Bill Gates threw wild naked pool parties with strippers and was a womanizer even after he met future wife Melinda Gates, his biographer claims, wondering if he will go back to his bachelor days once again given that his marriage is over now. Journalist James Wallace wrote two books on the Microsoft founder in the 1990s, and uncovered eyebrow-raising details of Gates' frat-like life as a single man.
Wallace wrote in detail about how Gates and many of the Microsoft employees led a wild lifestyle in the 1980s and early 1990s. Gates' wild days are now once again back in the limelight given the way his marriage ended. Wallace also mentions in the book how the other side of the gates never got reported in media.
Gates and His Wild Ways
In an interview with DailyMail.com, Wallace, 74, said Gates was "no choir boy" in his early days as a tech founder. "A lot of those Microsoft kids back then, they were young guys in pizza-stained t-shirts for two or three days working on software code," Wallace told the DailyMail.
"Then they would have some pretty wild parties, where they would go out and get strippers in Seattle and bring them over to Bill's home. He wasn't a choir boy back then, he wasn't just this little computer nerd. He did have a life back then."
Interestingly, Bill's wild lifestyle was well known among his inner circle — but newspapers hid the unflattering reports to continue getting "spoon-fed stories," Wallace had written in the 1997 biography, Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace.
In the book, Wallace also described the alleged naked parties at Gates' Laurelhurst, Washington home in even more lurid detail. For those wild parties, the Microsoft co-founder would "visit one of Seattle's all-nude nightclubs and hire dancers to come to his home and swim naked with his friends in his indoor pool."
This although wasn't a new addiction in Gates. In fact it was an extension of his Harvard day, where he "did like to frequent Boston's notorious Combat Zone, with its porn shows, strip joints, and prostitutes," Wallace wrote.
No All Was Well
Interestingly, Gates' bachelor lifestyle didn't end when he started dating future wife Melinda French in 1988, Wallace wrote in the biography. "Though Gates began dating French [Melinda's maiden name] in 1988, he continued to play the field for a while, especially when he was out of town on business, when he would frequently hit on female journalists who covered Microsoft and the company industry," Wallace wrote.
The billionaire tech mogul and Melinda announced their divorce last week, ending their 27-year marriage. The things written in the biographies by Wallace have once again resurfaced as the exact reason behind the bitter divorce is still unknown.
Last week it was also reported that Gates had a prenuptial agreement with Melinda that he gets to spend at least one weekend every year with his former girlfriend and colleague Ann Winblad at a resort. Photographs of the resort also surfaced where Gates and Winblad spend a weekend every spring.
Things are somewhat becoming clearing now, as the biography paints a different picture about Gates. It's likely that the couple's relationship soured a long time back and the divorce announcement was just a matter of time given that many claim the Gates and Melinda waited for their youngest daughter to turn 18 before making the announcement.
"French was well aware of Gates's womanizing, and consequently their relationship ran hot and cold. At one point, they broke up for nearly a year, reportedly because Gates refused to make any kind of commitment. When they got back together again in 1992, however, the relationship grew closer and stronger," the author wrote.
Gates's longtime friend and former Microsoft executive Vern Raburn corroborated the book's claims in an interview with DailyMail.com and said how the his alleged womanizing even extended to "infidelity" during his early relationship with Melinda, which began in 1988. Raburn admitted that Gates "liked to party" and was not faithful to Melinda when they first began dating, but was 'very proud of the fact he hadn't done any of that' since the couple wed.
"Being naked in a pool is no big deal," Raburn said. "There's a difference between being naked in a pool with a whole bunch of other people, and being naked in a pool with somebody else, or in a bed with somebody else."
Wallace's book also contains interview with some of gates' exces including Winblad. Gates even asked his ex for her opinion on Melinda before he settled down, with Winblad describing it as his future wife passing a "test" rather than being a "serendipitous choice."
"A relationship with Bill early on is a test. Are you smart enough? Do you have enough common sense? Can you make the grade? Are you athletic enough?" she told Wallace in his book.
"Melinda is Bill's pick. He could have chosen any woman as a wife for life. He has chosen her, and that means she is an exceptional woman," Winblad had said.
That said, rumors have begun to fly that Gates has gone back to his old bad behavior. TMZ reported last week that Melinda rented Calivigny Island in Grenada for $132,000 a night for the whole family except Bill.
The site claimed his wife and family are "furious" at him for some unspecified alleged incident, and that the couple had been trying to hash out a divorce agreement for months.
