Cleaned Out
This is a dismal story -- the kind of story that is the result of a vague impulse and an even vaguer execution. Which begs the question: "Why in God's name would anyone read past such an assertion?"
And yet, of course, I hope you do. Because my wife has threatened to leave me if I don't become a happier fellow, and this threat still means something to me. It would make me happy if you read my little story. I have always thought of myself as a writer, although many things have come between myself and actually sitting down and writing something of merit. Laziness, mainly. We don't have any kids, and I don't spend any more time at work than I have to. Well, to cut to the chase, I saw this woman on Oprah Winfrey who said that if you wanted to be a writer you should be a writer. Just write an hour a day, then you're a writer, she said.
So, here goes. This story is from a long time ago, when I lived very differently than I do now. Back then I liked to think that I didn't give a shit about anything.
My roommate and I were hanging around our basement apartment watching television when the sound of the phone ringing disturbed our morning stupor. Neither of us was particularly keen to answer -- who wants to know the kind of people who call before noon? -- but after much pointed staring back and forth I finally decided to get it. A female voice asked to speak to the lady of the house. For a minute I conjured up an image to go with the voice -- she would be dark-haired and have a prominent forehead. She would not be what you think of as conventionally beautiful -- her features were a little out of whack -- but she was certainly striking. I was dreamy then and I still am now.
"There is no lady in this house," I replied.
"Well, then, could I trouble you for a few minutes of your time, sir?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Well, sir, what I'd like to talk about today is a golden opportunity, a chance for you to trade in your present vacuum cleaner for the very latest in vacuum technology."
"I'm sorry, but we don't even have a vacuum cleaner."
"Well, just by answering this call you've become eligible to win an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii!"
Not being a complete dork, I didn't bite on this one. But she kept on, interpreting my silence as permission to continue.
"I'm completely serious -- as a part of our promotion I am authorized to give away thousands in prizes to people such as yourself."
"So what do I have to buy?"
"You don't have to buy anything -- all you have to do is allow one of our representatives to give you a demonstration of our product and the prize is yours."
"But what if no one at this address has any desire to buy a vacuum cleaner?"
"Look sir -- you're under no obligation to buy anything. I personally gain nothing if you choose to do so. I merely get paid for arranging home visits for our sales representatives. I'm paid an hourly rate and a bonus for every home visit I arrange."
"So I'm helping you earn a buck if I have your salesman come and clean my rug?"
"That's right sir -- and you do win a prize. Exactly what that is will be determined during the home visit."
"Okay then -- have one of your guys come over. But warn him we're unemployed students and he hasn't got a chance of making a sale."
When I got off the phone my roommate wanted to know what the hell had come over me: "What are you thinking, inviting some kind of salesman over? We don't have money to eat, for Chrissake."
"Yeah, I know. But I thought I was doing the woman on the phone a favor -- and she said we get some kind of prize just for letting the salesman in the door."
It's not as if we were what you would consider gullible types -- unless what you were selling was fancy continental systems of despair. In fact, we prided ourselves on being a couple of real cynical cats -- way too cynical to care about vacuuming our rug even if we could afford to.
Although we were without jobs, it's not as if we couldn't have found work if we had really wanted to. But the social mores of those times, the early 1980s, were such that even semi-educated young people like us were not expected to take jobs that we thought were beneath us. I had taken a shot at the young entrepreneur thing earlier that summer. Seduced by the idea of being my own boss I tried my hand at selling fruit, but even though I would have thought my location was prime (right in front of a small, exclusive mall on Calgary's prosperous southwest shopping strip), I just couldn't seem to make a buck at it. Ended up eating nothing but cherries for about a week there, then one miserable morning, wracked with stomach cramps, I up and quit. After that fiasco a few vague threats were sufficient to get my mom to cover my share of the rent, with a little left over for pizza and dope.
My roommate hadn't even bothered to look for a job. It wasn't like his parents were rich (I think his father worked in a supervisory position in a public utility), but he had some kind of youngest kid prodigy all-hopes of the family riding on him guilt thing going, and he wasn't expected to sully his exalted being with anything as coarse and demeaning as labor. The previous summer his father had got him on some cushy program the utility had set up specifically for the purpose of providing summer employment for the children of senior employees, but the Kid Lizard found even this too much for his profoundly melancholic soul. So he had spent most of the summer smoking and pretending to read The Pocket Nietzsche.
So essentially we inhabited that strange subcultural configuration some hip Marxist referred to as ClassX -- although our finances would surely place us in the underclass and our family backgrounds were strictly middle-class, we considered ourselves classless intellectuals and maybe even artists of a sort. Not that we did anything that might be construed as actual artistic production -- no, that would be too much like work. Rather we liked to sit around and deconstruct whatever happened to be on the television, pleased with just how nihilistic we could be.
We didn't eat very well, never exercised, and rarely left our basement suite except to go out drinking. So we started to look forward to having a vacuum cleaner salesman come over in the same way we might look forward to the broadcast of a particularly loathsome mini-series -- as an event that would give our capacities for irony a real workout.
It was early Saturday morning when the salesman showed up. Well -- eleven o'clock in the morning was pretty early for us in those days. Funny thing was -- the salesman looked nearly as bad as us. It was a pretty pathetic scene unfolding -- a bunch of guys who belonged in a sanitarium trying to engage in a primitive mercantile relationship. The salesman set to work in an atmosphere of utter gloom. He glanced over our place and set to work vacuuming the few carpeted surfaces we had, and then started to clean off the couch. He took out the special demonstration bag to show us just how much stuff came off the couch, and gave that old saw about dust being nine-tenths dead human epidermal a play for effect. We tried to look a little interested, if only not to completely demoralize the poor guy. Eventually he had to get to his pitch. I could see him trying to work himself up to it, like he didn't really want to but was compelled by some salesman's code of ethics or something.
"Boys, I think you can see just what this machine can do for you. You buy this baby and you'll never need another vacuum for the rest of your life. Just look at all the crap you've been leaving on the couch. Do you want to be sitting around in your own detritus the rest of your days?"
"I'm quite happy sitting in my own detritus, as you so aptly put it," replied the Kid.
"But what about when you have visitors, especially ones of the female persuasion? Don't you think they might be impressed by a clean couch?"
"We don't get many female visitors here, and the ones we do get don't give a shit whether our couch is clean or not. Usually they just want to know if we've got any dope."
"Everyone needs a vacuum -- it's a necessary part of modern life."
"We've been getting along without one just fine. Furthermore, and I think you will have to admit that this point is the most pertinent to our little discussion here, neither of us has any money. Just look around you. Look at the place where we live. Does this look like the home of people who can afford a thousand bucks for a vacuum?"
"But you're students, right? No doubt your parents have money. If you could get one of them to co-sign an agreement I could arrange financing for you."
"Are you out of your mind? Do you think either of us is going to hit up our parents for a vacuum? Man, if I was going to make a pitch it'd be for a semester in Mexico."
I had just been sitting watching the Kid and the salesman go back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match. It was clear that the salesman wasn't getting anywhere, and after a while he had to admit it too. And then, out of the blue, he turned to me and said,
"Hey, want to smoke a joint?" Happy.
The salesman squatted down in front of the coffee table and extricated a little bag of weed he had scrunched up in his front pocket. He rolled a joint with little ceremony, lit it up and passed it my way. I took a hit and passed it to the Kid.
"Good weed," said the Kid.
"Yeah. A friend gets it for me."
It was potent stuff, and I was soon in the grips of a powerful buzz. The salesman had it in his mind to make one last desperate pitch: "C'mon you guys -- why the hell did you have me over here if you don't want a vacuum?"
"We're getting a prize, aren't we?" said the Kid.
"Yeah, you get a prize. What is the number the guy on the phone gave you?"
I checked over by the phone and found the slip of paper where I'd written a fourteen digit number. I handed it to the salesman and he checked it against a list he produced from his folder.
"Well, it looks like you fellas have won yourself this beautiful set of kitchen knives," he said, reaching into his bag for a plastic package.
The knives were cheap Taiwanese jobs with black plastic handles. They looked like they'd be broken in a week.
"What about our trip to Hawaii?" the Kid piped up.
"Did you really think you were going to get a trip to Hawaii out of this?" the salesman replied.
"Not really, but that's what the woman on the phone said."
"That's just to get the customer interested, to help get the greed-reflex going."
"I guess we figured as much. So you give away a lot of these crappy knives?"
"A ton. And most people are happy to get them. It's still something for nothing --and they get their carpets cleaned for free. Every now and then I actually sell one of these babies. Crazy thing is that usually the people who buy one are those who can least afford it. People on welfare, old ladies on their own, that sort. People so grateful for any kind of human contact, they're willing to pay for it. Buying something makes them feel powerful, like they're giving something back. Bottom line is -- they're not quite up to saying no to a guy like me when I'm on a roll."
"I'm sorry we wasted your time."
"Don't worry about it. I'm feeling okay about it since we got high."
"Cool."
"Now you sure you don't want to buy one of these things?"
The salesman hung out for a while, and then left us with a set of cheap knives and a crappy little story.
I don't speak to the Kid anymore. We lived together for a year or two after this and got fed up with each other the way roommates will. Eventually he made a pass at my girlfriend when I was out of town, and this provided a convenient rationale for dissolving the relationship. We still have some friends in common though, and I monitor his progress in life through them. Sometimes I wonder if he does the same, but mainly I just don't care.
He got on with Canada Post, and now he delivers the mail to a downtown office building. I used to think that would be my dream job -- I'd bust my ass, get done my route before noon and spend the rest of my days writing. But some perverse character flaw has led me to pursue a career that earns me the respect of people I think are idiots. And my wife thinks I'm a miserable bastard.
I still have one of the knives. It's not the first one I reach for when there's a grapefruit to be halved, but if all my other ones are in the dishwasher I'll use it. And it does the job just fine.