Peter Bacanovic Unable to Step Out of Martha Stewart's Shadow
Peter Bacanovic, the gay stockbroker found guilty of perjury, conspiracy, making false statements and obstruction of agency proceedings in the Martha Stewart ImClone insider stock trading case, expresses a simmering resentment towards his former friend in a NYT profile published today.
Bacanovic reveals that during his time in a Las Vegas prison (he was sentenced to five months in prison and five months home incarceration) fellow inmates didn't bother learning his name, but referred to him as 'Broker'. The entire experience has left him bitter, despondent, and compromised his immune system, according to his doctor:
"I am chronically sick and chronically unemployed and without any specific plan about how to proceed next."
Bacanovic says he prefers not to think of or talk about Stewart: "I will reserve comment on my co-defendant but it’s very glaring to me to take such a cavalier outlook."
He then, however, proceeds to unload on his icy former client:
"I was indicted not because I was the biggest criminal on the block or the biggest insider trader in history. I was indicted simply to bring a case against my celebrity co-defendant. I was a device... I’m not interested in lying to serve an overzealous 32-year-old prosecutor. I stood by my friend and client and told the truth. I am also aware that if the reverse were possible, the same would not have been done for me. This was business and my co-defendant is first and foremost a businesswoman...I am so tired of hearing her name attached to mine that the less I hear of it, the better my day is...I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about my obituary in the last four years,” he said. “I would really rather my tombstone not read ‘broker, Martha’ with dates. I’d rather it read ‘Bacanovic, Peter'."
While I think Bacanovic has a variety of valid points and there's no doubt that the Stewart household can do 'frigid' really, really well ("I said, 'This is harming me,'" Mr. Bacanovic, who had to borrow money to pay his fine, recalled saying. "And [Alexis Stewart] said, 'No one here feels we owe you anything.'") maybe the best way to escape the association is not by dredging it up in everyone's memory via a laundry list of grievances in the New York Times.
Who cares, he's fuckable!!!
Posted by: Larry | Oct 13, 2006 10:53:37 AM
I feel so bad for him. Not really.
Posted by: steven | Oct 13, 2006 10:54:56 AM
I like Martha's show and respect her intelligence as a business woman and entertainer/teacher, but she does not practice the loyalty and respect I believe good friends and business associates should for one another. Shame on her for this!!
Posted by: michael | Oct 13, 2006 10:57:45 AM
He is "without any specific plan about how to proceed next"?
Wasn't he the man who was the "arm candy" for society mavens?
Why doesn't he use those connections, or start charging for his services?
Posted by: Steven. | Oct 13, 2006 11:01:50 AM
Oh, boo hoo. I met Mr. Bacanovic through a mutual friend (his boyfriend at the time who also happened to be my ex) in 1995. Peter was a rude pig. A snob who was barely friendly during dinner, then ice cold quiet in a shared cab. He is not at peace (or open) with his sexuality, with himself, or his character. Stop crying and start taking responsibility for yourself, Peter. Then fortune may (once again) smile upon you -- perhaps in the form of humility and personal happiness. Would you recognize it if it ever found you? I doubt it...
Posted by: St Anthony | Oct 13, 2006 11:04:46 AM
Lie down with dogs and you get fleas.
Posted by: gabe | Oct 13, 2006 11:06:17 AM
"Bacanovic reveals that during his time in a Las Vegas prison (he was sentenced to five months in prison and five months home incarceration) fellow inmates didn't bother learning his name, but referred to him as 'Broker'. The entire experience has left him bitter, despondent, and compromised his immune system, according to his doctor..."
Since when does one go to prison to make friends? He should have been happy that they didn't call him "Fresh Meat"!!
Posted by: Jonathon | Oct 13, 2006 11:12:49 AM
I didn't hear Martha bitching and moaning, I agree with St. Anthony a little humility please...
Posted by: Jocko | Oct 13, 2006 11:13:50 AM
I don't feel sorry for Peter. Having known him in New York, he is nothing if not self-promoting. This is just another opportunity for him to stand out in the spotlight and gain a bit of public sympathy.
Key points:
- He had made several million over the course of his career. He's not poor.
- He uses people. Always has, always will.
- His vanity knows no mirror that doesn't love him.
- He lied.
- He's the most insincere type of person you would ever have opportunity to meet.
So, as he continues to figure out who he is, the rest of us already know.
Posted by: Martin C. | Oct 13, 2006 11:22:09 AM
Is the NYT's piece supposed to make me feel sympathy for him? If so, it doesn't work.
At 44 years old, I'd expect a man (gay or straight) to take his lumps and deal with them in a private manner. What he did was wrong. The legal system works.
As for his personal life, it's not ours to take apart. However, he did find great pleasure in escorting all the grand UES women to various charity events as their walker. That is well known. Guess the very wealthy husbands weren't impressed enough with his ability to offer him a job within their own firms. It's all smoke and mirrors in the end.
Finally, To play it out in an interview is to show his true narcissistic personality.
Peter, who cares? WHO CARES!
Posted by: Jonathan | Oct 13, 2006 11:31:16 AM
I don't know who he's blown at the NYT, but they have always given him sympathetic, almost fawning coverage.
When you unabashedly run with a rich, high-flying crowd in order to advance your own career, you have to know that it's going to bite you in the ass if you ever fuck up. That's the price everyone pays.
In the article it sounds like he regrets not rolling over on Stewart and testifying against her in exchange for avoiding jail. He didn't do it at the time, not out of loyalty to Stewart, but because he would have become a total pariah among the society matrons that he dragged around to fundraisers if he had done that, but from his standpoint, that's exactly what's happened anyway.
Posted by: mp | Oct 13, 2006 11:33:00 AM
Poor Peter doesn't seem to understand the place of hangers-on in this world. Pity.
Posted by: 24play | Oct 13, 2006 11:38:53 AM
"He uses people. Always has, always will.
His vanity knows no mirror that doesn't love him. He lied. He's the most insincere type of person you would ever have opportunity to meet. So, as he continues to figure out who he is, the rest of us already know."
Sounds like someone else has figured Reichen out, too. What? Talking about Peter Bacanovic? Nevermind....
Posted by: Leland | Oct 13, 2006 11:45:34 AM
Miz Stewart took her punishment like a man and rebounded with intelligence and elan. HOwever, Miss Peter, in many ways, just couldn't rise to the occassion.
Posted by: Roger | Oct 13, 2006 12:00:36 PM
She should be helping him out of this...
Posted by: patrick | Oct 13, 2006 12:20:14 PM
He lives in Holly Golightly's iconic apartment so that should fetch a tidy sum.
Posted by: gabe | Oct 13, 2006 12:28:23 PM
There is no finer tribute to a handsome gay man than ENVY. But I just admire him. He did not break ranks with a comrade who apparently does not return such fealty. He is more OUT than anyone on here, and that Byzantine knight speaks Greek, too! Top that, will you?
Posted by: Antaeus | Oct 13, 2006 12:34:43 PM
"He is more OUT than anyone on here."
What does that even mean?
Posted by: Anita | Oct 13, 2006 12:43:39 PM
I do feel for him (I know it is way cooler to say you don't).
Most people serve their prison sentence and move on. Because of who the crime was with he continues to do the time and he's not allowed to move on.
Here's hoping that someone gives him a call from the story and helps him. The story was a call for help.
It is gratifying that the people who have stood with him (Robby Browne, Christopher Mason for example) are gay.
Posted by: David | Oct 13, 2006 12:57:17 PM
I read that story this morning and it was clear that this is a man unwilling to take responsibility for his own actions. Everything in that story was, "it's all Martha's fault" or "if it hadn't been Martha, none of this would have happened." Good-looking or not, if that story is any indication, he's just a rich pampered queen who just oozes bitterness that he -- HE! -- would be made to pay for his wrongdoing. And after he was so loyal to his fellow millionaire, Martha, too. Don't those nasty people in the US Attorney's office know who he is and how the game is played? Christ. I hope for his sake he's got a more level head than came across in that story.
Posted by: Glenn | Oct 13, 2006 1:12:13 PM
"He is more OUT than anyone on here."
Meaning he can be found at sex parties. The man is a big 44 year old bottom.
Posted by: Manny | Oct 13, 2006 1:17:29 PM
As a New Yorker of 20 years, I can say that Robby Browne is hardly a pillar in the NYC gay community. He's more like a 60-something year old queen who throws parties in hopes that young 20-something year olds get caught up in his little web. It's disgusting to watch. These men deserve each other's friendship.
Posted by: Byron | Oct 13, 2006 1:21:49 PM
He looks like a human Shih Tzu to me. Cute, but odd looking. Probably the implants and injections.
Posted by: Sarah H. | Oct 13, 2006 1:24:26 PM
Thank you, Leland. I was scared we would miss an obvious opportunity to discuss Reichen!
Posted by: Dan B | Oct 13, 2006 2:21:42 PM
I have known Peter since the late 1980s and have always experienced him as a warm, courteous, and often passionate man of genuine feelings and the best intentions. While we were never intimate friends, we did share personal hardships from time to time which revealed to me his humanity, integrity, sensitivity, and capacity for understanding and forgiveness.
Mistakes were clearly made - my own 15 years on Wall Street make it fairly clear what happened here. He became a successful book builder as he introduced well-to-do and well-known celebrity clients to Merrill Lynch, and as he hired a star-struck wanna-be who essentially paniced and screwed up a regretable transaction, lied, then turned against his abusive and resented celebrity client, with Peter caught in the crossfire trying to keep it all together. Peter's loyalties muddled his sense of the law, and its consequences - and his continuing loyalty to Martha (Kostyra) Stewart, and her cold-hearted daughter Alexis, obscured his way to forclose legal options that could have otherwise minimized the ultimate damage to himself.
I believe his claims to stress-related illnesses and uncertain self-esteem are thoroughly genuine. This serial crisis covering the past 5 years has taken its toll and Peter now finds himself psychically spent and physically compromised just as he naturally encounters the plethora of mid-life crises that challenge virtually all men in the mid forties in general, and virtually all gay men after 40 in particular.
Peter never intended to hurt or betray anyone. To the end, he took second stage behind the dissembling diva never once threatening to pull the curtain on her.
Now she has left him out to dry. He should acknowledge this for what it is, take credit for having stayed the course with dignity, and consider his exile from Marthadom the first step in getting back on the right direction.
Posted by: KDH | Oct 13, 2006 3:48:25 PM