Standing on the edge
Of the Hoover Dam
I’m on the center line
Right between two states of mind
And if the wind from the traffic
Should blow me away
That is from a Sugar song from the early 90s. I was a fan, that month it was the only cassette I bought. But pretty much I haven’t listened to it these days. Until today, it popped up on a friend’s playlist. It is clearly about suicide…
I had a business partner from Oklahoma. My age, my super-clever and a bit crazy. And he was super-sized, maybe 6ft 4 and 150+ kilos. He was the typical “loud obnoxious American”, which combined with his size meant he stood out. Regardless of what his fundamentalist Christian family said in his god-loving obituary video, he was a gambling, drinking, whoring live life large giant baby. Loved his food (I am still a bit weirded out by chicken fried steak), giant sodas and women whichever form they took.
He was my friend.
He chewed tobacco. Even in meetings that were worth megabucks to us, he would apologise and ask for a paper cup, to spit it out into.
I frequently had to tell him to tuck his shirt in.
He made millions as a high-roller gambler, lived large, and then ended up broke when the IRS told him he had to pay tax on his winnings. He was the least successful of four siblings, and was on a mission to please his preacher Dad. Don’t get me started about this guy – a very successful businessman (owned his own bank), he bought and demolished the homes of some poor black folk, so he wouldn’t have to see them on his drive home, yet was devoted to saving people in Africa.
Paying off his government debts and having his father be proud of him was everything. And he found me online, someone with zero materialistic desires. It took a lot of back and forth…
He liked my smarts, and wanted to team up. This sounds crazy but it was real… After months of my hippie disinterest, he said:
I will send you a container of old, used laptops for free. Sell them for whatever you can get. And then lets talk about business.
I declined. I don’t like selling. I am uncomfortable and unskilled.
So, Joel, said, “Dammit, I want to make money, what can we do?”
Google Ads had just begun and I was making a grand a week from my first ever ad, more money than I could ever need (as a stoner singleton with zero ambition). So I said, well there is this thing…
That thing, we milked it, we corporatised it, we slammed it. My secret was so lucrative we only hired his friends and family. At the peak there were 10 staff, and we were making many millions of profit each year. Google’s changing rules meant it ended, but while it was happening, it was glorious.
We had a think tank with an online marketing superstar, Chris Carpenter, a long weekend at his condo in Park City, Utah. We ate $200 steaks in Milwaukee (I wasn’t comfortable with that), and we shouted hookers £1000 bottles of champagne at the Dorchester in London (also, not comfortable).
I was the tech guy and Joel was the sales genius. That weekend, we convinced a German business to give us a lot of money. We wined and dined them, and then had a meeting at the Dorchester the next day. We were staying a the cheapest B&B we could find, but Joel convinced the Dorchester concierge to give us a meeting room, with a a freaking butler, because we “usually” stayed there.
He made me rich for a while. We were cocky and ambitious. We had a meeting with the CEO of Dell, to pitch my idea (browser-based, recommendation, affiliate system). He loved it. I waited weeks in the hell-hole that is Oklahoma City for the second meeting, which was the heads of every Dell department. Obviously I was on valium.
They recognised the potential of my idea, and agreed it would make money, but decided it wouldn’t help them sell more computers, which is what they do.
Before the dream ended, Joel became suicidal. We made a lot of money but not quite enough to pay off his tax debts. He was still a loser, in his Dad’s eyes, while he owed money.
So he went to the Hoover Dam, and called his Dad and left a message: tell me you love me or I will jump.
And then he called me, standing on the edge, pissed off that his Dad had not called back. Cops turned up…
Joel was my friend, and a screw-up. All of his house windows were covered in alfoil. He had a bed but slept on the couch 360 nights a year, passing out from trying to make deals on his laptop.
He hated religion, but would never say it, because his family were more important.
I just wrote this on his eulogy page, long overdue:
Joel was my best friend and business partner.
A gentle giant.
Nobody had more passion or dedication.
The love he had for his family was absolute.
That he didn’t have time to make his family proud of him saddens me, because that was what drove him.
Miss you, buddy.
Joel died from bacterial meningitis – usually not deadly, but he was a large man with minimal interest in health. Any attempts at weight loss were to please his family only.
Joel phoned me from the edge of the Hoover Dam, he was at his wits ends. Tellingly, unless his father told him he loved him, he would jump. His Dad was sending him hard love, Christian-style. I was telling Joel it was his choice, that I could argue it was the wrong choice, and I would miss him.
Then he died a couple of years later, not by choice.
Had he lived, his bold lifestyle and attitude, I reckon COVID would have taken him anyway.
Bullied as a child, disrespected by some of his family, devoted to becoming a worthy family member, Joel was a genuine beautiful human being who wasn’t sure where to shine.
I miss him.