GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - WTF? Al Goldstein publisher of Screw Magazine is Homeless?

Screwed?

Al Goldstein is 68, sleeping on the floor and looking for a job

There he sleeps, curled up on the orange carpet in the cramped front room of his in-laws' modest house in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York City, like a slacker boyfriend.

But he is no slacker. He is Al Goldstein, founding father of one of America's leading industries, self-styled Robespierre of raunch, former publisher of Screw magazine. He is 68 and he has fallen far in recent months.

His company, Milky Way Productions, home of Screw and his long-running cable show, Midnight Blue, went into bankruptcy last year. His mansion in Pompano Beach, with the 11-foot statue of a raised middle finger out back, was sold in June to pay debts.

Goldstein's probation papers officially list him as homeless, and he says he spent much of the last month sleeping in a borrowed car behind a Boston Market restaurant in Pompano Beach and at a shelter for the homeless in Fort Lauderdale.

"Anyone who wishes ill on me should feel vindicated because my life has turned into a total horror," he said with characteristic restraint last Tuesday evening at his in-laws' house.

Goldstein said that a pornographic-video company in Los Angeles recently offered him a sales job at $1,000 a week, but that Florida authorities told him any move had to be approved by his probation officer in New York, where he is serving three years for harassing a former wife in the pages of Screw. On Monday, he flew to New York on frequent-flier miles. On Tuesday, he said, his probation officer denied him permission to move to California.

"They want me to get out of the men's field, the only field I have expertise in," Goldstein said. "They want me to take a job at Burger King for $5.50 an hour. But who's going to hire me with a criminal record? On probation?"

The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, which supervises the probation department, said yesterday that it did not comment on specific cases but that it generally did not give permission to move unless a probationer had a "suitable residence" or family in the new state, which Goldstein does not.

In truth, things could be a lot worse for Goldstein. He has shed nearly 150 pounds since a stomach-stapling operation last year. He has a new wife, Christine, a psychology graduate student 40 years his junior who obviously did not marry him for his nonexistent wealth.

She sat beside him Tuesday as he showed off his newly svelte (O.K., scrawny and pouchy) physique in a leather vest he bought at a Florida thrift store for $3.50.

"Wednesday they have a senior citizen discount," he explained. "Fifty percent off."

But Goldstein is miserable unless he is in the spotlight.

"Today I went to my doctor to have my diabetes checked," he said. "I walked past the townhouse I used to live in on West 61st Street, and I kept thinking: 'That's who I was. I was a somebody with a chauffeur, a limo, a townhouse. Now I sleep on a floor.' " He sat surrounded by what he called his few remaining possessions: a bunch of DVD's and CD's and several boxes of cigars.

A large silver cross around his neck gleamed against his chest hair. He has been wearing it for a few months. "I feel doomed as a Jew," he said. "I'll try anything else."

More seriously, his wife suffers from Crohn's disease, an intestinal malady that has left her emaciated. She needs medical treatment that neither she nor he can afford.

"I need a job so I can help her," he said.

Mr. Goldstein said he felt lost without the bully pulpit from which he cursed his enemies for four decades.

"I don't have a soapbox," he said. "All I can do is tell Christine that when she's dead I'm going to date her sisters."

His wife's family tolerates his presence for now, but may not let him crash on their floor forever. One of his last remaining lawyers, Charles C. DeStefano, is preparing a motion to have his 2003 plea and probation sentence vacated on the ground that he was incoherent when he agreed to them.

"Al usually bounces back like a rubber ball, but he really needs a job," DeStefano said. "Otherwise in six months, you might find him at Bellevue."

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