The line is long, but the bouncer spots our ties (each of which costs more than his Kia) and ushers us to the front. We buy bottles.

Jammin' Back Like Crazy [The Leveraged Sell-Out]

Real/Life: "Livin' Single" [LX.TV]

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of A.J.

As Hertzan points out, A.J. has plenty of defenders on Wall Street-y sites like BankersBall. And we sort of agree with "Converted AJ Disciple" who comments,

This guy does not belong in a cubicle

Get him in front of a camera and keep him there

I-Banker Working Hard, Playing Hard, Inviting Ridicule [BankersBall]
Bankers Gone Wild [MSNBC]

For example, when we receive an email that opens with "Well I created this email account solely for the purpose of this email", and then offers unsubstantiated and potentially libelous claims about our hero, we cannot help but almost feel sympathy. And it does not help that the anonymous emailer follows up the original email with "IMPORTANT: DO NOT DISPLAY MY EMAIL ADDRESS TO ANYONE. DO NOT PUT MY EMAIL ADDRESS ON YOUR WEBSITE. KEEP ME TOTALLY ANONYMOUS" - if he is not willing to stand by his claims and hide behind the anonymity of the internet instead, then what reason do we have to expose our relatively less anonymous selves? That was not the only email we will not reprint - there's a point where schadenfreude turns into pure meanness.

And many readers aren't really getting it when they focus on his poseur-ness.

True, if he did overstate his wealth and importance, then he does deserve our derision. But the story, from the very beginning, was about the nightlife culture that he celebrated, a point lost on many of our tipsters and commenters at DealBook. He has done nothing wrong, per se; it's just his lack of self-awareness and obsession with empty status symbols. If "models and bottles" is, as commenter "Goose" writes, a catchphrase that "summarizes all of NYC nightlife", then we are in more trouble than we thought and we would almost be tempted to write something awful and unforgivable like "Maybe Osama had the right idea".

Fortunately, A.J.'s Thursday night out is not "all of NYC nightlife". For people like us, who are neither as good looking nor wealthy as A.J., there is a night life that does not involve velvet ropes and we manage to spend a night out without thinking to ourselves, "Tonight would be a lot more fun if only there were prettier girls and more expensive drinks".

Dealbreaker is correct in distinguishing A.J. from the Douchebag Extraordinaire Aleksey Vayner - Vayner is a douche no doubt, but A.J. is more a tool, if you will. He's harmless, and for the most part, simply fun to laugh at.

Finally, someone other than A.J.'s "friends and supporters" sticks up for him.

I was the girl that the second comment was referring to (not the polyester girl but the one that got the Manolo Blahnik shoes and dress). I actually did not know who Manolo Blahnik was... I was there when he bought me the black dress - the shoes he got me as a gift while I was getting fitted. I'm his ex-girlfriend who no longer talks much to him.

Just to vouch for him, since everyone on Gawker bashes him...I've never witnessed him bragging about any Hilton - and I was on and off with him for over a year. Does he make millions? I don't think so, but he does well (enough) for himself and was never very dependent on anyone. And I never knew him to brag about money. He never came off as showy to me.

Update: Code.tv was featured on MSNBC's The Most (hosted by MTV's Allison Stewart!) and the meat of the segment was naturally A.J.'s Thursday night out. You can watch the footage here on the MSNBC site. We feel like we made A.J. who he is today - "like a proud mother" is the phrase that comes to mind.

Point:

Well we went to school together and I can vouch that he would give pleasurable parties at the Waldorf Towers (Waldorf Astoria).

Counterpoint:

I, too, went to school with AJ and for the entire four years, he acted like a total jack ass. He used to throw all these parties and would tell all the "beautiful girls" that he would buy them gowns and manolo's to wear. Did he? Of course not. He would also tell people that celebs would be at the parties and claimed to be personal pals with Nicky and Paris. Of course they never showed. For as long as I can remember, AJ has been trying to "buy" girls by taking them to clubs and getting bottle service.....The saddest part? He can still only get cheap girls with wardrobes completely made up of clothes from Strawberry. In fact, not so long ago, I was at a bar and met a girl that knew AJ....she was a waitress, dressed in a lot of polyester, and was trying to convince me that AJ was worth millions...apparently this is what he told her.

I saw him earlier tonight at Vento, going down to Level V after dinner with what seemed to be a tall, French-speaking brunette. He was with one of those guys in the Code video who was with his own brunette, but not as tall.

Earlier: Your Thursday Morning A.J. Update

Before we dig into the mailbag, we should tell you that we aim to humiliate, not destroy lives. Or at least that is the guest editor's philosophy. He is but a boy playing dress up among grownups, and as one reader tells us, "not nearly the worst this profession has to offer". Shit, he's not even the worst Code.tv has to offer. After all, how can we hate a guy who reinforces Dove's message by showing us that even beautiful people need help looking beautiful.

Caption: "Kauai, HI — Pre Air-Brush (Polo Sport)

Our first email, after the jump, comes from A.J.'s "friends and supporters".

Hi,

This is a request to remove comments referencing to AJ on your page. The main story can stay, but the cached link must be removed. The account has been deleted because of Gawker's exploitation of an innocent man. If this is not removed, we will look to further available options to pursue removal. This is to benefit the companies listed on the page, and if the true identity of this man is revealed-it will spell trouble. Please understand this request and accept our gratitude in advance.

Regards,

Friends and supporters of AJ

Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

I was shocked to see A.J.'s picture on your website. It has been a while since I saw that bumbling has-been. I went to college with A.J. at Fordham University at Rose Hill (in the Bronx), and knew A.J. well. That is, until we got to know well of who A.J. really is. The kid has been a liar and struggling to climb the social ladder since infancy (I imagine he tried to pass off his nickel version of a classic Tiffany's rattle then too). The boy started out selling knives, probably door-to-door, before he ever became a so-called "investment banker." However, maybe panhandling around NYC and buying fancy threads at Salvation Army to get into washed out clubs qualifies you as an "investor." I hate when these simpletons get praised and the fifteen-minutes they're dying for by you guys. You should know the truth....and there's plenty more.

A.J. has obviously cleaned up his MySpace profile like a second-degree murderer at a crime scene. I was able to discern that he is not an I-banker, but rather a retail broker. As an NYUer in the financial services industry, I can tell you that both professions are kind of smarmy, but brokers are definitely smarmier and not as intelligent. Whatever he's making, if it's over 75k, I would be surprised and upset. I'm guessing he's maxing out his credit cards to pay for the bottle service and escorts in the video. As others have mentioned, the work and education history are a complete mystery. This guy is gross, but unfortunately, he's not nearly the worst this profession has to offer.

Your boy works at my company, [redacted], but he, lest you think he has an ounce of actual talent, works in the back-office Structured Products Group (a glorified handjob factory for banker rejects). His real name is [redacted]; please feel free to look at his Facebook profile which is ripe with photos of sleeping girls (models, perhaps?) and other creepiness. Please believe that not all of us who work as bankers are ridiculous enough to think that a leased Boxster and some hired help is what constitutes as being the "real deal".

He still lives at home in Westchester with his parents, not the city. He's not an analyst but a controller at one of [redacted]'s buildings downtown, ergo " he most def CANNOT afford those bottles or even cheap models," according to my friend who works there. I've become a woman obsessed. He went to high school with us.

Just spoke with my friend at [redacted]—he says they just discovered this kid "AJ" works there, but begged me not to mention [redacted] in the same sentence as this kid. Apparently he isn't even an I-Banker, as his initial video claims; instead, he works in the Financial Control group making much less than the "250K+" he lists as his salary on his myspace page. The internet sure is making it tough on all the liars out there...

A.J. greets us with the headline, "Zoom Zoom", perhaps harking back to his more humble days when he drove a Mazda instead of the drop top Porsche featured in the Cain promo. He chose a blurry self portrait for his profile pic, although the modesty is belied by the luxurious gold frame on the mirror. He has customized the page with a classy black background and sets the mood with a stylish, albeit predictable, Thievery Corporation tune. We learn that, to no surprise, his favorite films and books include Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, Art of War and Machiavelli.

Now we know more about A.J., but what little bit that the MySpace profile offers has only served to whet our appetite. Can you shed any more light on A.J.? We're all ears.

Update: Sadly, A.J. has deleted his profile. We were afraid this would happen. Alas, we'll just have to hold on to the fond memories and our browser cache.

www.myspace.com/ajc01 [MySpace]
Earlier: This Is What We Are Up Against

We are not exactly sure what Code.tv is all about (tagline: Your source for privileged lifestyle intelligence), but Clublife directs us to a video promo for the nightclub Cain (tagline: i-bankers gone wild at NYC's most decadent nightclub).

In the two-minute video, our guide A.J., a 23-year-old "analyst at a large investment bank", takes us through a typical Thursday night ("night that we ball") at Cain. A.J. promises "models and bottles", assures us "we're just getting started", vouches for the guys he rolls with ("they're the real deal"), and describes pretty much everything as "hot" and/or "crazy".

Gather the kids around for this, they'll thank you later. Watch and weep.

Cain: i-bankers gone wild at NYC's most decadent nightclub [Code.tv]
By a show of hands... [Clublife]