" What are you gonna do with a B.A. In theater, Harry?"

"I have no idea."

Wipe your ass with it? Snicker, snicker.

"Are you going to get a job and continue in school, Harry?"

"I have no idea."

Wake up and smell the coffee, dream boy.

"So what are you going to do with your life, Harry?"

He doesn't have a clue.

"I have a few ideas."

Like, ahhhh...do something bohemian, live abroad, get an earring. Just don't tell anyone. 

"Who do you think you are, Henry Miller?" cousin Joey Prager asked.

"I dunno," Harry said.

"I dunno, he answers. It's all about the money, Harry. Wake up, drop the earring, go to business school. Go mainstream already." When cousin Joey Prager talks, you listen.

"Maybe."

"Well you better start moving your ass, Harry. You're twenty-one already, time to jump on the train of life or get left behind. Just remember this, no money, no honey. What are you drinking, Harry? It's on me."

And that's all it took. A seemingly innocuous conversation in a bar with cousin Joey Prager, the kid who figured things out early on.


Going mainstream, why not? Never thought of that. Start wearing buttoned down shirts and khakis, dress like a Kennedy. A new role. That could be pretty cool.

And that's all it took. Six months later Harry was doing an MBA, hating it with all those numbers, but liking the idea of it. "I'm doing my MBA." Sounds so good, so serious. Going mainstream. Flowing with the current instead of swimming upstream.


It's the night before the last exam of the first semester. . No need to kill himself studying, Harry's going into the Macroeconomics final with an A- average and a special relationship with good ole boy, Dwight Evans,the unabashed beer-swilling professor of the course and subject of Harry's acclaimed caricature in the college newspaper.

Harry nailed him dead on; the beer gut, the bushy Fu Manchu moustache, although drawing a blast of air blowing from the professor's behind wasn't exactly tasteful. Actually Harry thought that the rear blast would've been edited out of the cartoon. But the professor was a notorious hard marker and scores of students had axes to grind with him, including the editor-in-chief of the newspaper.

So Harry's confident that he's got the course material under control and a good shot at maintaining his A- grade. A quick review of the material and a good night's sleep should seal the deal. Then there's a knock at the door. It's Leslie, the loud-mouthed, big-assed gal with the glass eye from across the hall knocks at his dorm door. She's holding a bottle tequila with Katie, her hottie redhead friend visiting from back home.

"How'd ya like to do shots with us, Harry? We can play swallow the worm..."

Harry contemplates the wormy innuendo: True, Leslie's glass eye has always made him queasy, but yum yum on the Katie side. He'd have to stick handle his way around Leslie--

Of course there's that annoying exam the next day at 9 AM, you'd have to be an idiot to party the night before.

"Sure, why not? It might help me sleep better."

Maybe Katie the redhead knew something about economics? Harry thought he overheard that she majored in it in college, or at least had taken an economics course. He could review some of the material with her.