Speaker 1: In a brand new podcast from Wondering in Bloomberg, The
Speaker 1: Shrink next Door, host Jonah Sarah takes you deep into
Speaker 1: what it looks like when a psychiatrist becomes something much more.
Speaker 1: You'll hear of extravagant parties attended by movie stars, a
Speaker 1: lavish home in the Hampton's, and the man at the
Speaker 1: center of it all. You're about to hear a preview
Speaker 1: of The Shrink next Door in which you'll meet host
Speaker 1: Jonah Sarah and hear about a relationship that would go
Speaker 1: on to affect two people's lives for twenty nine years.
Speaker 1: While you're listening, subscribe to The Shrink next Door on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening now. There's also a
Speaker 1: link in the episode notes that will take you there.
Speaker 1: Won by any measure, Marty Markowitz was a success. He
Speaker 1: had an IVY lead diploma, a law degree, his own business,
Speaker 1: and plenty of money. But when he hit thirty eight,
Speaker 1: he found himself feeling seriously overwhelmed. His Rabbi recommended a
Speaker 1: therapist he knew who had an office on Manhattan's Side. Well,
Speaker 1: I go into his office, which was, you know, a
Speaker 1: modestly furnished office with a desk and a chair and
Speaker 1: a couch. The therapist name was Dr Isaac Hirshkoff, but
Speaker 1: he told Marty to call him Ike. He was a young,
Speaker 1: handsome man with a round face, a close crop beard,
Speaker 1: and curly black hair. He was dressed casually in an
Speaker 1: open collar shirt and shorts. I sat down right across
Speaker 1: from him, and we looked at each other, and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: why are you here. Marty had seen a therapist before,
Speaker 1: the kind you would listen while you lay down on
Speaker 1: the couch and talk about your dreams. This therapist was different.
Speaker 1: His modus operandi was basically, I'm your pal, tell me
Speaker 1: what's following it, and let's take it from there. Marty
Speaker 1: spent the whole session laying out his problems. He told Ike,
Speaker 1: how is father there and mother had recently died, how
Speaker 1: he had inherited the family business, how he was having
Speaker 1: a hard time dealing with his new responsibilities. When he finished,
Speaker 1: Marty says, Ike looked at him and said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take him on as a patient, And I said, okay. Nice.
Speaker 1: Not only was I taking him on as a patient,
Speaker 1: but he made Marty a promise. He said, don't worry
Speaker 1: I'll take care of everything. I was overwhelmed and to
Speaker 1: have someone say to me, don't worry, calm down, this
Speaker 1: is nothing to get upset about. We're gonna straighten everything out,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna do it fast. Very comforting to me.
Speaker 1: Marty wrote him a check. I think it was for
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty dollars something like that. Back back
Speaker 1: in the day. It was June. Marty had come to
Speaker 1: Ike because he needed help. But if he had known
Speaker 1: what his new therapist had in store for him, he
Speaker 1: probably would have walked out the door and never come back.
Speaker 1: From Wonderree and Bloomberg, I'm Joe No Sarah, a columnist
Speaker 1: with Bloomberg Opinion, And this is the shrink next door.
Speaker 1: This is episode one. Welcome to the neighborhood. Every neighborhood
Speaker 1: has its share of mysteries. We can live our entire
Speaker 1: lives and barely know the people just one door down.
Speaker 1: I have a summer house in Southampton, a couple of
Speaker 1: hours outside of New York. This part of the Hamptons
Speaker 1: is called the Bay Side. It's quiet, peaceful, a place
Speaker 1: to escape from the city and hot summer months. Sampson
Speaker 1: and Jackie Gillatt have a house on the same street
Speaker 1: as me. My name is Jacqueline Guillott and we're married
Speaker 1: thirty five years. We're married fifty two years. They've been
Speaker 1: coming here since the eighties. Most of the houses on
Speaker 1: our street are single story with wooden clappered fronts. Sampson
Speaker 1: and Jackie's house is no different. So lovely home really,
Speaker 1: But there's one house on the street that stands out
Speaker 1: for starters. It's just bigger than most of the other houses.
Speaker 1: It's two stories instead of one, and it's the only
Speaker 1: one on the street with a separate guesthouse out back.
Speaker 1: And then there's the way it looks. The house is
Speaker 1: spectacular with windows and windows and windows. Everything about it
Speaker 1: is over the top. There's a pond with goldfish, lots
Speaker 1: of fish, and a waterfall to the pond too. It's bigger,
Speaker 1: boulder rasher than anything else on the street. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, my wife Dawn and I bought the
Speaker 1: house next door. It wasn't long before a man popped
Speaker 1: over to our house to introduce himself. He was dressed
Speaker 1: like a maintenance man, green khaki pants, a long sleep
Speaker 1: workshire and a faded baseball cap. He welcomed us to
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, and then he handed us a folder of
Speaker 1: press clippings. I literally just took them and said thank you.
Speaker 1: And but he wanted us to have them, you know,
Speaker 1: he really wanted Joe to have him. There were articles
Speaker 1: that a psychiatrist, Dr Isaac Hirshkoff, had written and articles
Speaker 1: that had been written about him. In mid August, an
Speaker 1: invitation arrived to a summer barbecue next door, hosted by
Speaker 1: Dr Hirshkoff Ike. This would be the last of three
Speaker 1: big summer parties he threw every year. I went alone.
Speaker 1: To reach the front door, I had to cross a
Speaker 1: bridge over a fish pond. There were maybe forty or
Speaker 1: so guests hanging out in the backyard. I roamed about,
Speaker 1: stopping here and there to chat. I spotted the actor
Speaker 1: Richard Kind, just in time to see him do a
Speaker 1: belly flop into the pool. There were a handful of
Speaker 1: other people too, people I recognized as prominent New Yorkers,
Speaker 1: like Dr Ruth, the TV personality and sex expert. It
Speaker 1: was a warm afternoon. I chatted with a few people,
Speaker 1: sipped on my glass of wine, and began to wander around.
Speaker 1: At some point I found myself in the living room.
Speaker 1: There was a fake draft bust, Phoenician masks, plastic parrots
Speaker 1: hanging from the ceiling, even a giant gong. But what
Speaker 1: struck me most with the photographs, lots and lots of photographs,
Speaker 1: and in nearly every one of them there was Ike
Speaker 1: Hirshkoff with a different celebrity, Ike with Henry Kissinger, Ike
Speaker 1: with Ellie Wizzell, Ike with Brooke Shields, Ike with Gwyneth Paltrow,
Speaker 1: even ike with O. J. Simpson. It was like one
Speaker 1: of those diners where the walls are covered with pictures
Speaker 1: of celebrity patrons. At that moment, the man himself appeared.
Speaker 1: He greeted me like a long lost friend and said
Speaker 1: that my wife and I should come over soon for
Speaker 1: a drink, and then he was gone. Sure enough, a
Speaker 1: few days after the summer party, the same maintenance man
Speaker 1: we've met before showed up at our door again. This
Speaker 1: time he brought an invitation for drinks. It was very formal,
Speaker 1: as if he was reading from a script. I mean,
Speaker 1: like Dr Hirshkoff would wants you to come over at
Speaker 1: such a such a time, on such and such a day,
Speaker 1: and the formality of it blew me away, and he
Speaker 1: was very, very exacting about how it had to go.
Speaker 1: So we went one of the strangest evenings I've ever
Speaker 1: had in the Hampton's, or anywhere else for that matter,
Speaker 1: but definitely the Hamptons. It was pouring rain. We headed over,
Speaker 1: umbrellas in hand to get to the front door. We
Speaker 1: crossed a bridge. We could see COI circling in the
Speaker 1: water below. Ike and his wife, Becky welcomed us in
Speaker 1: and ushered us to a round kitchen table. There were
Speaker 1: snacks laid out, carrots and salary. I served white wine.
Speaker 1: So what I remember is him talking incessantly about being
Speaker 1: a sex therapist and a celebrity therapist. And I can't
Speaker 1: remember the details, but that that it just really sticks
Speaker 1: in my mind that he kept going on and on
Speaker 1: about that. It was more like a monologue than a dialogue.
Speaker 1: That's what I remember. What do you remember? I just
Speaker 1: remember thinking, these people are I felt suffocated. I talked
Speaker 1: about his work. I've never say thing like it, but
Speaker 1: I remember thinking it was very brazen about the details
Speaker 1: of his life, considering we were strangers and also considering
Speaker 1: what he does. He did talk about an NBA sports
Speaker 1: god Eyes and somebody a Yankees player. I just thought
Speaker 1: he lacked a lot of discretion given his field. We
Speaker 1: listened politely as he went on and on. I just
Speaker 1: remember looking towards the door. Finally, after about an hour,
Speaker 1: I said we needed to get home, and we got
Speaker 1: up to leave, and it was very clear that I
Speaker 1: wanted a photograph, a photograph of me. I think he
Speaker 1: came out and said, well, we'd like to get a
Speaker 1: picture of you, and it was just Joe. It wasn't
Speaker 1: Joe and I. So I let I take my picture,
Speaker 1: hint it to his wall, and then we left as
Speaker 1: fast as we could. I remember getting to her home,
Speaker 1: collapsing on a couch or something. Dawn told me she
Speaker 1: never wanted to go back. There was no sign of
Speaker 1: the maintenance man the night Dawn and I went over,
Speaker 1: but I knew he was still around. Sometimes we'd be
Speaker 1: on our deck and we'd see him outside working in
Speaker 1: the yard. When I returned to the Hamptons the following summer,
Speaker 1: I noticed something strange at the house next door. I
Speaker 1: would see the maintenance man out on the property doing
Speaker 1: his usual work in the backyard, but Ike Hurshkoff was gone.
Speaker 1: I would never see him or his wife, Becky, and
Speaker 1: the Hamptons again. There were no more summer parties. It
Speaker 1: was as if they had simply disappeared. And that's when
Speaker 1: I learned that everything I had thought i'd known about
Speaker 1: my neighbor was wrong. It's it's a wild story. That's
Speaker 1: the maintenance man, the guy who came to our door
Speaker 1: with the press clippings, the guy we saw working around
Speaker 1: the yard. That was Marty Marcuitz, the same guy who
Speaker 1: had first gone to see Dr Isaac Hurstkoff as a
Speaker 1: patient nearly thirty years earlier. That was just a preview
Speaker 1: of The Shrink next Door. To listen to the rest,
Speaker 1: subscribe to The Shrink next Door on Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening right now.