The power of suggestion is mighty powerful when you''re naive and aren''t even aware that a suggestion has been made. In 1969, the drama teacher at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts asked me to lie down on the stage, to breath deeply and relax, and to imagine that I was on a beach, feeling the sun and sand and hearing waves and birds. Two months later, there I really was, on South Miami Beach, feeling sun and sand, and hearing waves and birds.

I met Jacques the Sock on the beach. He was a professional mime, one of Marcel Marceau''s students. He had flown in from performing in Hawaii. We called him ''Jock the Sock'' because he liked to spread eagle on top of a white bed sheet on the beach to sun himself, wearing nothing but a black sock over his privates, the sight of which disturbed old men to no end - the ladies did not seem to mind. 

"Hawaii is much better than South Beach," said Jock the Sock as we sunned ourselves one day.

"Hawaii is pristine."

The way he pronounced pristine really impressed me.

"But one has to avoid the Ala Moana Shopping Center on ''Kill a Haole Day''" he warned.

"What is a haole?" I asked.

“It means you’re an alien, but it’s used as a dirty word for white man," he explained, "but don''t worry about that, just stay away from the shopping center on the last Wednesday of every month."

Jock the Sock took off for Paris, and I soon forgot what he''d said about Hawaii. I liked South Beach and fancied myself as a lady''s man. I called myself the Golden Goy after a book I’d read about a man who hustled the mink-clad women on North Beach, the ritzy end of Miami Beach in those days.

I met a Jewish American Princess who had wound up all alone on South Beach because her sugar daddy had dumped her on the train down from New York. We hit it off. She invited me to stay with her in New York on her return.

I was working for the Cuban bankers who owned the hotel where I was night manager. They offered me a raise to stick around, but I quit my job anyway and followed my princess up north. We made mad passionate love in her Midtown apartment for three days and nights. She dumped me shortly after she read something I wrote – she found out I was not yet the great author I thought I was. She said her career as a photographer and B-movie actress was her “private little island”, and told me I was in her way. I retrieved what was left of my life savings from under her mattress, and impetuously boarded a plane bound for Hawaii.

And there I was, in a Waikiki hotel, with no plans whatsoever except to somehow become the greatest author in the world. Two weeks hence I was fresh out of money. What to do?

I went downstairs and asked the man on the front desk, "Who owns this hotel?"

"Roy Kelley."

"Where is he?"

"Over on Lewers Street" - he described the building.

So I went over to see Roy Kelley, Waikiki''s economy-hotel architect and hotel tycoon who had started out as a hotel bookkeeper, and, according to one estimate, wound up owning a third of Waikiki. Someone pointed out his office to me. I entered his office through a side door, skipping his receptionist. He was not there, so I sat down at his desk and waited. He entered about a half-hour later, saw me sitting at his desk, and gave me a startled look.

"What are you doing at my desk?" the old fellow asked.

"I''m here because I want you to give me a job," I firmly replied.

"Well, now," he said, recovering his composure, "do you have any experience in the hotel business?"

"Yes, sir, I worked as night manager at hotels in South Miami Beach - at the Colony, the Beacon, the Pennsylvania."

"All right, then, son, come with me and I''ll introduce you to Mrs. Courtney, my manager at the Waikiki Surf. She needs an evening man, the three to eleven shift."

As we walked towards the Waikiki Surf on Kuhio, Mr. Kelley clapped me on the back, and said,

"You knew just what to do, didn''t you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Barging into my office that way and asking me for a job."

"Well, I needed a job."

"Now you have one."

Mr. Kelley pointed towards Diamond Head as we strolled across Kalakaua Avenue, shook his head sagely, and said, “Now that you have a job, if you walk down Kalakaua and ask ten women to sleep with you, at least one of them will."

I didn''t get the connection between pursuing women and getting a job, as I had gotten the first job I asked for. Of course I had heard the maxim, "Ask and ye shall receive." Later on I learned about playing the numbers to make sales, but I did not pay much attention to that: I had little desire to be a salesman then. I eventually wound up counting the money others had made. First of all, I was a whiz at doing the night transcript - it was done manually in those days. I was already a speed demon on the 10-key adding machine, and I could balance the transcript in three hours instead of the average six.

I learned other things too: to work for Roy Kelley, you had to learn every job in the hotel. That allowed him to keep the payroll expense down: everyone was immediately dispensable and replaceable.

I''m back in South Beach as the result of a suggestive dream I had about a German-speaking real estate developer. He beckoned to me in my dream, and said he had “a great job” for me in Miami. He hasn’t shown up yet, and I sure could use a great job, a book deal, something. In fine, I’m lonely for dollars again. I’ve made a few positive suggestions to myself, and I’m playing the numbers.  Please wish me good luck.