A Dialogue, With Commentary
I would like to congratulate the good people at Blogger for tweaking the way comments work in order to make it more user-friendly.

I would also like to invite all the people who tried to shame me into using HaloScan to bite me. I knew if I only stayed the course of not doing anything at all, Blogger would some day come around and rescue me from Comment hell. Or maybe they wouldn't have. Either way.

And now today's little drama. This is a true story, as it happened to me yesterday.

[Doorbell rings. Dog barks crazily, charges the door. I go to answer it, followed by my 21-month old. I hold the dog by the collar and open the door. Behind the screen is an African-American man, roughly my age, wearing a back-pack. He seems very happy about something. He regards the restrained dog. I don't tell him she only wants to lick his face.]

GUY: Whoa! She doesn't like soul food, does she? [laughs hysterically at his own joke]

[A ha! A salesman.]

ME: Uh, no.

GUY: I'm not here to move in with you or anything, I just need a second of your time. Here you go.

[He passes me a brochure through the opened screen door. I forget to read it. This is the point where I am never quite sure what to do. I know I'm not going to buy anything so I don't want to waste his time or mine, but I'm not a slam-the-door-in-someone's-face type. Plus, I don't have a shotgun.]

GUY: Hey Dad [this is where he starts calling me 'Dad'. I don't tell him I prefer 'Pops'], do you already have some [product name I've never heard of and can't recall... some kind of spray cleaner]?

ME: Uh... no.

GUY: Well Dad, lemme tell you, your neighbors loved it. You've heard of Michael Jackson?

ME: Eeeee-yeah.

GUY: This is what he used to get himself white. [laughs hysterically at his own joke again]

[At this point he produces a nasty, formerly white rag, soaking wet. He marks it with a ballpoint, sprays it with something out of a bottle, then rubs it with the bottle nozzle. The ink marks are mostly still there, but it's hard to tell on the dingiest rag I've ever seen in my life.]

GUY: Look at that. It can clean anything.

[This is where I start looking for the exit from this conversation.]

ME: Look, I don't think I'm going to buy anything today.

[I can almost swear I can hear a click! as he downshifts from the soft sell to the hard sell.]

GUY: I wish I could win the lottery and get a house like this instead of living in the projects.

[It occurs to me that this is not going to end well.]

GUY: This company gives guys like me a chance to sell soap instead of dope. Listen: if you had a product that could clean everything, would you use it?

[The answer to this question is obviously "Yes", but mostly out of laziness. Usually if something gets spilled, I just rub it with whatever's handy until it goes away. A rag, my shirt, the baby, whatever. But I don't want to encourage him.]

ME: I'm sorry, I'm just not interested.

[Another click! He points at me through the half-closed screen.]

GUY: I'm going to need that brochure back.

ME: Sure thing. Good luck.

[He snatches the wrinkly old brochure away and stomps off. As he's leaving he says loudly:]

GUY: That's a deadbeat dad right there.

And... scene.

I don't get a lot of chances to be insulted or called random names by people who don't know me, so it was kind of exciting. He didn't yell or threaten or do anything to scare my kids, so it wasn't really that traumatic overall. It was kind of shocking.

I think the most interesting thing about it is that he looked at my house and made all kinds of assumptions about who I am and what I do and where I come from. I wondered for a second if he was sort of angry with the neighborhood in general because we're a bunch of stingy bourgeois white folks, but you have to go down a block or two to find another white family in my neighborhood. And it's not like we're all a bunch of fat-cat retirees and executives. One of my neighbors is a nanny, another owns a small business, most of the rest are office drones.

I spent the most of the rest of the day feeling kind of agitated and defensive. I think it's finally starting to sink in: oh lordy, I'm upper middle class! I'm used to being around people my wife works with, nearly all of whom make more money than we do as a family. It never really occurs to me that there are people who might regard me and mine with any kind of envy or resentment.

As a bleeding-heart liberal, I suppose I should feel guilty and apologize for not living hand to mouth. But you know what? Fuck that guy. I've tried scraping out a living on less money than can actually support a human being, let alone a family. It sucks and I ain't going back.

Just to show him, for the next couple of days he's going to be the main character in my recurring violence/revenge fantasies. It will break my dad's heart to know he's been replaced, but don't worry dad, it's only temporary. Just like the guy who was an asshole to me at the printing shop that one time, this one will come and go and I'll go back to imagining kicking your ass very very soon.

EPILOGUE

[It's 8:30 pm. My wife is working until 10 pm, the kids are in bed and I just got out of the shower. I'm at the kitchen table, working on writing something for the first time in nearly a year. The wind is screaming outside ahead of a storm rolling in. Bing! The doorbell rings. The dog barks and charges the door (again). I check the peep-hole, but my porch light is off, the screen is in the way and our street-light burnt out two days ago. I can't see anything. I go back to the table and back to work. If it was the same spray-cleaner salesman come to murder me for not buying anything, I apologize for ruining your plansfor me twice. Better luck next time.]


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.5


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 11:17 AM