Gentlemen, open your hearts and your wallets. Give it up and welcome to the stage…
She extends her hand and says, “Cher Nova.”
The random name generator, the one that tells you your stripper name.
“Cher, pleased to meet you, Joe Smith.”
Cher looks like she wears Mormon underwear.
We’re at the conference to talk about actuarial tables.
This is our breakout session.
An attendant brings us coffee.
The cocktail napkin has lipstick-red lettering: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Cher goes first.
“Okay. First one. What’s the appropriate discount rate adjustment…
In a city of chances.
Here’s the name you’ll never forget.
…when evaluating a closed block of life annuities under escalating mortality assumptions?”
Cher looks at me, the coffee cup shaking in my hand.
“Well, that would depend on the severity and trajectory of the mortality escalation, and the interest rate environment.”
Every Cher needs a stage. Fellas, keep your eyes in your head and hands to yourself.
“Generally, actuaries adjust the discount rate to match interest rates and life expectancy.”
Cher tilts her head. “So in practice you’re saying?”
“In practice, it means recalibrating escalating mortality assumptions to match market conditions.”
“Good. We should get through this module quick.”
Accountants talk golf. Actuaries talk gardening.
Cher goes on about Shasta daisies over a martini.
The hotel bar runs on parents-aren’t-home rules. No one was looking.
I hadn’t changed out of my suit. Cher was wearing a short, low-cut dress. Her hair was down.
“The thing about daisies is you just let them grow. They don’t need anything.”
Cher stabbed a fat, blue-cheese-stuffed olive and chewed it with her mouth open.
“What do you do for fun?” She leaned back in her chair, tapping a pinky on the cocktail napkin.
“You know, Cher, I’m a simple song-and-dance man.”
“Well, let’s dance then.” She emptied her martini.
Cher was as tall as a snowdrift.
Her smile came from one side of her mouth.
We laughed about stripper names.
I told everyone we met my name was Buck Cameron.
On the ride back, the Uber smelled like alcohol and sweat.
Cher sat close. Our shoulders touched.
The driver kept his eyes on the road. He understood the arrangement.
With the alcohol and drugs in our system, the present value of future discomfort was negligible.
Cher put her head on my shoulder and wiped her palm where a tiny footprint of blood lingered, a remainder.
Her finger left a red smudge on my suit.
“Low probability, high severity, but off our balance sheet.”
Her body snuggled up to mine.
In the morning, I left her room and said, “Statistically, this disappears.” The door slammed.
The sun was too bright. There were two more modules today. Cher led the second.
With enough coffee and food, I came around. A screwdriver drank me sober.
Cher was in her Mormon disguise.
Her module was Infant Mortality Adjustment.
In front of the microphone, she looked like a mouse.
Gentlemen, keep your hands off your privates. This one rearranges priorities and walks away clean. Let’s give a big Sin City welcome for this little lady from the Beehive State.
“Actuaries isolate infant mortality into its own cohort, applying higher initial rates and accelerated discounting to account for volatility. Improvements in care can flatten the curve, but variance remains sensitive to socioeconomic inputs, access, and reporting lag.”
Boys, no way this little gem will flatten your curve. She’ll make your money and your morals disappear.
“Because exposure is brief but impact is permanent, infant mortality is often modeled as an externality. Once survival thresholds are crossed, the risk is removed from the system entirely.”
Fellas, short exposure, permanent outcome. Not everyone survives crossing her threshold. Give it up for the woman of your dreams.
“From a valuation standpoint, losses are front-loaded, fully realized, and non-recoverable. There is no tail. There is no adjustment period. The data either persists forward, or it doesn’t.”
Statistically, the remainder disappears.
I took the suit to the dry cleaner.
The red stain couldn’t be removed.
There’s a lot to love about this, but for me…above all else…it’s this line: “Her smile came from one side of her mouth.”
I'm not sure what this piece is trying to say. I like it, but is it just being strange for the sake of strange? Or trying to state that the dynamics of a strip-club interaction conform with certain economic models routinely pondered by accountants?
A stripper acting, in her work uniform, as an ordinary attendant of an actuarial conference is surreal, but I have a feeling there's supposed to be some greater point.