Australian Penthouse

Is that what Laid Bare is about?
That’s essentially what Laid Bare is about. It’s not about sex; it’s a book about trying to figure out what love is and where to find it, and how to make it last. It started out as an article I wrote for marie claire magazine about how it feels when your wife leaves. I got a lot of letters from women around Australia thanking me for writing a candid story from the male perspective on how difficult divorce is.

How tough was it for you to actually write the book?
I took the approach that if you’re going to write a memoir, you have to write it as authentically as possible. My dark personal moments were very much a part of that story. It’s important that people understand that men—though outwardly we may appear to have no emotions at all—are actually deeply emotional, as much as any woman. We just very rarely show it.

How common is your experience among other men?
I found that my situation wasn’t that uncommon and there were a lot of guys suffering in silence and not really having anyone to talk to about what they were going through internally. I felt that it was important for me to show that it’s okay to be vulnerable and to break down and have emotions. I think it’s really important that men also be more open about the times when they are struggling, particularly with mental illness.

Mental illness?
A lot of guys I know are going through similar sorts of things to what I went through, particularly with anxiety and depression and even OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder].

You mention OCD in Laid Bare. What was your particular subset?
My subset of OCD is called ‘Pure-O’, which is short for ‘Pure Obsessional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’. Essentially, what was happening is I would be getting intrusive and disturbing thoughts at the most inappropriate times. It’s not something you can really understand. It’s brought about by anxiety. I think OCD is an incredibly misunderstood disorder.

How so?
In the media, the impression we get of it is crazy people washing their hands 50 times a day, but it’s much more than that. The thing that most don’t understand is that people are driven to these sorts of compulsive behaviours because they’re trying to shut out thoughts and images coming into their head that they don’t want. People are killing themselves because of OCD because they don’t know who to talk to about it.

On the topic of sex, what kind of dating websites were you signed up to?
I never went on an adult personals site that was strictly geared for sex. I put a profile on one of the adult sites here in Australia, just to see what the deal was, but it didn’t strike me as something that was for me. I met most of the women I dated through more traditional online dating sites, such as RSVP.com.au.

In your experience, was RSVP more geared towards relationships or sex?
People are saying they want relationships, but it’s a meat market. If you’re in good shape, have decent looks and a bit of money, it’s very easy to fall into the player lifestyle by putting yourself online. And it’s not just men, it’s women as well. I found myself getting hundreds of emails from very desirable women. All of a sudden, it’s like being in an American supermarket where you’re overburdened with choice.

So these women were chasing you?
Oh, much more so than I was approaching them. I was frankly surprised because the woman I was deeply in love with—my ex-wife—didn’t want a bar of me. But I put myself online and hundreds of women were sending me emails and they all looked bloody fantastic. It’s great for your ego, but it’s not necessarily good for settling on one person because I think men go on there and become rock stars. We get a bit carried away with the attention. That’s certainly what happened to me.

What is the perfect middle ground for online dating?
To be honest, I have met a lot of women through online dating who have become very good friends of mine. I think online dating is fantastic for making friends, for networking, for building your social circle; I just don’t necessarily think it’s fantastic for relationships.

With the London 2012 Olympic Games thankfully now well and truly over, James Buckley lifts the lid on the amount of shagging that takes place at the world’s premier sporting event in his e-book Sex & the Olympics: Condomania…

by Nathan Lawrence

That’s the sequel…
Honestly, the IOC probably wouldn’t be too impressed with this material because the Olympics is all about perfection and purity, and achieving your best and sportsmanship. This is the other side to that sportsmanship.

How many condoms are usually supplied to Olympic athletes?
You get Olympic Games with 100,000-plus condoms distributed for two weeks, and they run out! In Vancouver, they ran out a couple of days early, and the same thing happened in Sydney. When you do the math—100,000 condoms divided by 10,000 athletes—it works out to 10 per person.

Why so many?
You get 10,000 athletes around the ages of 18 to 30, they’re all hormone-charged and competitive, and have been building up for 12 to 24 months for the Olympics. All of a sudden, they compete, and 90 percent of them don’t even make it past the first round. Then they’re stuck in the Olympic Village with nothing to do.

The big sponsors like to throw these big parties where the athletes attend as VIPs. You’ve got a few past athletes and that sort of thing, and most people can only peer through the doors and wonder what’s going on in there. And, from what we can tell, it gets pretty wild.

There were only 1700 athletes, but there were about 40,000 condoms, so you’re looking at 26 condoms per athlete. If you couple up there, that’s 52 per pair for a two-week event.

Are these athletes perpetually horny?
It comes back to this: you’ve got all these people together of a similar demographic. They’re all essentially beautiful people, very athletic and chiselled. They just generate sexual energy, really.

What sort of condoms are being handed out at the Games?
They play around with them at different Olympic Games. At the Sydney Games, they offered a bronze, silver and gold range, to mix it up a little bit. I think [different colours] is the extent of it, though. They do the job they’re meant to do, and at the end they’re thrown around.

Literally?
At the Seoul Olympics, the British team got in trouble because used condoms were all over the roof of their building. Outdoor sex was banned on that occasion.

Who won the sexual Olympics?
We have a promiscuity index that rates each country on how likely they are to engage in casual sex. England was very high up on that list. Travellers to this year’s Games, statistically, were more likely than ever to engage in casual sex with one of the locals or, if they’re lucky, one of the athletes.

Did organisers at this year’s London Olympics run out?
They distributed 150,000 condoms this year; they tried to make sure they didn’t run out. But the Games were in a western country where sex is not as taboo as it is in some places, and there were a lot of athletes : 10,000-plus. I reckon it was tight in those last couple of days; I don’t know if the 150,000 held.

After taking so much personal responsibility for the losses incurred by your publications, how do you feel about the heads of other organisations getting off scot-free post-GFC?
That’s the problem with the financial system in the western world right now—there are too many people playing with other people’s money, and that’s where all of the risk-taking came from. I talk about the history of hedge funds in the book. In the old days, the managers co-invested.

So when a fund blew up, you knew whoever was managing it was doing his darndest to make it work; taking prudent risks and not reckless ones. He was right there, shoulder to shoulder. Those are people you can only admire—and if it does work out, you’re happy for them. But these bank chieftains are making giant bonuses and have very little ‘skin in the game’—or if they do have skin, it’s because they were granted stock options, they didn’t buy them. So they’re playing with house money. Of course it’s infuriating, and it’s also dangerous. And as it continues, I worry we haven’t learnt our lesson.

Could a magazine like Trader Monthly launch now?
No. We knew we were in trouble with the last issue of Trader Monthly, which had the cover line “What’s next?” and a dour-looking trader on a black background. The magazine had been go, go, go, then when things started to get choppy in the Autumn of 2008, we were a little bit restrained. Then absolutely everything that Trader Monthly was about, which was celebrating these guys as rock stars, fell apart. ‘Wall Street’ became two dirty words. Trader Monthly was sustained on advertising and suddenly the advertisers didn’t want to work with us because they couldn’t be seen advertising to that crowd. And that hasn’t gone away. So until Wall Street types are seen as the good guys again, a magazine like Trader Monthly doesn’t really work, and I don’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.

You give the example of BMW, who said they knew that ads in Trader Monthly sold cars but they just didn’t want to be associated with traders.
That was the day we knew we were in real trouble.

Do you think the magazine would still be around if you and your partners hadn’t tried to expand the stable with Dealmaker, Private Air, The Cigar Report, etc.?
Yes, it could have survived as an electronic newsletter and we could have kept some of the events going. There were aspects of it that, if we weren’t so leveraged, we could have still had a small business. But that was never the goal. We were of the time. Especially when Jim [Dunning] came on board and we started to feel the success, the idea was to do something monumental. And in the end, we paid the price for that. But I don’t think Trader Monthly as a magazine works anymore. It’s amazing how fast something can go from a vibrant product to a museum piece. They should put those magazines in a time capsule. In 50 years, people will pick them up and their mouths will be agape.

It was interesting reading how keen traders were to be on your cover—kinda like the glamour models who dream of being on ours. Did any big businessman try to buy his way into that coveted spot?
We were never offered bribes. It was more that we were lobbied—as I’m sure you guys are. Although I’d rather be in your position. Having some 40-year-old millionaire kissing your arse probably isn’t as good as being courted by an Australian beauty!

It’s amazing how many bullshitters and backstabbers you’re forced to deal with throughout the book. What about the good guys/gals—who do you still respect?
My partners, Magnus [Greaves] and Jim. I still talk to them and I still respect them. They put their money where their mouths were and they lost a lot.

They paid their debts.
Absolutely, and you can only respect that. There were a lot of stand-up people… It’s almost uncanny the correlation—the people who were willing to take risks with their own money were generally the ones who came out okay or at least with their integrity. The ones who were playing around with other people’s money… Either they made money and you kinda winced, or else they blew something up and you winced about that, too.

It happened to Lehman Brothers, where one day they’ve got a market cap in the billions and the next day they’re worthless. It happened at BusinessWeek, one of the biggest magazines. It was worth probably a billion dollars in 2007—literally—and it was given away to Bloomberg for a dollar. There were two perfect storms. The magazine industry was in free fall in 2008 because everyone had started pulling back the ads. And our core industry, Wall Street, was ‘cratering’ at the same time. So we’ve got these two awful vortexes converging and we were right in the middle of both. That was very scary.

We don’t want to focus solely on the bad times… so what’s your happiest memory from working on Trader Monthly and the other titles?
Launching new magazines is like giving birth. So the pride of doing that—launching things into the community and seeing the reaction. Especially when we were doing something nobody had done before. We were taking trade magazine audiences, B2B audiences, and giving them Conde Nast-level products. You’d see a look on people’s faces like, “What is this thing?” We blew them away on quality—that was always a big kick.
And by the end, when we had half a million people who we were reaching, we were able to do a lot of things for charity. We could send an email and raise thousands of dollars for charity. It was heady. Just the influence you had on such an audience. We tried to do good things with it… although there was that awful team from Extell. That still makes me insane.

They hijacked your charity boxing tournament, scored free publicity, made sales and never paid the charities what they’d promised.
They still haven’t paid. It’s disgusting.

With the benefit of hindsight, what would you change?
We could have done a lot of things differently. We shouldn’t have expanded so quickly. It seems obvious in retrospect, but those are the lessons you draw. That’s the core lesson: we should have been more cynical about ourselves.

What about the foreign versions of Trader Monthly—were they a mistake?
Dubai wasn’t a mistake because that was licensing, but we lost way over a million dollars on the UK operation, all told, because we wanted to own it. As you know, usually with outside markets, you do a licensing deal and the local company runs it and gives you some money, so it’s good for everybody. But in the UK, we actually paid Conde Nast to produce the magazine for us, and so we lost a lot of money as a result of being over-aggressive.

Is there a lesson to be learned by other publishers from the demise of your group of titles?
Yeah, don’t go into magazines! Unless you’re already there and in a strong position, it’s a very tough business right now. Web sites have their problems, too, but digital doesn’t have all of the paper and printing costs and the distribution. I mean, in 2008 we did US$12 million in revenue and we were still losing money! It’s very daunting economics and that’s the lesson for the magazine world.

And with web sites, your pages can’t be hijacked by an ex-baseball star…
People ask about that, and the thing about Lenny [Dykstra, who won the World Series in 1986 with the New York Mets] is that he was paying us. I always thought that was a crazy idea in terms of a business, but he had a model that he didn’t want to make money from the magazine—it was a marketing piece for him [and his financial advice].

So I got that. It was actually quite a good deal, because he was paying us to do what we were good at and we got a lot of residual benefit. In the end, after he didn’t pay us, he wound up jumping ship to American Express Publishing, and they were happy to take his money and steal him from us. He didn’t pay them, either, but I still think that, in theory, it was a good deal.

Because nobody knew he was going to turn against you.
What are you gonna do? It’s the classic confidence game. We ask him for 100 grand and he writes a cheque for 150. Then, later on down the line, he’s asking us to lend him money. It’s tough, though, when you’re dealing with a guy who’s a public figure, owns a giant house, flies around in private jets and is writing you cheques whenever you need, not to go down that path. It’s easy to regret it, but it was hard to resist. It would have been hard for most people to resist.

You now write for The Daily Beast (www.thedailybeast.com). Have you left print journals behind for good?
Never say for good, but right now I’m enjoying the immediacy of the web. The Daily Beast is fun because [editor in chief] Tina Brown has a magazine sensibility and we’re translating that into kind of a daily digital magazine. It’s fun to do something where we’re breaking new ground. I miss magazines, but I don’t miss
the magazine business.

In your opinion, is the behaviour of Wall Street any less insane these days?
It’s like an iceberg right now—it’s under the surface. That’s the scary part, and I end the book that way. A lot of the crazy bonuses are still happening. A lot of the behaviour hasn’t changed. A lot of the incentives to take risk have not been removed. You don’t see Wall Street spending as conspicuously or acting as arrogantly, but the institutional problems are still there. So that’s cause for all of us to be a little worried.

You mention Goldman Sachs telling its employees not to be ostentatious.
That’s right. And that was a real memo. That’s not fixing the problem. That’s putting a coat of paint on it. That’s worrisome. They’ve changed their public perception, but I’m not sure they’ve changed the drivers that caused the problem in the first place.

Have you got any more books planned?
Nothing in the pipeline, but this one was very cathartic. I enjoyed getting back to my roots—I’d forgotten how much fun it can be to write. Like most things, if you’re looking to do it, it’s not going to be very good. I was never looking to write this book. In fact, until everything imploded, the thought didn’t even cross my mind—then my mother told me I should write this stuff down. I’d started telling these stories and we were all realising, “My God, it’s an unbelievable cross-section of what went wrong during the decade.” Luckily, I had it all in email.

Was there anything you didn’t put into The Zeroes because you thought, “No-one will believe this”?
I’ve gotta say, for good or bad, I didn’t leave very much out. That’s why I had the book fact-checked. I actually hired a fact-checker out of my own pocket, who spent the better part of a month going over every email and every line in the book to verify its accuracy. Because even I, as I was re-reading it, couldn’t believe it all happened. But it did.

It’s like a dream.
It is. And it’s one of those dreams where, for most of it, you’re having a happy dream, and then you wake up in a sweat.

Is Penthouse magazine popular in American prisons?
Funnily enough, Australian Penthouse was the first magazine Dad sent me! Full nudity is banned in the majority of prisons I was sent to, but in the first jail the rules were a bit more lenient and it was a big hit. I remember a couple of lads wanted to have a look and it came back with a few sticky pages! One issue of Australian Penthouse in prison is worth $100-$200, easy.

Did it take you long to settle back into life in Australia when you were deported from America in 2009?
It did take a bit of time. It was a strange period for me, those first six months after I was released. The people closest to me didn’t really know how to treat me. They didn’t know how much I’d changed and whether I was still a full-on, hardened criminal. I did all I could to show them I was still human and the same affectionate Anthony I’ve always been. Now I have wonderful friendships with a lot of people and I feel they see the real me again.

What are you doing now?
I’m a sales manager for a clothing company based in Byron Bay [northern New South Wales]. I coordinate reps in each state and also manage a couple of guys who work in the warehouse. It’s a great role in a growing company and I’m really enjoying it.

How do people react when you tell them who you are?I
Mates will always sting me about it, which is okay because mates are mates and you’ve got to expect that. I’ve definitely copped a fair bit from them! When I tell people who I am, the majority of responses are quite positive. I’m very grateful to live in such an amazing country, where people can appreciate the humorous
side to it.

Was it difficult to relive the experience while writing Bank Robbery for Beginners?
I got so much support while writing the book and I think I rehabilitated myself in a lot of different ways. Me and the people closest to me were able to put the whole thing to rest and move on. But it was quite difficult for some people, especially my parents, to read it and to know everything I endured.

What does Luke, your former partner in crime, think of the book?
He’s happy for me. We’re two very different people and he’s home safe and sound doing his own thing. We don’t talk a whole lot about the past. We catch up for a surf every now and then but just keep it light and easy. I can imagine it might be difficult for him to relive the ordeal, so I don’t expect him to read it.

What was the most important lesson that you learned in jail?
I learned not to be so selfish and to consider consequences and appreciate the feelings of others. Obviously that’s something I didn’t do. I was completely selfish in deciding to go ahead with robbing the bank. There were extreme repercussions on the bank tellers, on my beautiful family, on my girlfriend at the time, on my friends and all the people around me. There were very, very serious consequences, and I never considered them because I never thought I’d get caught. In my naïve mind, I thought I’d be in and out and off to Mexico.

In your opinion, what’s the biggest problem with the US prison system?
That’s an interesting question. I suppose one of the main things that stands out for me is the lack of rehabilitation. Personally, I was seeking to support myself through study and journal writing, but I’d have to fight to get the prisons to allow my text books and calculators and other study materials. They weren’t helping. If there was more education and it was mandatory for all prisoners to study and evolve, I think it would stop recidivism and help them when they got out. Everybody in there is just bored shitless and they get caught up in the politics of prison, such as racial segregation and that kind of bullshit.

What’s the best thing about being free?
Women! I have a beautiful girlfriend and being able to interact with females in any way makes me feel more human. The other benefit is nature; being in the bush or the ocean is what I used to long for more than anything.