Notebooks part 10 by Ron Steinman

• Posted by Roger on October 17, 2008
• 57 comments

I’m going to try out for a job as a pitchman. I’ll be selling who knows what in chain stores in New York and New Jersey. First I journey to Flushing to watch a pro in action, then to talk terms. I’ve got to watch two demonstrations to see if I can make it. Then I’ll see the boss man later in the week. My commission will be on gross sales. Strange feeling of freedom and river boat gambling, if I can handle the job. The souls of my parents and friends will curdle when they learn what their favorite college graduate is about to do.

June 15, 1955. New York. I saw the pitch and it was fascinating how my future boss handled the crowd. Beautiful and magical. Hell, it beats being an executive trainee, so I threw in with him and his crowd. With other future pitchmen I went back with him to his apartment on the Upper West Side where he briefed us on our new job. He gets the locations and works out the arrangements with the stores. He works in Woolworth and other chains. Tomorrow I go to Union City, New Jersey. I have to get a small fan because these stores are very hot. The air-conditioning doesn’t always work. We have to inventory the goods on and under the counter. The last guy who worked this pitch, did this job, cut out, quit, and Wayne doesn’t know if he stole anything. I must count all my combs and brushes. I have to estimate, as Wayne says, my bristles. I also have to get into the store’s public address systems. Wayne doesn’t supply a sound system. If I don’t have a sound system, I’ll kill my voice. He started lecturing us about speaking from our chests, not from our throats, less from our mouths. Enunciate clearly. Rid myself of my Brooklyn accent, though it isn’t as bad as some guys I know. If I get the p.a., I’ll have to turn it to the bass, then to two or three on the volume. We mustn’t blow out the store with our pitch, frighten customers away or anger the store manager. I have to call Wayne tomorrow night when I get back from the store and run a tally with him. I must work on my “balley,” the pitch. I have to use a full length mirror and watch myself talk. Some fun. The “balley” is the part of the spiel that brings the crowd to me. While doing my talk, I have to get in as many words and I can, and samples out as I can simultaneously. A one-armed paperhanger, my mother would say.

Pitch the shampoo and lanolin firmly. Hold the bottles aloft and gently. Fill the spiel with surprise. Sure. I shouldn’t move too fast or push too hard. I have to make the five minutes seem fast but filled with fun and facts. Wayne says I have to get a cloth other than black for the counter top. Black is too depressing. Black is a lousy color. Black isn’t even a color. Suddenly I’m also a clerk. I have to do everything for that man and he collects the money, no matter what. Remember to ask Wayne if the stock inventory has to be recorded and find out when he wants the sheet with all the numbers signed.

Get in touch with Dave in Easton to tell him what I’m doing with my honor’s degree in history, almost none of which is modern. Tudor-Stuart England is good preparation for a pitch man. Fun. He’ll chuckle through his glass of ale with the bizarre turn my post college life is taking.

June 18, 1955. I still feel strange putting something down on paper. It’s strange because it probably isn’t a natural act. It hurts when I have to read it back, especially when it isn’t very good. Really bad, like. But it keeps going from the pen to the page, especially when I’m riding the subway, eating in a diner, drinking at a bar. It’s worse when I read aloud. Then my writing has even less meaning. I look for the reason I write. I seek the answer to what propels me to write. Something is alive inside me that makes me want to create. When something makes no sense, it hurts then and it hurts later when I force myself to think of what I’ve done to the page, how I may have desecrated the white space between the lines.

All the small problems hang on as I do my best to hang in. They never borrow time. They present themselves time and again. Sure the big difficulties keep coming back, too, but they never really go away. They never disappear. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whoopee. The little obstacles often grow into bigger ones and fuse with each other, solder on porous metal. Together they make a whole, a unit of dense hopelessness. A damnable and absurd circle. A squared circle. All my emotions become stopped up, a drain plugged with debris. The water collects above the mesh screen and goes no further than its continuous, downward circle.

Why is there nothing, no one thing, I can be positive about? Perhaps when something starts to work itself out for me I can probably face myself and come to an agreement where I’m going, if I know where I’ve been.

Talk. I’m lonely for some talk with a woman of intelligence. Then again, maybe she should be everything except intelligent. But she should talk, anyway. Crap. That wouldn’t work. A thinking mind works best on a screw-happy body. Dream on. Unsatisfied curiosity, me, struggles to discover beauty, her. Somewhere. Anywhere. A kiss and something more. Or nothing else. A fleeting wisp bathed in bloody gore. What does that mean? A woman. A bull. Ping bang. Couples do come together. They produce. They create. They also can destroy anything in their path. They again, they etc. It’s always the same. The search never ends. In some ways it’s all life. It is fuming, big, fat abstraction. Here today, gone tomorrow. The ultimate cliché. Damn the cliché and balls ahead.

Speaking of that, I met a chick last night named Leslie from Chicago. She’s five feet two inches tall, weighs 112 pounds, is 34-23-35 and that isn’t bad. She has short black hair, bright blue eyes. We had a fine night. We met and we wasted no time getting to know each other. She was willing and helpful. Her body was warm and soft. Her nipples were firm, large and taut. Leslie’s scent was real, delicate, yet musty. She called herself a pseudo sentimentalist but she took me the first time quickly and anxiously. She yipped. I shouted. Then we drank from each other with all the thirst of dying people. Thank you, she said. She told me it is an inadequate way to express what she really feels. It is wonderful, I said. That’s what I felt. Wonder. It has been wonderful, she said, as she cupped my erection between her hands and guided it slickly between her legs, allowing it to ride deeply inside her as if it was jet propelled. When I left her, she told me she would be back. God it was good.

It happened in New York, New York, July 4, 1955. I’ll be dipped. Independence Day.

July 5, 1955. Leslie could be the one, but Chicago is a long way away, too far away. Thus, the only two chicks now on my mind live far away. The latest one is something more. I won’t explain. I cannot explain. But maybe I should try explaining. It’s amazing how everything about her lingers. Just fantasizing about her makes me hot, makes me want to come with little real effort, as if I ever needed much effort at all. Write her and try to keep it clean. Keep it honest, though, no matter what.

I’m at work in Union City. This lousy store is driving me crazy. I’ve sold hardly anything. People aren’t buying. At least they aren’t buying what I have to sell. Nothing is moving. Temperature outside is 93 degrees. It’s not much cooler inside. The air conditioning works sporadically. Shoppers are nowhere to be found. I’m dying here. I can’t make a buck. I can’t even make my nut. If the hot weather doesn’t subside, I’ll subside. I’m having a hard time taking the heat especially when I’m inside and dressed in a shirt and tie.

Letter to Leslie. Dear Leslie. ( Not a bad start.) Hi, nice people. I like nice people when they are better than almost anyone else I know. It may sound strange, but I miss you, though we spent so little time together. As I write this I’m on a bus trying to get back to New York from New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel. Thousands of cars crowd the roads. Too many passengers jam my bus. We can’t move in this horrendous traffic. It’s about 100 degrees outside and approaching that inside this metal coffin, my bus. It can’t get any worse. Gas fumes clog my mind. From where I sit I can’t see the sky. A thin film of blue plastic coats the windows to keep the glare of the sun from our eyes. But I know the sky is gray. Soot covers everything evenly. Everyone has a hand on his car horn—bleats and beeps and mechanical groans fill the air. We start moving again so I’ll complete this later when I’m home or sitting quietly in a gin-mill someplace in the real world I call, Brooklyn.

I’m restarting the letter to Leslie. It’s late at night. I don’t really know what to say. Last night I sat and wrote to you. One hour later much of this came but I won’t put it all down on paper because, well, I may say too much. You did things to me during those two days we were together. You were the brightest ray of light to shine on me in a long time. Then you had to leave. Suddenly you weren’t there. Though I knew you were leaving, you left me in a state of shock. Inside I became dark again. One more day with you and I would have been lost forever, permanently. I should be bold with you to get what I want. We were bold with each other. Hot buttered rum in July. Add just a pinch of salt. Dive in without hesitating. You are now too far from me. Our joined surfaces were all too briefly penetrated. We took a ride that was so marvelously sweaty that sometimes it was impossible to hold each other for very long. Each move we made was steamy and punctuated by our cries of joy. It’s more than I can express. A picture. A word. A scene. An event. So much so soon and it came so fast. All the words spill out. They crumble, pounding and trampling each other, compressing, bursting forth, emptying themselves on the page without apparent reason, without sense, without any purpose, but emptying themselves anyway.

I often act without thinking, think without acting. I’ve been writing some of this at work. It’s very slow today. I’m glad. I have a feeling I’ll lose money on this job. Not good. My mind is too full to think about pitching people some lousy, untested product for their hair. I wouldn’t use it on my hair. You had to come into my life and further complicate it. I’d be a fool to forget you, unless, of course, you told me to and then, even then, I might be at a point where I could not. I don’t think anyone else you know could spew so much over this plain white paper. I can’t hide my feelings toward you. Once I commit myself, it is impossible for me to go back on my word. Or hardly ever. My love to you and your love to me, if that’s possible. But you are there and I am here in desolate Union City, not even in New York.

I keep saying, forget it, forget it. Forget the night. Forget her. Deny Leslie’s existence. It doesn’t work, though. My problem is that I want you Leslie. I want to get to know you better, more, always. I want to know more about you, the whys, the wherefore’s, what makes you tick.

Leslie said “thank you for the evening” and she “wished me the best of everything.” Then she said “I will be back.” Somehow I doubt it.

July 6, 1955. I called Dave. He wants money, as usual. He needs money, as usual. Hell, so do I. I haven’t even earned bus fare.