Chapter 3

"Wait! Before we get started as lovers, is your heart still open to me?"

"Yes, Randy, it is. I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"Well... Stacey is the first girl I ever physically loved, and you're about to be my second. What's it like from your side? You mentioned once having a lover with this same problem, am I your second lover? You're such a sweet person, how come you broke up with your earlier boyfriend?"

"Randolph!" hissed Stacey, "How dare you ask such an intimate question!"

"No, it's okay, Stacey" said Lin. "Randy, I want to express complete trust to you. You have my heart. Please be gentle with it... You are the third person in my life I'm accepting as a lover. My first lover was two years my senior, when I was a sophomore in high school. I had a schoolgirl crush on a handsome senior. We did get intimate with each other for a brief time, petting each other's bodies, no intercourse. And then he graduated. We wrote each other for a while, drifting apart but remaining friends. And then there's Jeff, the passion of my life in my senior high school year. And to understand why we broke up, I have to back up and explain my family to you..."

"Both my parents are flower children of the late 1960's. My mom met my dad as a freshman at their community college in San Francisco in 1968, when she was 18. My parents spent much more time in concerts and sit-ins with their friends than studying, but financially, it didn't matter. My dad's mom was very, very rich, and she would dote on him and keep him financially secure. My parents finally married about ten years after they met, and I was born in January 1983. My mom would often smile and call me her "accidental child". Sometimes, people say this to be cute, but in my case, it was completely true. My parents had no desire for children. They didn't hate me; they were just very distant, and unable to be caring parents. I think my grandmother realized this would happen, and when I was born, she persuaded my dad to head a company she was forming where she lived, in Dallas, Texas."

"I spent the first twelve years of my life in Texas, with my grandmother as my only true parent. She was a wonderful, generous, and kind person. Her only fault, if any, was being too easy on my father, continuing to pump money into his company year after year for product development, while the company never actually sold anything! My dad had hired a bunch of his flower children friends to be the executives and researchers of the company. When I was 12, my grandmother had a stroke, and couldn't interact much with anyone. My parents moved the company to San Francisco, and I spent the last two years of my life before high school there. My parents' company was still very well funded with trusts from my grandmother, and my parents began to throw weekly parties for all the company employees. I don't want to dehumanize them, but they all seemed to be first class bullshit artists."

"Just before she had her stroke, my grandmother gave me a great present. She knew her health was failing, and told me she would fund a boarding high school for me. It was an act of caring love; she knew I would mature better away from my crazy parents. I picked one in Colorado, one I had heard about during a ski trip there. My grandmother talked to the school and pre-paid for four full years, including summer boarding, riding lessons, climbing lessons, skiing lessons, everything, two years before I would even get there. She even sent money for all my ski and tackle equipment, camping gear, even money for an account for all the clothes that I would need. She was that thoughtful. She had her stroke less than a month later."

"I blossomed in Colorado. It's so beautiful out there, Randy. I dove into my studies and the athletics: hiking, trail riding, technical climbing and skiing. I went from child to adult there, making only Christmas trips to San Francisco. My parents really didn't want to see me more often, or to pay for the plane fares. My dear grandmother died in the summer of 1999, when I was 16 and about to become a junior. The trusts that were funding my parents' company transferred to them, over $10M. She never told me, but she also funded a trust for me, with over $1M in it."

"The last time I actually saw my parents was in February of 2000. The trusts had just passed through probate and they were giddy happy with all the money they had, so happy they sprang for a non-Christmas plane fare for me. They also handed me copies of the papers describing my trust. My grandmother didn't trust my parents on decisions on how to spend it, so the money could only be withdrawn for payments directly to certified colleges for tuition, room, and board, until I turned 21, when it would be mine to use however I wanted."

"Unfortunately, my grandmother didn't realize how crazy my parents are with money, and she left them as the trustees of my trust, with sole power for investment and disbursement decisions. With their own $10M, plus max mortgaging their house and all the business assets, they bought over $20M worth of high tech stock on margin in February 2000, buying companies they called "safe doubles", companies that would safely double in stock value in a year. As sole trustees, they did the same for my trust. The only difference was my trust would not allow buying on margin. The safe double my parents picked for me was Global Crossing. They sold all the US treasuries, municipal bonds, money market, stock-index and real-estate funds in the trust, and dumped 100% of it into over 20,000 shares of Global Crossing, paying more than $50 a share. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, though I pleaded with them for days to change their minds."

"In the spring of 2000 I started dating Jeff, a fellow junior. I had bragged to a few people that I had a $1M trust, and word got around a bit. Jeff was very charming, very athletic, very affectionate, and, once we solved our problem with sexual function, a fantastic lover. We went on long hikes together in the summer of 2000, trail rides in the fall, and ski outings in the winter, spending much time sharing our dreams and planning for our future together. I felt we were very, very close to each other emotionally."

"From April 2000 to September 2000, Global Crossing was bouncing around $30/share, my trust was over $600,000, and I still thought my financial future was fairly secure. My parents, though, were frantic. Their margin calls were killing them, and even the flower power executives started leaving their company, when my parents started cutting salaries. They were still optimistic, though, insanely so, and I couldn't get them to change. I was so happy that they couldn't buy on margin in my trust."

"In early November of 2000, I finalized my career choice for nursing, confident that I could get into Deaconess in Boston. Global crossing was still over $20/share, and $400k was still more than enough to fund my training to my R.N. and Masters degrees. My parents were panicking over their own finances, but they were so incoherent on the phone about it, it was difficult to see what their true situation was. They said sending me my Christmas plane tickets would be difficult, but that since I had just seen them with my extra trip in February anyway, not going home this Christmas would even up the visiting schedule."

"In April of 2001, I got accepted to Deaconess, and I asked my parents to pay my tuition from my trust for the upcoming fall. They said they would, but the school never got the check. The reason finally became clear to me on Memorial Day weekend. My parents had already told me they wouldn't be coming to my high school graduation. I wasn't surprised; they had never come to my school, even when they would ski in Aspen. Global Crossing had closed the previous Friday at $14.22. My trust still had almost $300k in it. It was then I finally realized I was in serious trouble. My parents started saying that I really didn't want to sell any of the stock when it was so low; I should just wait a few weeks, a few months at most. I pleaded my heart out to them, but since I was still under 21, it was their sole decision whether to disburse any of the trust's assets."