New York, 8/14/2019 (Note the proper way to write the date!)
Dear Friends Across The Pond,
As a young boy, I went to camp with Jeffrey Epstein.
I want to disclose right from the beginning of this letter that the Jeffrey Epstein I went to camp with, befriended, and shared a bunk bed with was not the same Jeffrey Epstein who committed suicide over this past weekend.
I’m not speaking metaphorically, as if the Jeffrey Epstein I knew was a nice young boy and I never could imagine him to grow up to be the man in recent news. No. That’s not what I mean at all. I mean that my Jeffrey Epstein was a completely different individual who just happens to have the same name.
The Jeffrey Epstein I went to camp with did not grow up to be a multimillionaire financier and convicted sex offender. He did not have scandalous secrets on current and former US presidents, English princes, foreign dignitaries, CEOs of large US and multinational companies, or regularly eat dinner with Woody Allen. However the similarities are striking.
Jeffrey, or ‘Epstein’ as we called him back in camp, was a bright Jewish boy, born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, NY, just like the other Jeffrey Epstein. He liked comic books and sports trivia and the NY Mets. He was a decent card player (I literally lost my shirt to him in a game once!) and, not surprisingly, he liked young girls. He was crazy for them.
He loved the 14- and 15-year-old girls and he especially loved the 16-year-old girls. He was very comfortable telling us what he wanted to do with them, or to them, and gave us vivid details of how it would all go down. He had a wonderful imagination and an encyclopedic memory for the scientific names of female anatomical parts. It made his stories almost plausible.
He put a lot of time and energy into his fantasies. The bunk bed we shared would often rhythmically shake and vibrate at night, though I’m sure he was up there alone. Poor Epstein!
He was only twelve at the time. We were all twelve at the time. And I’m embarrassed to admit that I too contributed to those stories. This is what young boys do at camp when the lights go out.
And if I’m being completely honest now, I’ll admit that I too had an infatuation for the 16-year-old girls. They were sophisticated and worldly. They wore bikinis to the lake. And they were smokin’ hot!
“Can you imagine dancing with Debbie Moscowitz?” Epstein said to me at the lake one day as 16-year-old Debbie strutted by. “It would be a cool evening in the Rec Center. I’d be in jeans and a sweatshirt and she’d be in that bikini and she’d press up close to me to get warm.”
“Yah. I can imagine it. That’d be swell!” I replied.
My friend Epstein did not grow up to be a convicted sex offender. He’s not a multimillionaire financier and he doesn’t regularly dine with Woody Allen. Nor, sadly, did he get that dance with Debbie Moscowitz. He still lives in Canarsie, Brooklyn with his wife and four children. All girls. He’s a regular, stand-up guy. A family man. Boring and dependable. I called him this week to check in on him and to get his read on this business with ‘other’ Jeffrey Epstein.
I asked him if remembered the old stories we used to tell about girls and what we would do with them if we got them alone. He remembered.
I asked, “Are we any different than the other Epstein, Epstein?”
“Oh shit! Cut that shit out, Ben!” he replied. And then he paused and asked, “Do you remember Debbie Moscowitz?”
Picture by Tegan Mierle on Unsplash
Letter from America, part ten: Yesterday, yesterday
Letter from America, part nine: Where are your balls, Theresa May?
Letter from America, part eight: Bohemian Rocketman
Letter from America, part seven: Come on UK, do something funny already
Letter from America, part six: So you’re getting divorced …
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