I was 22 years old, and a senior in college. I had joined a modeling agency for which Woody had been friends with the management. The male models tried to speak to one of the most brilliant minds on the planet. He had created economical theories, and here he was, giving table manner tips to a bunch of Midwestern 17 year olds who had never seen a bottle of Riesling. "You always order salmon medium!" He yelled. "Use modeling to travel, and that is it, that is all you do with it!" The kids gazed with doll faces and bobble head naivety. "A woman only cares about your annual raise in income and your TPM!" "What's a TPM?" "Thrusts per minute!" He responded.
We had filled a table of 15 at Barbaresco's and my own frustration set in. Every other sentence was a commandment. He speaks empirically, but with the ability to converse with a donkey, or fellow genius. It is no matter to him, for he knows more than most, and most always becomes the grand wizard of tableside rhetoric.
Dr. Woody is royalty. His father was one of the first transatlantic pilots for Pan Am during the golden age of aviation. He knows every inch of the light and the day of this sphere we live on. From Papa New Guinea to Darfur, Dr. Horace he will tell you who was in power, why they were inherently bisexual, and why the country is no longer as great as when he was there last.
We entered his golden leaf museum of a Park Avenue living room. "I'm donating this room to the Boston Museum of Fine Art," he always says about every one of his rooms. I noticed the painting and asked if it was from Versailles. "No, it is the chateau they turned into Versailles!" he responded. No matter how insightful, it was still wrong. "Don't touch, don't even breathe in here!" From that day forward we have been involved in this once a month tutorial lesson. I learn more in an hour with Woody than I learn all year with the rest of the population.
Three years later, I am at Woody Brock's compound. He has invited a male model, a banker from Credit Suisse, and myself to his house in Gloucester, Massachusetts. We missed our first flight only for Woody to call me a "Moron, dufus, and idiot." Everything must go smoothly with him. His directions are angles and degrees of the compass, so it was hard to explain to the Sudanese cab driver what a five-eights turn is. We took longer to get here than he had expected. After the airplane problem and the detour, we had "ruined" Wood's day. He is a mathematician. In his world, there is only one answer, the right answer.
Through the back roads of a small Massachusetts beach town, we entered the Brock compound. It is truly one of the most magnificent places on the planet. After the one-mile back road, you enter through stone pillars into the property. Every single blade of grass on the 50 acres is accounted for. "Of course it is. I have 20 people a day that come here to make sure of it! For God's sakes, I have a botonist!"
