Asshole Read online

  A$$HOLE

  ALSO BY MARTIN KIHN

  House of Lies

  A$$HOLE

  How I Got Rich and Happy

  By Not Giving a Damn About Anyone,

  And How You Can Too!

  Copyright © 2008 by Martin Kihn

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information, address Writers House LLC at 21 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10010.

  ISBN 978-0-7867-5374-1

  Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services

  For my parents,

  who did not raise an asshole;

  and for my wife,

  who had to live with one.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  INTRODUCTION

  PREPARATION

  STEP ONE: Keep Your Eye on the (Ass)Hole, Not the Donut

  STEP TWO: Get a Life [Coach]

  STEP THREE: Act As If

  STEP FOUR: Think Win-Lose

  STEP FIVE: Practice Practice Practice

  STEP SIX: Be a Fighter, Not a Lover

  STEP SEVEN: Become the Alpha Dog

  STEP EIGHT: Put the “Tame” Back in “Team”

  STEP NINE: Never Surrender

  STEP TEN: Life Is a Gift, So Return It

  EPILOGUE: Doing What It Takes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  A$$hole is based on an experiment I conducted on my real life. In order to protect unwitting co-workers, innocent family members, and others, I have made a number of changes to what really happened. I have altered most names and physical characteristics, created composite characters and combined events, and reimagined some scenes to make them funnier.

  If that makes me an asshole, then thank you.

  A$$HOLE

  INTRODUCTION

  I was the nicest guy in the world—and it was killing me.

  This is not just chin music. If you’d asked anyone who knew me then—before my glorious rebirth as an Asshole—who was the nicest guy in the world, you’d get one of two answers. Either they’d say my name immediately, or they’d say some other name, then go, “Oh, wait, I forgot about Marty—he’s the nicest guy in the world.”

  My life was a dictionary without the word “no.” Years passed in elaborate acrobatic contortions getting out of everybody’s way.

  Except my own.

  Here’s the kind of guy that I was: If you asked me to do you a favor—even the kind of favor that required me to go so far out of my way I needed a map, a translator, and an oxygen tank, even if I didn’t know you that well, I might hesitate a second, hoping you’d think of someone else to irritate. But I’d always say “Yes!”

  That’s not true. If I really didn’t want to do it, I’d say something different. Something like “You bet!”

  I seemed to spend my whole life giving money to anyone who asked (even rich people, like the Metropolitan Opera), doing websites for free, walking other people’s dogs, bringing back to the office complicated lunch orders of some cuisine I don’t even like (say, Chinese), and then, upon learning the place had messed up one of the orders, going back out to get the right thing.

  I was a telemarketer’s dream. The kind of guy who agreed to buy not only the Identity Theft Solution, but also the high-rate home equity loan, just to get you off the phone.

  I was a man who always backed down in a fight—who didn’t even get into the fight in the first place, because to have a fight assumes you have a point of view. A man who’d managed to turn an almost embarrassingly rich portfolio of advantages earlier in life into a crappy apartment in the middle of a barrio; a net worth more negative than my philosophy; a pet who laughed at my commands; and a job where I was about to become the guy who didn’t get promoted because he lacked the eye of the tiger, the mojo, or even the desire to be in that stupid job in the first place.

  Oh, and I was about to turn forty.

  But believe it or not, this is a tale of hope and redemption. This is my story of glory.

  It begins on that birthday, a day not much worse than my usual at that time, and no better. I was myself; I was nice. Nothing special. That morning, something in me snapped.

  I made a decision to take a stand against my weaknesses and fears and actively question my philosophy of life. It’s better to give than receive? Then take this!

  Why can’t we all just get along? Because we can’t.

  It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. On what planet?

  I made the radical decision to whittle and chop and burn away the defects that would toss me into an early grave—defects like consideration, politeness, giving a fuck what you think—to blowtorch away my old personality and uncover the rock-hard warrior (and abs) within. I would learn from the masters, the legendary bastards and bitches who had walked before me, like Donald Trump, Scarface, and that guy in my building with the tattoo on his face. I’d study the works of the great fuck-you philosophers from Nietzsche to Dogbert. I’d do the things assholes do like kickboxing, attending NRA conventions, driving fast on the shoulder of the road, using the speakerphone for long meetings, screaming at co-workers for no reason, blaming the waiter for things the chef did, returning items with no receipt not because I don’t have the receipt but because I can’t be bothered to look for it, asking people I barely know for favors, cutting in line, eating garlic bagels on the subway, complaining, complaining, complaining.

  There would be me and my needs. And then there would be me and my needs. Any questions?

  I’d had it. America is not a country for the nice. Not anymore, if it ever was. No, America is a country for the prick. The bullshit artist and his coterie. The screaming diva. My intention was not to become a sadist; I didn’t have it in me. My intention was simply to do what it takes to win, baby—even if what it takes is to turn one hundred eighty pounds of puff pastry into a Grade A bag of dicks with an expense account.

  So I set out on a program of self-realization, learning how to remake myself into an Asshole. It was a voyage of many months and thousands of dollars, and it succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, as you will see. I lay it out here step by step so that you, too, can follow in my path.

  Having taken this journey before you, I can honestly say that it’s worth it. You may never be as rich and good-looking as I am, but don’t let that discourage you. Even I could be richer and better looking, although that would be cruel.

  So how, you ask, can you put this program to work in your life?

  Here’s how: Put it to work! Get out there. Make that big world your bitch. Whatever you decide to do, it is most important that you do something.

  Because the alternative is to keep doing what you’re doing and keep getting what you’ve got.

  Believe me, that is definitely not what your spouse wants.

  RULE$ OF THE GAME

  I was about to jump into a program that could be life-threatening, and I wondered if I really wanted to have no rules. Would I suddenly inhabit a world where, say, shop-lifting was fine as long as I didn’t get caught? Where I could “dine ’n’ dash” and dance naked in the streets just because—well, just because I wanted to? Did not that way lie chaos, confusion, and those baggy orange jumpsuits?

  I decided: Yes. I would need some rules—the bare minimum necessary to keep me sane yet provide total freedom to become an Asshole.

  After some deliberation, these were the ones I settled on:

  THE RULES: THINGS I WOULD NOT DO

  1.Any felony—including murder, rape, arson, arms trafficking, and traitorous thoughts

  2.Substance use—illegal and, at my age, kind of sad

  3.Surgery—plastic, brain, or otherwise />
  4.Parenting—either natural, via intensive communion with my wife, or adoptive; my thinking here was, what kind of a kid would want an Asshole for a parent?

  5.Cheating on wife—a survival instinct on my part: She is very perceptive, holds a grudge, has a Welsh temper, and, since she recently enrolled in culinary school, has a large collection of Teutonic knives she keeps so sharp I get a nosebleed just thinking about them. Also, I love her.

  6.Smiling—except when other people are in pain (a tactic of psychological warfare)

  7.Following rules

  I thought of other no-nos—like tipping, doing favors, paying retail—but I was wary of anything too prescriptive. I was becoming a victim of rule creep, which would violate my own Rule #7.

  Okay, now that we have our guidelines, there’s one more hurdle we need to clear before we can begin.

  Commitment to any program as demanding as mine requires the conviction that you will realize the life you want. Take it from me, you will not be able to meet the harsh rigors of this life-changing regimen unless you’re as wide-awake as I was to your many, many shortcomings.

  So take a moment to complete the following self-assessment. This should make you feel bad enough about your-self that you’ll be ready to get moving.

  SELF-QUIZ: DO YOU NEED THIS PROGRAM?

  Answer the following Yes or No questions, selecting the option that best describes what you normally do or think in the given situation. Don’t answer as the person you wish you were; answer as the person that you are, no matter how lonely and fat that makes you feel.

  Select only one answer (Y/N) to each question. There is no (M)aybe anymore.

  1.Do you feel you can never be happy if somebody, somewhere is sad?

  2.When you get the wrong dish in a restaurant, do you just assume you ordered wrong?

  3.Have you ever stayed up all night worried you’ve offended someone?

  4.When you apologized, did that person have no clue what you were talking about?

  5.Do you believe that plants have feelings?

  6.When you enter a room, do people start napping?

  7.Did you pay the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for your car?

  8.When you “fly off the handle,” does nobody seem to notice?

  9.Does it make you proud when someone takes credit for your work?

  10.Do your co-workers seem to have trouble remembering your name?

  11.Have you ever been invited to “girls’ night out,” even though you’re a man?

  12.Did you go?

  Scoring: For every No answer give yourself +1 point; for Yes give yourself -1 point. Sum up your total point score. Now find a piece of plain white paper, preferably 8½" × 11", and a black felt-tip pen or marker. Write down your point total in large block numbers directly in the center of the piece of paper. Fold the paper so the shorter (i.e., 8½") ends meet. Now rotate the page 90 degrees and fold it again. Keep rotating and folding the paper until you have completed this action five (5) times. You should now have a very compact, accordion-like wad of white paper that is very difficult to fold anymore.

  Now take this wad of paper and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

  Done? Good.

  My point is this: Of course you need this book. As with alcoholism, gambling, and over-loving the fried foods, even suspecting you have a problem like niceness all but guarantees that you in fact do have the problem. So stop musing and start moving.

  THE TEN STEPS OF ASSHOLISM

  Change doesn’t happen overnight. People like us have spent decades being considerate and thoughtful—bad qualities that can’t be erased in an instant. Through hard trial and error, I have developed an effective program of Assholism: Ten Steps toward your awakening as a prick. The following chapters describe my own experience with the Steps, and indicate how you can apply my insights to your own so-called life.

  These Steps are:

  PREPARATION: Set Your Butt on Fire

  •Looking closely at your sorry-assed self and becoming afraid—very afraid

  STEP # 1: Keep Your Eye on the (Ass)Hole, Not the Donut

  •Finding role models and badly dressed heroes who do Asshole right

  STEP #2: Get a Life (Coach)

  •Locating the right professionals to help kick-start your program

  STEP #3: Act As If

  •Pretending you’re a dick—and, like, totally loving it

  STEP #4: Think Win-Lose

  •Getting over yourself, so you can get over on others

  STEP #5: Practice Practice Practice

  •Trying out your new offensive skills on an unprepared public

  STEP #6: Be a Fighter, Not a Lover

  •Honing your body into a lean, walking sphincter through the use of pain and caffeine

  STEP #7: Become the Alpha Dog

  •Getting into the simple, Asshole-like mindset of your four-legged enemy

  STEP #8: Put the “Tame” Back in “Team”

  •Applying your new skills to sow dread and confusion in the office

  STEP #9: Never Surrender

  •Realizing there are no obstacles, only schmucks who desperately deserve a beat-down

  STEP #10: Life Is a Gift, So Return It

  •Finding out that the end is never as clean as we thought

  PREPARATION

  “It is necessary … to learn to be able not to be good.”

  —Niccolò Machiavelli,

  The Prince

  The first step in any journey is not to decide where you’re going—it’s to get out of bed. You need to look around and see where you’re starting. If you’re like me—and I’m sorry, you are—this will be a painful process. You will be pecked at by could-haves and should-haves. But even worse is the prospect of staying in place. You’ve been burned your whole life. Now it’s time to set your butt on fire.

  It was the day I turned forty that I decided to change my life, not in the usual way, by buying a sports car and getting rejected by younger women in bars. No, I decided to transform myself by doing whatever it took to become a total Asshole.

  Now, I wasn’t particularly upset about turning forty, confronting middle age, facing the inevitable disappointments and failures. I’d felt middle-aged since that day in my twenties when a (slightly) younger person tried to pass by me in the aisle of an airplane when we were deplaning and said, “Excuse me, sir.”

  Sir?! From that moment, I’d felt kind of old. And my looks backed me up.

  Considered fairly handsome in a Midwestern mode, I was routinely taken to be older than my years. I blamed my diet (execrable), my exercise regimen (hah), my city (Manhattan), and my being too nice. How this last part had anything to do with my appearance I was not exactly clear, but I was pretty sure being too nice had ruined every aspect of my life and so was perfectly capable of making me ugly

  So I woke up on this special day in the usual way: whacked on the jaw by a two-by-four with nails sticking out of it.

  At least, that’s what it felt like. In fact it was my darling doggie, Hola, welcoming me to a brand new day on spaceship earth. Because I hesitated a moment getting up, Hola jumped up on my chest and started using my head as a, speed bag, doing her reps.

  With another dog, this might be cute. With Hola it was actually dangerous. She is a four-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog and weighs over ninety pounds—in fact, since she’s extorting more food out of me every day, she’s probably closer to one hundred, which is getting into International Boxing Federation flyweight territory.

  “Hola, down,” I said, halfheartedly.

  In the old Soviet Union, there was a saying, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” That’s the way it was with my four-legged love child and me. I pretended to give her commands, and she pretended to obey me. Should she be up on the bed, uninvited? Probably not. Should she be hammering my aging puss like it was a home improvement project? I don’t think so. But what was I gonna do about it, exactly? Put her on warning?<
br />
  I ducked away from her while she was momentarily distracted by chewing up my pillow, and escaped to wipe the saliva off my face and review the to-do list for the day. Let’s see, there was being walked by my dog, standing squashed in a train for an hour, running to the office too late for breakfast, getting besieged and second-guessed at work, receiving another iffy performance review, saying yes to some as-yet-unidentified users, and coming home to a woman who once told me she loved me despite the fact that I was never going to make any money. Happy birthday, Marty.

  “Hola!”

  I bribed her away from my pillow with some high-end cheese from Citarella. She had migrated us up the scale, from Velveeta to Kraft to Cracker Barrel to cheese-store cheddar to the very finest imported cheeses of the world. How she did this, I’m not sure. Just as I’m unsure how we used to get away with feeding her the food other dogs eat but now had to special order super-expensive prescription-only food from a veterinarian in Westchester County. We didn’t even live in Westchester County.

  “Hola, sit!”

  She smirked as she stood there. Then she tapped my leg with her forepaw, the universal request for Danish Beemster Extra Aged Gouda, on a little cracker.

  After I’d lured her into her harness, she pulled me through the door and over to my neighbor Ramón’s. Ramón is a slick-looking lawyer about my age who lives in a much bigger apartment on my floor with a view of the Hudson River. My apartment has a view of the Hudson Airshaft.

  Ramón barely acknowledged me—he was on his cell phone, doing a deal—as he ordered his German Shepherd, Misty, out of the apartment and shut the door behind her. The thing about Misty was she was beautifully behaved—the epitome of sterling dog manners—but only when Ramón was around. With me, she was a terrorist in training.

  I knew what was coming. Misty gave Hola a little goodmorning kiss, girlfriend-to-girlfriend, and then the two of them glared up at me and growled.