For years my feed said first class: the flights, the hotels, the look. Behind it, I was in debt, alone, and coming apart. This is the part I didn't post.
Eight stops. Every quote is from his book.
My father was fast money. Cash in his pocket, Cadillacs, no job you could put a name on. He trained horses and bet on them too, and over a lifetime he put millions through the windows. I stood next to him at the rail, eight years old, holding a twenty somebody had peeled off a roll for me.
The money in your pocket is not for keeping. It's the ticket price for the next surge of being alive.
Food came first, then drugs and drinking. I got clean and sober on February 28, 2013. I thought that was the finish line. It turned out to be the starting gate.
Card after card, balance transfer after balance transfer. An Amex Platinum at nine hundred dollars a year because the gold card wasn't enough card for the man I was playing. A two-to-three-thousand-dollar camel photo in front of the pyramids. I quit a six-figure job to be the man in my feed.
I wasn't buying trips. I was buying reactions. The trip was the production cost; the likes were the product.
I spoke at conventions about recovery and a better life. Hours later I'd be on a curb in a strange country at four in the morning, eating street-cart chicken fingers, asking the question that became the title of this book.
All the seats at the front of the plane. Still alone. The seat was never the variable.
The day we recorded the social media chapter, I'd just hung up a call about getting certified to counsel people through phone addiction. Then I spent ten minutes watching my own Facebook story before the cameras rolled.
That's not hypocrisy I'm confessing to get ahead of you. That's the disease telling on itself.
Two machines, a hand on each button, four hundred a spin. A crowd pressed in behind me chanting while the reels ran. The attention I'd do anything for, in the exact voice of the thing I was most ashamed of. I emptied my 401(k) to zero and took loans at twelve and seventeen percent to chase money already lost.
The house's greatest advantage isn't the odds. It's that the house is the only one at the table who wants the money.
January 21, 2026. My last bet. I still pay rent every month on spins that stopped that day, working seventy, eighty, ninety hours a week. I'm not ashamed of that anymore. It's what the other side costs.
In September 2026 I became a certified gambling and digital addictions coach. I'm writing the whole story, and I coach men who are standing where I stood.
My father handed me the rail. I'm trying, one boring, unphotographable Tuesday at a time, to hand down the front door instead.
There's a casino in New York where, for one night, I was famous.
I was at the slots, I was always at the slots, and I was hitting, and a crowd had gathered around my machines. Machines, plural, because one was never enough: I had a hand on each of two buttons, both games running, a hundred a spin, four hundred a spin, whatever the machine would take, and if God had given me four hands I would have used all four.
The crowd was cheering. This was during the mask years, so it's a whole row of eyes above masks, strangers pressed in behind me chanting while the reels ran. And I can still hear the thing they were chanting, because a crowd will tell you exactly what you are if you listen:
Come on, fat boy.Come on, fat boy.
I didn't hear it that night, or I heard it the way you hear rain. I was busy. My hands were full.
From Alone in First Class by John Geremia III, in progress.
A man builds a first-class life on credit cards and camera angles while the person behind the account is quietly coming apart. It's for anyone performing a life online while feeling empty behind it.
No pitch. No judgment. One real conversation with someone who's sat where you're sitting.
You don't have to figure this out alone.
Talk to someone who's been there. Call John, or grab a free 15-minute call. No pressure.