Lightning Rods (4 page)

But the thing to remember was that some women were prepared to provide an outlet, in
spite
of all the aggro, if the money was right. And lots of guys were prepared to pay, in spite of the aggro. And what the aggro boiled down to, if you thought about it, was the shame of being known to be the person who had been involved. That was why prostitution was so degrading. A prostitute knew that somebody knew she was a prostitute. So whatever else she did with her life, there was always the chance that it would come back to haunt her. And likewise, even if nobody else knew, a man knew that a prostitute knew that he had been to a prostitute.

If you could work out a way to offer anonymity you would have a solution to a disaster that made Hurricane Edna look like a variable breeze.

Now the night before, sitting on the steps, he had thought of a way to offer anonymity and he had decided he was crazy.

What he thought now was: An animal knows no shame.

In other words, the reason he had decided he was crazy was just because he was human. A salesman knows you have to deal with yourself as you are, and that includes a tendency to be ashamed to sell things that society has decided are shameful.

Well, the question to ask yourself is, are they right? And in this case the answer had to be no. A physical urge is a physical urge. What’s shameful is to look the other way and let the devil take the hindmost, instead of dealing with it responsibly. Because the fact was, these unsatisfied urges were causing an incredible amount of wastefulness and suffering. Women were being molested in the workplace solely because their colleagues did not have a legitimate outlet for urges they could not control. Men who had worked hard and who had a valuable contribution to make were being put at risk, through no fault of their own. And it was shame, false shame, that had kept people from dealing effectively with the situation.

Humans are animals, he thought. All these instincts, these incredibly powerful instincts, are just thwarted by all these taboos. If you can break through some of those taboos
for
people, there’s got to be money in it. A
lot
of money. But the money is big because those taboos are so strong. Do you have what it takes to break through that, Joe? Do you have what it takes to look someone in the eye when they’re thinking it’s disgusting? Because the thing is, Joe, a big idea is ahead of its time. That’s
why
there’s money in it. It’s going to be a long, long time before people catch up with you. If they ever do. You’ve got to know you’re right, because they sure as hell won’t. People are going to give you a lot of grief. A
lot
of grief. So if you can’t take it, Joe, let’s call it quits right here and now.

What he thought was: I don’t know if I have what it takes or not. I’ve never really been tested. I’ve never had the chance to find out what I’m capable of. But I know one thing. It’s one thing to try, and do your best, and fail. All you can ever do is give something your best shot, and sometimes that’s just not enough. But it’s another thing to not even try. This is the first time I’ve had a chance at something really big. If I just walk away from it, what does that make me?

“Look, Joe,” he said. “Let’s not get too serious here. I’m not saying it won’t be a lot of work. But it should be a lot of fun, too. Are you having such a good time selling vacuum cleaners? And OK, you may get some funny looks. But just try to see the humor in it. Besides, at the end of the day, you’re doing everybody a favor. That’s something to feel good about. So just do the best you can, and remember, if it all goes horribly wrong, you can always shoot yourself.”

He was grinning. He slipped off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants, and he walked up the cool soft sand of the low bank beside the road, and then down onto the beach. The sand near the road was choppy, warm where the sun hit it, cool where the hollows were in shade. Then the sand was firm and ribbed, and then it was flat and wet.

The line of pelicans was coming back along the waves. He watched them, shading his eyes.

“Look at those beautiful birds,” he said. “Is there one single thing wrong with them, Joe? Does a pelican have one single thing to be ashamed of?”

He was walking along in the shallow water. He turned to face the sea and put his hands around his mouth.

“
MY NAME IS JOOOOOOOOE
!” he shouted. “Yabba dabba
DOOOOOOOOOOO
!”

SO LONG ELECTROLUX

The first thing he did was he returned the Electrolux and its accessories.

“Well if it isn’t the hot shot!” The head of the sales reps was in a meeting. His secretary had been interrupted in the middle of a book by Danielle Steel and was none too pleased at having to break off and check the vacuum cleaner back in.

“Not such a hot shot after all, I guess,” he said.

The girl was looking at him mockingly.

“I guess I just don’t have what it takes.”

He said this with a quiet conviction that is rare in salesmen.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” the girl said. She was still looking at him mockingly, but there was a kind of undercurrent of sympathy.

“Now the guy who was there before me was a real operator,” said Joe.

“Believe me, I know,” said the girl.

“If you ever want some testimonials for the product, you should talk to some of the people there. They’ve all got these stories about how it saved their life after Hurricane Edna.”

“Yeah, we keep getting letters from them. That’s why I’m saying, don’t be too hard on yourself. Billy Graham couldn’t have sold a vacuum cleaner in Eureka. Billy Graham could have gone door to door telling people he had vacuum cleaners that were personally endorsed by Jesus K. Christ, and he would not have sold one single one. Ed has a kind of mischievious sense of humor is all. If he’d have given you the chance to show what you could do in some other district it might have been a different story.”

“Well, it may turn out to be a blessing in disguise,” said Joe. He was looking at the girl. His eyes kept being drawn to her breasts and then he would smoothly keep moving his gaze on as if it had just happened to travel past her breasts en route to checking out the pencil sharpener. He’d spent a lot of time on his own, after all. This kind of thing must happen all the time when the sales reps came in after a long time on the road. “Do you have much trouble with sexual harassment in your job?” he asked.

“What?” said the girl.

“With the sales reps, maybe? They spend all that time on the road and I just wondered if you ever had any problems.”

“Well, it’s not a job for shrinking violets if
that’s
what you mean,” said the girl. “But the way I see it is, and this is no disrespect to you, it takes a certain type of personality to succeed in sales. And it takes a certain type of personality to be able to deal with that type of personality. If you look at the skills, there’s a lot of people could do my job. But what it really boils down to is being able to deal with people. You have to be able to give as good as you get. There’s things about the job that would bother a lot of people. But that’s taken account of in the package they offer. The way I see it is, I’m quite a strong person. If I can get a salary that takes that into account, why would I want to settle for a job that doesn’t need those strengths?”

One of the things that’s perennially fascinating about the world is the way people sell things to themselves. If people feel the need to sell something to themselves, that tells its own tale.

“That’s very interesting,” said Joe. “But doesn’t it ever get to you? What I mean is, just suppose for the sake of argument that a guy like me, a guy you
know
is never going to make it to the top, comes up to you at the Xerox machine and does something inappropriate. Drops some M&M’s in the pocket of your blouse and tries to get them out. What would your reaction be?”

“Well, if you’ve ever had a secret ambition to sing with the sopranos I suggest you try it and see.”

“But say a top sales rep, say
the
top sales rep did something like that. You might have feelings about it that you would not feel free to express in the way you would to a guy who was not in that kind of position.”

“I see what you’re saying,” she said. “But the way I look at it is, every job has its drawbacks. You can make yourself miserable dwelling on them and thinking if you go elsewhere you’re going to find the perfect job. The fact is there
is
no perfect job.
The
perfect job does not exist. People are people. Any job you go to, you’re always going to find people. And the way I look at it is, let’s say somebody steps out of line. You’ve got to keep a sense of proportion about these things. I don’t care
what
he’s making, I don’t care
how
many Goddamn vacuum cleaners he shifts, he can’t
force
me to do anything I don’t want to. As long as we’re here during office hours I don’t have to do anything not specifically covered by my job description. And as soon as I leave the building my time is my own.”

“Well, there’s a lot in what you say,” said Joe.

But what he was thinking was this. A guy could be the top earner in a company and have a house and a car to reflect that, but when it came to something our instincts have programmed us to want more than almost anything else you can name he was basically no better off than Joe Schmoe.

If he wanted an outlet for his sexual urges he would have to invest the time talking to someone about her interests, with no guarantee that anything would come of it, or he would have to go home and jerk off to a magazine or video, or he would have to pay someone, with all the risks that entailed. But how much time does the top earner in a company realistically have to talk to someone about her interests? If he hires someone, on the other hand, a guy in that kind of position has a lot to lose. He has a reputation that can be damaged. What real choices does he have? If he’s at the office he can’t even put M&M’s down somebody’s blouse. Let alone get any kind of real sexual satisfaction. And a guy like that is going to be spending a lot of time on the job. He works his butt off and at the end of the day he can go home to a magazine. Just like Joe Schmoe sitting on his butt all day in a trailer.

If you’re Joe Schmoe in the trailer you tend to think if you got off your butt and got your act together you could have real girls just like the ones in the magazines. You wouldn’t have to do anything. They’d be yours for the asking. Well if it was actually
like
that you wouldn’t get guys trying to get off on behaving suggestively in the office.

Well, if you have a situation where the top earner in a company
still
can’t get what he wants, and where he can jeopardize his career trying to
get
what he wants, jeopardizing the profits of the
company
in the
process
, you
know
there’s got to be money in it.

“Well, I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” said Joe.

“What are your plans?” said the girl.

Joe was standing in front of her desk. Behind her desk the wall was a floor-to-ceiling mirror, with potted rubber plants along the base. In the mirror, between the rubber plants, he could see a guy wearing a tired brown polyester suit. It wasn’t rumpled or wrinkled because that’s the whole point of polyester. But it wasn’t crisp, either, because polyester does not have it in it to be crisp. The guy was standing there among the plants with this suit wilting on his shoulders. If a guy like that came up to you and tried to sell a vacuum cleaner you might feel sorry for him and offer him a piece of pumpkin pie, but you would not buy a vacuum cleaner. If a guy like that came up to you and made an innovative suggestion for rewarding the top earners in your company you would reject it out of hand. He was just the kind of guy you’d
expect
to come up with the kind of dirty idea that was totally inappropriate to your company.

“I’m going to buy a new suit.”

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Joe was the first to admit that he made a lot of mistakes when he started out. He worried about all the wrong things. The way he looked at it at first was, take it slow, build up gradually. So the first thing he decided to try, if you can believe it, was a kind of office-orientated version of Spin the Bottle.

But one thing he got right was that it was important to look good. In the trailer he had only seen himself in the bathroom mirror that he used to shave in. Seeing himself in the office mirror had come as a shock. In fact it had made him wonder whether he had actually been sane when he bought that suit in the first place. Why would
anybody
buy a shit-colored suit? Why would that have seemed even
momentarily
a good idea? All right, it was on sale at the time. Originally a $99.99 suit, it had been reduced to $49.99 with choice of tie. But wouldn’t you think you would at least
wonder
why they hadn’t been able to sell it at $99.99? Wouldn’t you think you would look at it and think Oh, I’ll bet the reason they couldn’t sell it at $99.99 was that nobody wanted to buy a suit that went with their turds. But no, he’d just gone in and said, “Hey! $49.99! And it fits! And it’s 100% polyester so it won’t get wrinkled!”
Jesus
.