My Amazing 35 Year Journey Abroad - Part 1

I have to preface this memoir of mine by telling you that the ONLY reason that I wrote it is because I just couldn't let this amazing story of mine simply fade away and go to my grave with me. It was way too good for that! I mean I'd lay in my bed here in Thailand and think about all of the unbelievable things that had occurred during this journey of mine, and that if I didn't share it with mankind, well, it just wouldn't be right, what can I say, so I took this thing on, and it ended up being the best decision of my life. It all started when I took what appeared to be an innocent 2-week ski vacation to Innsbruck, Austria, and then decided not to get on that return flight to Chicago because Europe seemed to cool, so instead took a train headed south with no destination in mind except for warmer weather, and ended up getting off in Nice, France because of a guy I met on the train who worked as a model there, and the next thing I know I get signed by his model agency and within days I'm working as an extra in an episode of that ol' American series The Love Boat, and well, I spent most of the next 35 years living and working all over the world. I mean none of this was planned, it was all right out of the blue, inadvertent if you will, and I just went with the flow, and here I am some 35 years later writing this memoir about this amazing journey of mine from my home in Pattaya Thailand, which just happens to sit right on the Gulf of Thailand. Woe is not me, I can assure you. Honestly, I really had no choice but to write this book because my story was way too amazing and unbelievable and one of a kind to simply let die with me. I just couldn't let that happen. I mean hell, I end up modeling in Nice and then Paris and then because of a suggestion from a photographer during a photoshoot there, I wind up in Singapore working as a model and actor there, and end up falling in love with Southeast Asia. Then after working in a few commercials in Singapore, I decided that I liked acting and jet off to New York for a year to study acting at HB Studio, and that ol' magic continued as I worked with Liberace one day during his show at the ice rink at Rockefeller Center where I worked as a skate guard as my day job, and then out of the blue I fly to Hong Kong where I would end up becoming the most booked actor/model expat in town, landing featured roles in local movie productions one after another, including a speaking role in Kickboxer with Jean Claude Van Damn, and hell, I even land on the back cover of The New Yorker in an ad for United Airlines which was shot in a bird cage restaurant in Hong Kong. Not bad for a drunken stockbroker from Chicago who had never been anywhere in his life prior to that ol' 2-week ski trip to Innsbruck. And then after 2 years in Hong Kong and right out of left field I would move to Thailand where I would immediately get cast in a film production there where I would actually have a scene with Richard Crenna and even have a few lines in a made for TV movie called Last Flight Out, and then after that I would change careers and start shooting sexy Thai girls just for the fun of it, (And boy was it fun!) and end up becoming the most prolific photographer of naked Asian girls in the world shooting 100 girls altogether during this right out of the blue career of mine, selling the stuff to major magazine publishers worldwide including Larry Flynt whose brand new magazine Asian Fever would feature my shots on almost every single cover that first year, including on the very first issue in 1999. I mean I end up living in a 31st floor penthouse suite in Bangkok making tons of money and life was literally a fantasy come true right out of the blue. This is a must read! It also deals with alcoholism as I went to AA meetings in Bangkok and Pattaya Thailand.