew their minds. Fun to see. I am not a big fan of neckwear. I have a decent tie collection, but I don’t have much occasion to wear them. I don’t like wearing them. I’m going to take a rope and tie a knot around my neck and choke myself all day? Nobody has been happier than me to see ties go the way of the dodo bird.

In summary, I don’t care if people don’t like me. I’m not going to be a crank on purpose, but I’m not trying to win any popularity contests. See the financial pundits on Twitter—the tweets are carefully curating an image. I DON’T CARE. I will tweet about my own balls, if I think it’s funny. Anyway, the upshot is that you probably have some crazy uncle in his 80s that will absolutely do or say anything. After a certain age, old people get a pass. They’re old. Wouldn’t it be great to be the crazy uncle—now? A follow-on to this discussion would be about transparency and oversharing. You see, I don’t think there is any such thing as oversharing. I think if people said what they thought, the world would be a better place. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to self-edit? The richest man in the world doesn’t self-edit very much, by the way, and it doesn’t seem to hurt him.