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“No doubt, I was born a sucker—a sucker for a hot girl with a smile, that is. I have to admit I was abused by every gold-digger I came across. For as long as I can remember, I’ve chased the kitty, and it took me losing all my belongings to realize I had a problem.” So opens Conan’s sexy caustic tale of love, loss, and revenge, and what happens when they intertwine.
In Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything, women are types who fall into categories, all of which revolve around money—mostly trying to get Charlie Mo’s money. Regardless if they are a former best friend, fixer, businesswoman, spiritualist, Christian, stripper, or Daddy’s girl, these types are all calculating, gold-diggers who use sex to achieve their aim.
Charles Fuller, Jr. known as Charles, the Mortician, or Charlie Mo for short, came into his family’s fortune after his parents were killed the night of his High School graduation by a drunk driver, his nemesis Dickie Beale. To add to Charlie’s trauma, because of his well-connected parents Dickie got off with only losing his license and a minor probation. After his parents’ death, Charlie, a pampered only child, was left with more money that he knew what to do with, and he only knew one thing to do with money. “I had no one around to remind me that the love of money was nowhere near as important as true love itself. Needles to say, it didn’t take long for my life to spiral out of control.”
The Fuller Funeral Parlor was the most successful mortuary in Houston, Texas, and Charlie Mo, the sheltered spoiled 21-year-old heir, with little to no impulse control, is woefully ill-equipped to handle his inheritance. Not long after his parents passing Charlie has plowed through the millions of dollars left to him. “With me in charge, the Fuller Funeral Home stayed on life support. I was too distracted for business and too determined to be with the next girl. No doubt, I wasn’t nearly as good with the parlor as my pops had been. My incompetence buried the family’s good image almost overnight.”
Charlie Mo soon finds himself broke and working for the city sanitation department under the supervision of his manager Tin-Can Stan—during work, his singing and clanging of the cans earned him the nickname. Tin-Can becomes something of a father figure to him. After accepting an invitation to dinner Charlie is surprised by Stan’s wealth. He has a large well-appointed home and history with Charlie’s dad. Charlie finds himself spending more and more time with Tin-Can’s family, and quickly falls for his daughter Gabby. At the same time he reconnects with his old friend, former tomboy Meghan who has filled out in all the right places. Charlie is smitten, at first mostly because she’s hot, but as luck would have it she’s dating his drug-dealing cousin Ron, who lives down the hall from him. This doesn’t stop Charlie, whose lack of both impulse control and common sense, makes him an easy target. He finds himself in a sexual relationship with both women and is equally torn between them. The choice is made even more difficult when he discovers that his father knew that he would burn through his inheritance and he set aside two million dollars in a trust fund for him when he turns 22, which will be in six months.
One day at work, Charlie recounts his past exploits with gold-diggers Mercedes, Chardonnay, Cinnamon, and Sweet Sugar Sarah to Tin-Can.
“So that’s my deal, Mr. Stan. All women want from me is money.”
“Charlie Mo, let me tell you about women. Women are unpredictable. They want what they want. Most of them are very smart about it too.”
“It’s all about money. It seems like every woman I come in contact with only wants money. For damn sure, I didn’t expect that.” Charlie responds.
“Why didn’t you expect that? Money is what you show them. It’s the first thing they see when looking at you. Why wouldn’t they want it?”… “See the smart thing is to have money and not look like it. Stack your dough and look broke. Best way to be.”
But will Charlie learn from his past and make better choices or is he doomed to repeat his mistakes and be fooled again?
Filled with sexual escapades and double entendres Fool Me Thrice is a light and fairly fast-paced read. If you don’t already know much about life and relationships, you might gain some insight: “Rich is loud. Wealthy is quiet.” And “Love was an action word. You can always tell how much someone loves you by their actions.” As I got to the rather convoluted twist ending, (which to Conan’s credit, I didn’t see coming) I kept wondering what did these women he had trysts with see in him to begin with? The answer is money. That’s what Charlie had to offer and why he kept running into the same type of woman. For him, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fool Me Thrice, is a sexy story of how we can lose ourselves looking for love, if we think we have only one thing to offer. Although somewhat entertaining, if you are closer to 50 than 25, and have a more nuanced and layered understanding of relationships you won’t find much new here. But if you want a spicy and fairly fast read, light on emotional analysis and heavy on sexual escapades, this might be for you. Because withFool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything, what is lost in Charlie’s lessons, is that in life, money doeschange everything, if money is what is most important to the people involved.
Reviewed by Carol Taylor for AALBC
Raised by a schizophrenic mother and a manipulating aunt in Mississippi, Harold’s childhood is fraught with consistent abuse and violence. He soon learns the art of becoming invisible and complacent to avoid the daily ritual of physical and emotional attacks, not only from those who should care for him but also from his older sibling and peers. Although Harold’s childhood is a constant battle to survive each day unscathed, he somehow manages to retain his humor and hunger to succeed. Surviving Chaos (How I Found Peace at a Beach Bar) by Harold Phifer is an inspirational and heartwarming story of one man’s journey to make sense of his chaotic and dysfunctional world with unwavering determination and optimism. Follow Harold’s horrifying story as he recounts the events and memories from the mayhem of his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. As Harold, now 56 years of age, recovers from a near-death experience in Afghanistan, he begins the long journey toward recovery and a peaceful future.
Surviving Chaos by Harold Phifer is a beautifully written memoir that will take you on a rollercoaster of powerful emotions. Harold is a natural-born storyteller as he invites you inside his world of betrayal, abuse, neglect, and triumph. I loved how the story, switching from past to present, lends the reader insight into Harold’s mindset at each stage of his life. The humor is superb; his attitude toward his lack of friends and his dog abandoning him made me laugh out loud. The characters are memorable, with larger-than-life personalities that leaped from the page, especially Flirty Shirley and Dead Eye Red. The story flowed perfectly and kept my interest. Some of the scenes of abuse were extremely hard to read, especially the manipulating mind games by his aunt. The relentless bullying and violence Harold suffers builds a strength of character that is extraordinary. However, the story reminds us that one event can trigger painful memories of the past if not addressed. Harold’s story is a beacon of hope that we can overcome adversity and regain our dignity, kindness, and resolve to find a positive future. Surviving Chaos is a compelling read.
Reviewed by Lesley Jones for Readers' Favorite
Surviving Chaos: How I Found Peace At A Beach Bar is Harold Phifer’s memoir of childhood abuse, family dysfunction, and his search for peace. Starting in the present, we go back to the past, then further back to his childhood, looping back and forth in interwoven narratives, as he recounts his life.
“I grew up in a severely dysfunctional environment where I was constantly manipulated by a controlling aunt, abused by my mindless big brother, and shamed by my schizophrenic mom. Ducking, dodging, and going un-noticed were daily rituals.”
For Many Many years, the toll and full extent of the far-reaching and long-lasting damage of Phifer’s childhood trauma remained a secret, not only from those who knew him, but also from Phifer himself. The shocking memories of his early physical and emotional abuse at the hands of those who should have protected him, blasted to the forefront of his consciousness during a bomb attack in Afghanistan that “levitated” the building. “My emotions were clanging and crashing so hard, my mind flipped through all fifty-six years of my life. I had an out of body rush that sent me back to my early days in Mississippi. Growing up, whenever there was violence and mayhem, there was Mom.”
Phifer’s journey through memory to healing and acceptance is prompted by a beachside chat in Thailand, where he’s taken refuge after the trauma of the bombing. He’d been working as an air traffic controller in Afghanistan when the Taliban attacked. Months later, he’s spending his days in a drunken haze when he’s approached by “another lost soul.” Dylan is a burned-out retired banker from New York, who is drinking and watching pretty girls on the beach, not unlike Phifer. Noticing a “fellow drunkard” and wayward spirit in Phifer he approaches him, and with a promise to fund his stupor with unending booze, convinces him to tell his tale. As Phifer relays the story of his life, he uncovers deeply buried truths that lead him down a hole that is deeper and darker, than he could have imagined.
Phifer was born the second oldest of four boys to a mentally unstable and criminally abusive mother, and “cared for” by a manipulative and self-serving aunt. This, combined with the lack of a father figure in his young life, oriented Phifer to the chaos and taught him how to navigate it. Because he was never acclimated to what was normative, it was through chaos that he viewed the world. He was ultimately, the luckier of his siblings. His youngest brother Carl, ended up in prison for murder, and was killed within three years of his release. His older brother, Jerry, the golden boy, the favorite, was good looking, light skinned, charming, and vain, and doted on by their Aunt Kathy, and everyone in their community. But his vanity would be his undoing as it lead to a life spent easily getting by on his appearance, which didn’t equip him for the complexity of adulthood. Jerry spiraled into alcoholism and gambling when his good looks, and the charm and magnetism that came with it, faded.
As a child, Phifer was often left unattended, didn’t have enough to eat, and wasn’t given the care he needed. To stay alive, he learned how to live with the chaos of his daily life. Quick-witted, he became canny and calculating, sometimes meting out the same cruelty he received, to not be the target he often was. There was no father-figure in Phifer’s early life. His father wasn’t in the picture until he ran into him one day at the library. A young man, Phifer went over to talk to a couple of girls when his father walked in. Knowing the girls his father greeted them. He then looked at Phifer and said, “Hello, and who are you, young man?” They eventually developed a relationship, however, the early emotional damage was already done.
Phifer was either drawn to chaos or he attracted it. It was prevalent during his turbulent school years, in the abusive women he dated, in the workplace where he suffered, “pure, raw, racial prejudice,” and when he was an independent contractor in Afghanistan. Finally, fully immersed in, and almost killed by chaos, he sought peace on a beach.
Like Dylan, I kept wanting Phifer to get back to what happened after the blast in Afghanistan where’d he’d started the tale. Not because his recounting of his early life was mundane, or because the fast paced, and engaging, recounting of the bomb blast was interrupted to recount his childhood, leaving us with a cliffhanger. It’s because Phifer seemed to not make the connection between his chaotic early life and the part he played in the chaos. By continuing to trust his overtly manipulative Aunt Kathy, or letting himself be taken advantage of by his brother, or his dysfunctional relationships with women, he allowed the chaos to thrive. Without his understanding of this, his childhood recounting became a litany of the abuse he permitted and at times, even perpetuated.
As I reached the end of the book, I wondered, what’s the message? What does Phifer want to tell us, teach us, what can we learn from his life? Is it that if you’re born in chaos then all you’ll know is chaos, that it will always find you, or you’ll seek it out, because it feels familiar? But isn’t life itself chaos? We live with chaos daily. How chaotic our life is, is not wholly dependent on how much chaos is in our life, but how we handle the chaos. Understanding the role we play in amplifying, or perpetuating it, helps to keep it at bay.
Ultimately, through the cathartic power of storytelling, Phifer realizes that his mother’s death in 2017 unmoored him. Her madness was his north star, it gave him his bearing. It was familiar. He navigated from a place of chaos, he functioned within it, it drew him to it and he, perhaps sought it out, ultimately taking a job in Afghanistan during the height of conflict. Months later sitting on that peaceful beach telling his tale, Phifer realizes that for most of his life, chaos was his only constant, and without the defining chaotic relationship with his mother, he needed to seek it out again. “Losing Mom destroyed my inner balance. I was always on guard when she was around. Now, I’m unattached, floating, drifting out to sea. Water is no longer wet and music has no sound. Her death removed many challenges but left no answers.”
Having known mostly chaos, sometimes besting it, sometimes not, Phifer didn’t fully feel comfortable with tranquility, with idling his life away in the sand and surf. Like his chaotic life before, he needed “to be stimulated.” He decides to leave the serenity of the beach, and return to Afghanistan. “The war, poverty, the bombing make no sense, but it has been my world. My life before was nothing but a series of obstacles to overcome… I have faced death and survived, by the grace of God.” With this knowledge he finds a sort of peace, which ultimately leads him not away from chaos but right back into the very heart of it.
Reviewed by Carol Taylor for AALBC
“Phifer’s anecdotes are disturbing, often painful, and compelling…the peace-seeking memoir revels in the cathartic power of storytelling after a lifetime of challenging circumstances.”
Reviewed by Foreword Clarion Reviews
Author Harold Phifer recounts the engaging story of his life in Surviving Chaos.
The narrative begins on a beach in Thailand, to which Phifer has escaped after 10 years as a contractor working air traffic control in Afghanistan. There, he was nearly killed in a Taliban attack, an incident that caused him to seek physical and mental refuge in Thailand.
During Phifer’s usual morning round of margaritas, an older gent from New York strikes up a conversation. He wants to hear the author’s story, and Phifer agrees—provided the man supplies the drinks.
Phifer then recounts his life for his audience of one, interspersing details of the horrific Afghan attack with his recollections. His Mississippi childhood was difficult because of poverty and his mother’s severe mental illness, which resulted in the family being ostracized. His search for the father who abandoned him at birth, his younger brother’s murder, failed romances, workplace racism all spill out. The chance encounter with Dylan turns out to be cathartic.
His narrative is interesting, and often much fun. Discussing Dead Eye Red, a crimson-wigged woman who held court at the local juke joint during his youth, he writes: “If her mouth was open, she was swearing. But music, liquor, and men revved her up like a steel locomotive… There were fights and shouting matches just for a chance to be near her. Dead Eye Red loved every minute of it, and spanked her own little butt as she worked the floor. It was her house.”
Still, there are other events that don’t completely ring true. For example, his request for a transfer at one job was blocked, he says, because he was a fan of Mississippi State’s basketball team and his supervisor preferred the University of Kentucky, Mississippi’s rival.
Nonetheless, his tales are entertaining, sprinkled with humor, drama and sadness. Readers will discover an intriguing life, one of turmoil and finally, thanks to a stranger on a beach, inner peace.
Reviewed by Blue Ink Review
I’m a small-town author that spent half of my life in the deep south. That would be Columbus, Mississippi USA. I was boxed in by an absent father, schizophrenic mom, bullies that didn’t hesitate to belittle me due to my mom’s condition, and an abusive aunt who made sure I never got more sunshine than my mindless older brother. Of course, you must throw in the abject poverty. Luckily, I can joke about that upbringing, yet many-a-times, I do speak of being too poor to live in the projects (or section 8 housings).
Honestly, I formed a plan at a young age (about 11 years old). I knew if I could make it to college my world would drastically change. Of course, it did change and I got recruited as an Air Traffic Controller. After 23 years with the Federal Aviation Administration, I retired then went to work as an International Contractor but doing the same type of work.
The moments that touch me are probably not great moments for the reader. Such as, “A Moment in the Sun” and “The Walls Stand Silent Now.” Those reflections remind me of the pure terror I had not knowing if my social life at 7 years old was over. With “The Walls Stand Silent” I couldn’t stop vividly seeing my mom going through her episodes of mayhem. I cried a lot when I wrote those stories.
What drove you to explore this specific theme in your book? Is there a central message or insight you aim to convey to your readers? Yes, Resilience. The need to believe in yourself and find inner love even if it doesn’t exist outside of you.
Loneliness, Fear, Insecurities, Lack of love and Support, and Constant hunger.
I knew I was going to write this book around the age of 20 years old. I think I officially started at 35 years of age (just framing how to do it) and finished at 56.
I do have a unique sense of humor that I try to expose in my books. I have written in Fiction (“Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything” by Dean Conan) and Non-Fiction (“Sleepwalking Out of Afghanistan: Walking it All Back” & “Surviving Chaos: How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar” by Harold Phifer). Surviving Chaos is a merging of two books (SleepWalking Out of Afghanistan & The Bicycle Lady). “The Bicycle Lady” was never published. However, I think I will continue to write in both genres but mostly Fiction. Fiction is much more fun and not as tough on my state of mind.
Yes, I have a book about the “Follies of being an International Contractor or Expatriate.” Of course, Not officially named yet. Then, there’s the sequel to “Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything” by Dean Conan currently named “A Fool Indeed” by Dean Conan (Not yet released).
Yes, see: “Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything” by Dean Conan.
I realized back in high school I wanted to write. But I also knew I had a unique story (or past) I wanted to tell, yet without being a book of Sorrows. Therefore, I pulled out all the bizarre and humorous details I could possibly recall and placed them in “Surviving Chaos: How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar.”
I put myself in the mindset of reliving the events that took place. That way, I was able to deliver as if it was happening in real time even after all those years.
I’m an Air Traffic Controller with around 37 years of experience.
That’s a tough one. Since, I wanted to infused hardship with humor then I would say my book is a combination of the movie “Antwone Fisher” with Derek Luke (also adapted to the book “Finding Fish” by Antwone Fisher) and Denzel Washington. Then, there’s the movie “Pushing Tin.” But the character is more of a huckster and mischievous teenager. I can’t say any one author influenced me. I do love Stephen King, James Patterson, and the social-life authors like Steve Harvey and Terry McMillan.
Not really. I had stories I wanted to share with the world. If I found them to be zany or funny, then others would too.
Oh yes! I stop and find other things to do. Like, go to a movie or watch a sporting event. Eventually, the vision comes back even if it takes months.
I try to dredge up all details from that time frame and bring it forward to what people can relate to today. Or I try to spell out the details to the extent the readers can understand or emphasize with me.
There are lots of things I try not to touch. But if it’s central to the story (or needed for understanding an event), then I try to respectfully talk about sensitive details without making lite of something that can be taken as an insult.
I do try to bring out the uniqueness of my stories. There’re so many books about life and people experiences. Since, so many before me have spilled their guts, I wanted my journeys to be worth picking up but with little to no likeness to anything that’s been read or written before.
Thank you, author Phifer, for taking the time to answer our questions and for all your insightful and interesting answers!
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