by Helen Dewitt
He sighed. The sun was setting behind the pines. Another day comes and goes.
“Look,” he said. “The game is not rigged, OK? The only reason it’s rigged, if it is rigged, is because you made it up that way. Nobody did anything behind your back. You decided, for reasons best known to yourself, to move in the direction of a rigged game, so you got a rigged game. You didn’t find anything out. There was nothing to find out. You made the whole thing up in your head. And now you’re talking to yourself. This has got to stop.”
The sky was a dark clear blue, all except for the narrow band of blazing orange behind the black pines.
He said, “All I want is to be a success. That’s all I ask.”
The sky slowly blackened and the stars came out, and still he sat on the steps.
He had hit rock bottom. Because let’s face it, the kind of guy who gets ahead in the world, the kind of guy who makes a mark, the kind of guy who makes a difference, is the kind of guy who deals with his sexual urges and gets on with the job. He is not the kind of guy who lies around obsessing about whether some completely imaginary game show is rigged. He is not the kind of guy who gets side-tracked out of his masturbatory fantasy into a non-masturbatory fantasy about three guys from college called Jeff, Shane, and Duane. Duane. Where the fuck did that come from? Jesus.
What he realized later was that this was exactly the mistake he had made all his life, assuming that if he was different in some way that was automatically worse. Assuming he’d be all right if he was just like everybody else. Assuming the thing he needed to work on was getting rid of all the things that stood out. Because after all the basic raw material of his fantasies was probably not all that different from a lot of guys, look at it this way you could find similar types of scenario with some of the elements in magazines and videos which had to mean they thought it would appeal to a lot of guys. The thing was just that most guys would not replay favorite episodes from the days when Suzie was on the show, and wonder what she was doing with herself now that she had a million bucks to play around with; most guys would not get involved in the personalities, they would not get pissed off because the MC was an asshole and start wondering how to get him off the show, they would not wonder why it had to be rigged, and they would not decide that the thrusting buttocks behind the screen belonged to three college guys named Jeff, Shane, and Duane.
What he should have realized is that if there is something that makes you different from everybody else it may be that that very thing is your unique selling point.
Because as it turned out, it was his tendency to gradually start seeing the personalities, to start bringing in all kinds of irrelevant stories to the point where people would have names, that turned out to be his hidden strength. Gradually the people would turn out to be ordinary people just like you and me, only involved in a situation most ordinary people would not put themselves into. And instead of getting obsessed with the sex, the way most guys would, he just happened to have this tendency to start seeing the whole picture with the sex as part of the picture. He happened to have this ability to imagine what it would be that would get ordinary people involved in something like that.
The sky was a velvety black. The stars were out and the moon had risen.
He said, “Come on, Joe. You can do better than this.”
He started wondering what it was about sex. Because if you think about it the pornography industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Some people use it as an adjunct to a fulfilling sexual relationship, sure, but what about the rest? If you could figure out a way to deliver the real thing you’d really be onto something. A way to deliver the real thing where people did not have to worry about running into the criminal element, or getting arrested, or just getting recognized.
He started looking at it another way. The way he looked at it was, why is this not a problem for homosexuals? A couple of guys could be just working together in an office and they can meet in the john and get back to work. A lot of guys would not have a problem with doing this kind of thing with a female partner, part of the problem obviously was segregated toilets and part of the problem was that a lot of women would have a problem with it.
Any salesman knows that you have to deal with people the way they are. Not how you’d like them to be.
The crickets were chirping in the long grass.
Joe sat on the steps, jingling the change in his pocket.
“Come on, Joe,” he said. “There’s got to be something you can do.”
His thoughts turned again to the guy who had cleaned up after Hurricane Edna. Basically the guy had identified a disaster that had struck everyone and he had identified a problem that faced everyone who had been struck by the disaster. Then he had gone in with a solution to the problem.
Somewhere around midnight the idea came to him.
“Joe,” he said, “you’re in big trouble.”
SPECIAL K
In the morning the sun was shining, birds were singing, and there was dew on the grass. The crazy thoughts of the night before did not look so bad. They looked crazy, but they did not look like crazy things he would seriously think about trying out. Everyone gets crazy thoughts from time to time, it’s what you do about them that counts.
It was time to turn over a new leaf. Eat right. Get some exercise. For instance, instead of taking the car, why not walk to the store?
He walked over to the 7-Eleven and bought a box of Special K and a carton of skim milk.
On his way back to the trailer park he saw a heron fly over the lake and vanish in the reeds. “Now if you’d taken the car you wouldn’t have seen that,” he said. “It’s a beautiful world. You have a right to be here. Now let’s get back to the trailer, have us some breakfast, and get out there and sell some vacuum cleaners.”
After breakfast he washed the bowl and left it to drain. He did not wash the rest of the week’s dishes because it’s important to be able to prioritize. He shaved and dressed and put the Electrolux in the car.
“Skooby dooby doo, exchanging glances, skooby dooby dooby dooby dooby,” he sang, shifting to Drive. He pulled out of the trailer park and headed down the highway for the next neighborhood on his list.
The highway went along the beach. This was a part of the beach that never saw much action at the best of times, and at this time of day it was pretty much deserted. The tide was out. The sand just above the water gleamed white in the bright morning sun, and tiny sandpipers darted up and down. Out to sea a line of pelicans flew low over the waves.
“It’s a beautiful world,” said Joe again. “You have a right to be here.”
He started singing the song “Everything is beautiful in its own way,” which he had never expected to want to sing voluntarily and so had never learned past the first line. “Everything is beautiful in its own way,” sang Joe. “Skooby dooby doo, dooby doo, dooby doo, dooby dooby by doo…” Maybe it had something to do with starting the day with Special K.
He kept driving along, one hand on the wheel, singing the first line of “Everything is beautiful in its own way” and grinning and looking out to sea. The pelicans were just tiny specks in the distance, but the sandpipers were still running up and down.
Years later he could always get a laugh out of an audience telling the story. Because the thing of it is, this is a thing that crosses generations. You take a bunch of guys and maybe for some of them The Man was Elvis, and for some of them it was Jimi Hendrix, and for some of them it was Kurt Cobain, but the thing they all have in common is that they would never sing “Everything is beautiful in its own way” unless someone held a gun to their head (and maybe not even then). Except that every one of those guys will have had the experience of being up at sunrise and going out and being alone in the world and wanting to sing something. He could get a laugh because he only knew the first line of “Everything is beautiful in its own way,” and the other way he could get a laugh was by explaining that he went on to sing “Oh what a beautiful morning,” and he actually k
new all the words because his mother drove him crazy playing the record when he was a kid, but he couldn’t quote them in his autobiography because he would have had to have paid a lot of money.
Well, he finished singing “Oh what a beautiful morning” and he found that he had taken his foot off the accelerator. The car was slowing down and he found that he was putting his foot on the brake and turning off the road. He stopped the car on the sandy shoulder and parked it and turned off the engine. He could hear the soft whisper of the waves and the piping of the sandpipers.
There are things that you spell out in words for an audience that you don’t think in words at the time. In his mind he was just seeing the heron with its long sharp beak and spindly legs. He was seeing the sandpipers running up and down the wet sand. He saw the pelicans with their big beaks that could hold a whole fish. They were flying low over the waves because they knew where to find the kind of fish they could put in their beaks.
He opened the door and got out of the car. The Electrolux, with its accessories, sat in the back seat.
He closed the car door and folded his arms on top of the car, looking out to sea. “I don’t have what it takes,” he said. He had never said it before because saying it would be like admitting he couldn’t make the grade. But now he said it and he wasn’t blaming himself. Does a heron go around complaining because it doesn’t have the kind of beak you can stick a whole fish in? Does it say “Where there’s a will there’s a way” and go flying low over the waves, beak or no beak? Like hell it does.
There are guys who can persuade someone they want a new vacuum cleaner even if they have only just bought one. There are guys who can persuade someone they want a new vacuum cleaner even if the vacuum cleaner they have now is more a member of the family than an appliance. In all probability half the people who bought an Electrolux after Hurricane Edna had a perfectly good vacuum cleaner that had come through the hurricane miraculously unscathed. The reason they had bought a new vacuum cleaner was that they had come up against a guy who was born to sell vacuum cleaners. The reason they did not want to buy another vacuum cleaner now was that they were dealing with a guy who did not have what it takes to sell vacuum cleaners.
Well, if you don’t have what it takes you can go on trying to sell vacuum cleaners till the cows come home. When you look back over your life, what you’re going to see is that you ate a lot of pumpkin pie.
If you’re a salesman, you have to deal with yourself the way you are. Not how you’d like to be.
If you don’t have what it takes, you can waste a lot of time asking yourself “How can I get what it takes?” The question you should be asking yourself is, “Is there something else that takes what I have to offer?” Because if there’s something you can succeed at, just the way you are, you won’t have to waste a lot of time trying to change yourself. Which you’re never going to be able to do, anyway.
If you ask most people what’s the hardest thing about being a salesman, they will usually say the rejection. “People always trying to get rid of you,” they say, “that’s what I’d hate.” Or sometimes they say it’s the travel that would really get to them, all those hotel and motel rooms blurring into each other, it must get really lonely. Or sometimes they think it would bother them to be selling things to people that they didn’t really need, pressurizing people into buying things they were not really able to afford.
Well, at one time or another every salesman has probably felt all of those things. But the thing that’s hardest about the job is something you can’t leave behind you by getting another job. A salesman has to see people as they are.
Most people spend their lives trying to avoid doing that very thing. Most people see what they want to see. But a salesman can’t afford to see people the way he might like them to be. He has to see them the way they actually are. And he also has to see them the way they’d like to be. Because no matter how badly people want something, if they don’t want to be the kind of people who want that kind of thing you’re going to have an uphill battle persuading them to buy it. He has to see what it is they don’t like about the way they are and convince them that the way they are is OK. Or he has to see what it is they don’t like and persuade them that he has just the product to fix it. That’s the hardest thing about the job.
Now if you’re selling encyclopedias it’s obvious you’re selling people the idea that they can be what they want to be. But even if you’re selling vacuum cleaners you’re selling people the way they could be—they could be people who will clean their stairs and the furniture and curtains using appropriate attachments, instead of people who could save themselves a couple of hundred bucks by just borrowing a vacuum cleaner for Thanksgiving and Christmas from their next-door neighbors. You’re selling the chance to fix something that’s wrong. What you’re selling, basically, is the idea that there’s nothing wrong with the customer; maybe they don’t know as much as they should, or maybe they happen to live in a dirty house, but that’s just because they don’t have the one thing lacking to put it right.
What you’re selling, obviously, is the idea that if they don’t buy that one thing there is something wrong with them. They could put something right that needs fixing and they chose not to.
The reason it takes a salesman to do this is that left to their own devices most people will just drift along thinking I really should do something about that one of these days. That’s the way people are, and it takes a salesman to get them out of the rut and take some action to actually achieve their goals. It takes a salesman to show them that something they hadn’t thought of as a goal, such as reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica on a regular basis, could be a goal. An achievable goal. The longest journey starts with a single step. In this case, the step of buying the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
What this means is that a salesman is constantly confronted with the human capacity for self-deception. He has to recognize that most people will do just about anything rather than face up to the truth about themselves. That’s the hardest thing about the job.
He looked out to sea over the roof of the car. The waves threw down their veils of foam and drew them back, and the sandpipers ran piping over the glistening sand.
He thought: An animal has no shame.
It hunts what it eats and it eats it.
It shits when it needs to. It pees when it needs to. That’s why a parked car gets covered in bird shit. The bird doesn’t wait to find a bathroom. It doesn’t understand the concept of bathroom. It just goes when it needs to.
Then he started to think: But wait a minute, if you see a dog or a cat trying to shit while someone’s watching they look kind of embarrassed. And afterwards a cat will scrape dirt over it. Is that just because it’s left over from the days when the animal would be vulnerable to a predator, or a predator could track it, or something?
And the really interesting thing was that instead of getting side-tracked the way he usually did he just thought: Screw that.
In other words, when something was genuinely important he didn’t get side-tracked. There was something inside him that was able to tell when something was genuinely important.
The thing that was important was that animals have the instinct to mate and they do it without shame.
He thought: Humans do nothing without shame.
Even eating is shameful because it makes you fat. And some things are so shameful you can’t even use a word for them without swearing. You say “go to the bathroom” and “sleep with” because the actual words would be bad language.
What he was thinking, as he watched the sea and the birds, was Look how strong the impulse is! Because you can sell people just about anything if you can convince them it will give them a better chance to get sex. You can sell people just about anything if you can convince them it’s a substitute for sex. The only thing you can’t sell is the actual thing itself. That is, obviously people sell it, but you can’t sell it without shame.
Well, just look at how much time people
waste because they can’t get it without shame! Look how much time people waste in conversations, asking people about their interests. Look how much time people waste fantasizing. And just look at the risks people take! Because he had read about a case where a man had harassed a woman by dropping M&M’s in the pocket of her blouse and getting them out, and his firm had to pay her a million dollars. Or it might have been more.
Well, if people are willing to take those kinds of risks you know there’s got to be money in it. And if people are going to do things that put their company at that kind of risk there’s got to be money in it. Plus, if you could give people a way to get it out of their system they would be a whole lot more productive. They’d be happier about themselves. Because there had to be a lot of guys like himself, guys who didn’t want to be spending the amount of time they were spending thinking about sex, guys who given the chance would rather get it out of their system and concentrate their energies on achieving their goals.
Now the way he saw it was, gay men seemed to be able to get it out of their system without too much trouble. Their only problem was there were not that many of them around. But normal men could be in an office full of women without finding an outlet. You have to deal with people the way they are, not the way you’d like them to be, and unfortunately most women did not seem to have the same urges. Or if they did, they wouldn’t admit it. They probably didn’t, anyway. But if they did they wouldn’t admit it.
Because you have to deal with people the way they are, not the way you’d like them to be, and unfortunately most men tend not to respect women who have the same urges they have. Or even if a woman doesn’t have the same urges, but just provides an outlet, men tend not to respect her. Because if you take people the way they are, most men tend to see sticking their dick into someone as a form of domination. To be honest, if you take people the way they are, that’s what they like about it. It’s not just the physical sensation. That’s exactly why masturbation is so unsatisfactory. The physical sensation is pretty much the same. But the domination is all in your head.