“Guys are selfish.”
George Fuiaxis makes this matter-of-fact declaration with just the correct hint of disgust in his voice.
George is a real estate broker and author.
This is the conclusion he came to after writing a book on female orgasms.
This bears repeating: He’s a guy – guys are, by his experience and definition, selfish — and he’s the author of a manual on women’s sexuality.
If he realizes how odd this sounds, he doesn’t let on.
But when prompted, for the record, what he will say is that he considers himself a sensitive, not a selfish, man.
“Women tell me I’m sensitive all the time,” he says, adding that he’s a Pisces, as if that explains everything. “I was born this way. I have always cared about other people.”
George reissued the book this year.
George, who has an ex-wife and two teenage sons, is sitting on the white leather sofa in his bachelor pad, which is where he’s doing his writing these days.
He also has a house on the same block as his ex’s to make visitation with the kids easier.
While we’re letting George’s self-assessment sink in, let’s take a look around the place.
His office, a small desk, computer and chair, is squeezed into a corner of the second bedroom.
It faces the wall.
In the living room, there are three enormous Hulbert Waldroup paintings: A pair of portraits from his Pop Girlz collection bookends the largest, a Tiffany blue canvas that features cartoon character Dick Tracy and a levitating skull studded with real rhinestones.
George has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology.
On the facing wall, above the flat-screen TV, is a trio of nearly large-as-life black and white photos of women that look as though they were taken for a Vogue fashion spread.
OK, let’s get back to George.
A soft-spoken man with dreamy brown eyes who looks half his age, George was born and raised in Astoria, which is where his parents, who are from the Greek island of Rhodes, settled.
He published “Stop Beating Around the Bush: How to tell him he’s not satisfying you, a woman’s guide to sexual fulfillment” more than two decades ago.
He was 30.
This year, for reasons he never fully explains, he has reissued it.
It didn’t even need to be revised, he says, because men are pretty much still as selfish as ever.
George, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pace University and a master’s in the same subject from City College, started doing research on sexuality while he was in college.
“I did a paper on menopause for my master’s because my mom was going through it,” he says. “And I got curious and started talking to my buddies about their sexual encounters.”
George collects Hulbert Waldroup paintings.
Originally, he planned to write the book for men.
“But I realized pretty quickly that men don’t read,” he says. “And they’re ignorant.”
So, instead, he tailored it to women.
“Women usually don’t tell men how to satisfy them because they are too nice, and they don’t want to hurt their feelings,” he says. “Men have such fragile egos.”
“Stop Beating Around the Bush” is the only book George has ever written.
George is the co-host of a current-events podcast.
His career revolves around real estate, not the written word.
The owner/broker of Steinway Realty Group, he focuses on residential sales in Astoria and development in the city.
In the last couple of years, though, he has returned to writing.
Recently, he finished a screenplay that’s based on the true story of a Greek immigrant who got involved with the Mafia and served prison time for doing illegal real estate deals.
George just finished his first screenplay.
“It took me two years to write,” he says. “The flexibility of my real estate career allowed me to do it.”
And he’s the co-host of the weekly live podcast “Views, News & Reviews,” which focuses on clever, weird current events.
George plans to keep plugging away – at writing and at real estate.
“My personality is not wheeling and dealing, but through the years, I have become good at it on the job,” he says. “Now, I hope that I can make writing my focus, but this will only happen if something I write becomes successful. Then I may make real estate my part-time career.”
Copyright 2023 by Nancy A. Ruhling