The losses continued into 2008, during a time when I was working for A. Nonymous, an attorney friend/lover of mine who I met some years before. He had acted as my attorney to squash some abuse I was getting from a small minded and small statured principal named Kelleher. He was an absolute ass, who seemed intent on making my teaching career into hell everyday. With A.Nonymous's help, I defeated him, paying Peter $600 to do it. After it was over, I wrote this man a letter that began “You are a little man in a little suit: stay away from me.” and continued to berate him for his idiocy and his bully tactics. Needless to say, he never bothered me again, but the entire incident was very distressing. If you remember, I told you all about it earlier.
At any rate, A.Nonymous renewed contact with me, proposing that I take the bar, pass it, and work with him in his home-based practice. He also wanted me to ultimately manage his Temecula office. He had a satellite office there, with just a phone for the relay of messages. There was no staff there at all. His practice was centered on his home office, where his common law wife, M., did all his secretarial work. She had met him years ago when he was a pharmacist. She helped him get through law school, the same law school I had attended. Without her support, which gave him the time he needed to take the bar exam five or so times until he finally passed, he would not have been able to become a practicing attorney. She was a key figure in his practice, taking care of the client files and computer scheduling and billing. He did a huge business and became the main workers compensation attorney in the county. He got good settlements for his clients and had accrued at least three and maybe five million in reserve cash invested. His home was a large one in a prestigious neighborhood of Riverside.
A.Nonymous had taken the bar exam more than a few times, as I had done also. He finally passed and began to take on workers compensation cases. He is now the busiest workers comp attorney in the county. He is a big man, an Irish looking Jew from New York. He got a degree in pharmaceutical science first, but the years of being a pharmacist were boring to him, so he grabbed the chance to go to law school. At any given time, he has about 200 cases underway. He arranged for me to work at his home office while also reviewing for the bar exam. He wanted me to join his practice. But the money he paid me was so little, and the practice in his home was too cluttered with a collection of women. He had his wife, a live in housekeeper/legal researcher, and a part time assistant as well. As for me, he had an interest other than work. He and I had a few intimate encounters and he liked to say that I was an "acquired taste", whatever that meant. I took it to mean that I was, as he also said, "difficult". In his view, I was not suitable to work for any employer: I was too independent, too outspoken and too argumentative. It is true I have little tolerance for stupidity and pettiness, which seem to be too prevalent an aspect of the temperaments of employers. The arrangement did not last very long. Just long enough for him to capture me in his upstairs exercise room, and take me to the floor. And just long enough for him to waste his money on helping me pass the bar exam, since I made an even lower score than I had made before. It was pathetic. I did not care anymore. After all, if I passed the damn thing, what was my reward? Nothing more than a license to go to work and work harder than before. There would be no pot of gold, though he claimed that I could earn a million in the first couple of years of practice. I frankly doubted that. The economy had put thousands of attorneys out of work: there were many of them selling products or waiting tables.
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