Which former treasury secretary would you rather hear about sticking his tongue down a woman’s throat whilst placing his hands “everywhere sort of like an octopus”? Which former treasury secretary would you like to hear about coping with the stress of the financial crisis with a good spoon? If you said “anyone but Larry Summers,” you’re in luck! Today Iris Mack (pictured), a former investment banker, MIT professor and derivatives trader is writing about her brush with Bob Rubin’s appendages. Monday we’ll track down all the lucky ladies who’ve taken a ride on the Summers express. Sayeth Mack, who met Rubin while buying a smoothie in Miami circa October 2007:
Three days after [our first phone] chat, Prince resigned, forcing Bob Rubin to add an additional chairmanship — of the board — to his business cards. But he kept calling me all the while, and by December some of my friends, late mother and siblings knew about my unlikely “phone buddy” relationship with the former Treasury Secretary. He seemed kind of lonely and lost, I told them; like he didn’t have a lot of close friends, and if anyone back at the office had been in the mood to joke around it wasn’t going to be with him. … He flew down to Miami to visit his father again on Christmas Eve. When he called he seemed disappointed to learn I was in Alabama, visiting my family in Mobile (where most of them eventually moved after losing their homes in Hurricane Katrina.) I politely explained that when you want to have a meeting with someone, it helps to inform her ahead of time. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and sure enough, a few days later he called to make a dinner date for January 10 at the Setai on South Beach.
Now, I say “date,” but even with our budding “buddyship” I did not really realize at the time that this was a “date.” He was an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful (much older) man who spent his days traveling around in a Citigroup jet and I was a math/finance geek who’d been covered in five miles of sweat and no makeup the one time we’d met in person. Now, I clean up pretty nice for dinner in South Beach with the former Treasury Secretary, but maybe it didn’t matter; later he would remind me that the first time we’d met I had something written on my backside. (I promise you, I had not even noticed when I picked up a few pairs of gray sweatpants on clearance at Victoria’s Secret that the words “Pink University” were screen printed on the behind, but give the man credit for being observant.)
