Lightning Rods

Lightning Rods - By Helen DeWitt


HURRICANE EDNA

One way of looking at it is that it was just an unfortunate by-product of Hurricane Edna.

If you’re in sales you know that life has its ups and its downs. He was living in Eureka, Mo., a district he’d been given only because nobody else wanted it, and with reason. He was supposed to be selling the Encyclopaedia Britannica to people who simply couldn’t see how their lives would be transformed by instant access to the Micropaedia and the Macropaedia. He had been there six months and hadn’t made a single sale.

One day it occurred to him that the problem was he was selling something people could do without. How much better to sell something people knew they needed anyway! Something that didn’t make people give you weird looks! Something like vacuum cleaners. Because he just knew the problem wasn’t with him. The problem wasn’t even with the product. The problem was with the people.

He wasn’t the kind to let grass grow under his feet, so he walked straight into the nearest Electrolux office.

Geographically speaking, it might not have been an office most people would have identified as even in the vicinity. Asked to name a state that’s close to Missouri, very few people come up with Florida; those few tend to change their minds when they look at a map. Which just goes to show how easy it is to be misled by our assumptions, overlook the obvious, and jump to conclusions.

What most people assume is that you can answer a question like that just by looking at a map. And what they overlook is the fact that when you start a new job it’s important to give it everything you’ve got.

It’s important to give that new job 101%, 25 hours a day, 366 days a year. You simply can’t afford to have any distractions. If the reason you gave up your old job was that it was not sufficiently remunerative to enable you to meet your commitments, you may well find yourself with some debts which it would be distracting to deal with at this time. It’s absolutely vital to start the new job in an area where any difficulties you may have experienced in the past are unlikely to lead to unwelcome distractions. He needed to be based in a locality presenting no foreseeable distractions, and he selected the nearest Electrolux office which would enable him to meet that need, and he walked straight in.

When you’re in sales you’ve always got one thing to sell, and that’s yourself. He walked in and started talking about what he could do for Electrolux sales and they said You’re that good. All I ask is the chance to show what I can do, he said, and they said All right, hot shot, let’s see what you can do, and they gave him a district.

He familiarized himself with the product and moved to Eureka, Fla., and rented a trailer. The next day he got cracking.

By the end of the week he realized this was not going to be as easy as it looked. Because every single house he went to had the same story to tell. They already had an Electrolux, they’d bought it just after Hurricane Edna, and it was one of the best things they’d ever done. The customer would then insist on dragging out the faithful Electrolux and singing its praises. Yessir, the customer would say, reckon I’ll break down before this thing does.

In fact, the place was every salesman’s nightmare: a festering swamp of market saturation. A rep had come through and cleaned up in the wake of Hurricane Edna and every single item he had sold was still there in good working order.

He tried, obviously, to point out that time doesn’t stand still, enhancements had been introduced, but once again Hurricane Edna blew him out of the water. The customer would explain loyally that she wouldn’t dream of replacing her old model, you should have seen what we had to deal with, she would explain, the Electrolux had handled things you wouldn’t normally ask of a vacuum cleaner.

He managed to make one sale to someone who had just moved into the area.

The result was that he spent a lot of time in the trailer trying to get up the energy to go out. He would lie in bed with a magazine, or sometimes he would watch a video, or sometimes he used fantasies of his own.

His first fantasy was about walls. The woman would have the upper part of her body on one side of the wall. The lower part of her body would be on the other side of the wall.

Sometimes, in fact most of the time, the upper part of the body would be fully clothed. There would be nothing to show what was going on on the other side of the wall.

Sometimes the woman would be naked from the waist down. Most of the time she would be wearing a short tight skirt that could be pushed up and underpants that could be pulled down. Sometimes he would have trouble deciding whether it was better with or without the pants. The high point was pushing the skirt slowly up to reveal a firm, tight, unsuspecting ass. Later a cock would go in and the vantage point of the fantasy would shift to the other side of the wall, where you would not know from the fully clothed upper body of the woman that a cock was hard at work on the other side of the wall. For some reason or other she would need to pretend that nothing was happening.

The problem with the fantasy was that it was hard to get the wall right. Could she be leaning across the counter of a kitchen that opened into the dining room? But then you would see what was behind her. Could there be a roll-down blind? But why would it be rolled down? And anyway you would still be able to see. Could she be leaning out an upstairs window? A partially opened window with the blind down. She stuck her head out, say, to talk to a neighbor. The window was too stiff to open any higher. Meanwhile her lodger, say, comes up behind her, slides his hands up her thighs, slides up the tight skirt, gives her an unexpected bonus on top of the rent. From the vantage point of outside the window you would see her talking brightly to a neighbor—brightly but with a strained expression.

This was a solution that seemed to work at the time, and yet later he would feel dissatisfied, as if some essential ingredient of the fantasy had dropped out. Was the problem with the neighbor? Would it help if it was her boss? An important client? Or was the problem on the other side of the wall?

He would get up and go out and tackle another street. To be fair, he never once had anyone who didn’t look pleased to see him. He would go up to a door and ring the bell. Someone would come to the door, and there would be the usual initial hostility when they saw it was a salesman. One mention of the word Electrolux and it was a different story.

“Electrolux!” the target would exclaim. “Why didn’t you say? You just come right in. Now what can I get you? Coffee? Tea? A soda? Now can I interest you in something to eat? What would you say to a piece of pumpkin pie with ice cream? Or I’ve got a chocolate cake. Or how about some chocolate chip cookies?”

Half an hour later he would escape clutching as likely as not a little Ziploc bag of chocolate chip cookies in a sweating hand.

When he was a boy he used to wish every day was Halloween. There is an old Chinese saying: May your enemy’s wishes come true.

He would force himself to visit every single house on the street. Hours later, awash with coffee, stuffed with pumpkin, apple, cherry, pecan, chocolate meringue, lemon meringue, banoffee and blueberry pie, ears ringing with the praises of the Electrolux and stirring stories of its battles after Hurricane Edna, he would make his way back to the trailer, stopping only to pick up a magazine or two.

Back on the bed he would leaf rapidly through the magazines.

The problem was that the magazines never really had what he was looking for. Once in a while a magazine might show the naked bottom half of a woman cut off by a window. The problem was that the magazines never showed pictures of the clothed top half of a woman cut off by a window.

This was an area where you might expect videos to provide a better product, but in fact the videos also tended not to include the scenes where you saw the clothed half of the woman, or if they did the woman overacted so much it spoiled it.

He would lie on his side, hand jiggling quietly, trying to envisage the window, the skirt, the ass, the fully clothed upper body of a woman with a strained expression.

The funny thing about it was that at the time he felt really guilty about it. He kept thinking he should get up and go out and sell vacuum cleaners. He should get up and go out and make something of his life. It felt like he was just lying there wasting time. He kept doing it but he didn’t feel good about it. He was thirty-three years old and he had zip to show for it. And here he was lying in bed in the middle of the day not even masturbating effectively but just twiddling until he got the fantasy set up to his satisfaction. He didn’t feel good about it at all.

His feeling at the time was that the guy who had cleaned up after Hurricane Edna had probably been a completely different kind of guy. The kind of guy who goes out, buys a magazine, takes the magazine home, opens the magazine, looks at the tits of the month, jerks off, closes the magazine, and goes out and sells vacuum cleaners.

Sometimes he would lie there for fifteen minutes worrying about the roll-down blind and twiddling and he would think of the guy and he would think This has got to stop, I’m going to turn over a new leaf. How could he lie there for fifteen minutes worrying about the Goddamn roll-down f*cking blind? It was disgusting. So he’d get out the magazine and turn to a pair of tits backed by Miss April and get on with the show. And go out and try to move some product.

Which just goes to show how blinkered we can be by our preconceptions. Because little though he knew it, it was the hours he spent trying to sell vacuum cleaners that were the waste of time, something he would remember with shame and self-loathing for the rest of his life. His well-meant efforts to develop an efficient masturbatory program, likewise, were completely misconceived.

What he didn’t realize is that a genius is different from other people. A genius doesn’t waste time like other people. Even when he looks like he is wasting time he may in fact be making the most productive possible use of the time. In fact the only time a genius wastes time is when he tries to follow the rules and act like ordinary people.

What he didn’t realize was that all that time he spent twiddling and worrying about the roll-down blind would one day lead directly to a multi-million dollar industry that would improve the lives of millions of Americans.

Another fantasy was about a game show with three contestants with their upper bodies sticking through a hole in a wall. In the first part of the game, one contestant was penally challenged from behind. Panelists had to guess which. The contestants got points if the panelists guessed wrong. An inset in the screen showed the thrusting buttocks of a man giving the contestant the old Atchison Topeka. In the second stage of the game, any number could be involved, from zero (though this had never happened in the whole time he’d been watching the show), right on up to a full house (this was actually surprisingly common). The panelists had to guess how many, and which ones.

Each panelist got to ask questions, or set tests. The panelist then made a decision on the basis of the behavior of the contestants during the questions, and made his or her guess.

After a while one of the contestants started to get a personality. She was a consecutive winner for twenty shows. She wore a pink jacket and immaculate pink lipstick and make-up, and she had dark hair in a hairsprayed permanent. People looked at the heaving buttocks in the inset and they couldn’t believe that someone that cool could possibly be getting the full-service 24-hour Revco from the rear. Then after she won the round the MC would say Let’s just see that amazing performance again.

In her final play-off one of the panelists, a real bitch, said she’d like to see her put on nail polish. She took a bottle of pink nail polish and started on her nails, and everybody watched, and her nails were absolutely perfect. It turned out later that this was one of the times when all three contestants were getting the old Triple Jeopardy. One kept smearing her nail polish, and one dropped the bottle, but Suzie just kept quietly finishing her nails.

Afterwards the MC said: I’ve never seen anything like it. I take my hat off to you. Let’s just see that again.

The screen divided in half, on one half the heaving buttocks on the other Suzie quietly painting her nails.

MC: Well, I see it and I still don’t believe it. What’s your secret?

Suzie: That’s my secret.

He really liked her. And he always played fair. It was all right to replay highlights of her game career. But she’d won her million fair and square; she didn’t have to play the game again, and he never brought her into any new episodes. Sometimes he’d think of her, out in the world, in her pink suit, with a million to blow. She did what she had to do, and then she did what she wanted to do.

He often wondered whether other men did this. Did they have participants that developed personalities? Did they have a sense of humor? Was there a story that developed over several episodes?

And being a salesman he could not stop analyzing in a really micro obsessive nitty-gritty way what got him off. It’s not what you see it’s what you know. Because it wasn’t the bare buttocks or the thrusting cock into a tight wet cunt but Suzie in her pink jacket painting her nails that sent Old Faithful skyward every time.

For a while, anyway, he went on rerunning favorite episodes in Suzie’s brilliant career, looking in once in a while on current episodes just to see how things were going and then going out from time to time when he felt like a piece of homemade pumpkin pie with ice cream.

Then one day he noticed that the game was rigged.

For some reason he hadn’t noticed it before, but once you knew what to look for you couldn’t miss it. The contestants varied, but there was always one with platinum blonde hair and pink lipstick and big tits in a tight top who had no self-control whatsoever. The thing was a joke. The MC would start the game and suddenly the girl’s eyes would widen and her pink mouth would open with this ostentatious Oh my God, there’s a cock up my twat kind of expression.

Is anything the matter? the MC would say in a syrupy voice and the girl would say No and then suddenly catch her breath or bite her lip or widen her eyes just to make sure everyone knew what was going on. How obvious can you get?

And the MC would say OK, we’ll get on with the show then. Panelists, our stud for this session was Mr. Body for Arkansas four years running. As I speak Clint is giving one of the girls the kind of workout only a serious bodybuilder can provide. Let’s have a quick look at the service offered by Clint, and there would be an inset of the thrusting buttocks.

Well, that’s one bodybuilder who thinks there are no holds barred, he’d say, and the studio audience would laugh. Ladies and gentlemen, your job is to decide which of our lovely ladies is enjoying this magnificent stallion of a man. Heloise, it’s your turn to ask the first question.

And the blonde girl would whimper or shout Oh my God and the panel would laugh. Sometimes the panel wouldn’t take it seriously. It would be absolutely obvious what the answer was but they’d laugh and guess wrong on purpose.

Sometimes he could enjoy it anyway and sometimes it was just irritating. They were only doing their job but sometimes it irritated him anyway, and he missed the days before he realized the whole thing was a set-up.

One day he lay on his side on the bed and they had yet another of these blondes on the show. He lay there wondering where they got them all. The studs today were three guys who were putting themselves through college. They had called the studio’s 800 number in the aftermath of a frat party and left their names and when they got the follow-up call they all thought Shit. But in the end they agreed to go on the show because it was something different and because people only saw you from behind and because it was something to say you’d done, and because of the money. Would they do it again?

Jeff: No way. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed myself today, it’s been a really unique experience and it certainly will be something to look back on, I’ll say that, but I don’t think I’d want to make a regular thing of it.

Shane (laughing): Is that an offer?

MC (laughing): No.

Duane: Well, the way I see it, Mike, there’s a whole lot more goes into this than meets the eye.

MC (laughing): You can say that again! (studio audience laughs)

Duane: No, but seriously. On the one hand, you’re there to do a job. It’s up to you to take a professional approach. But on the other hand, it’s important to have a good time. So would I do it again? Sure I would. Because there’s no way you can bring everything to the game that it’s possible to bring, on your first time on the show. And the other thing I’d like to say is, I’d just like to say thank you to all the girls, it was a pleasure to work with them and they definitely made it a day to remember.

Joe lay with his head on his arm. His hand, he realized, was holding a limp, wilted dick. Jesus, he thought. Jesus. This was exactly the problem. What was it with him? He was the type of guy to go out and try to sell vacuum cleaners and end up eating twenty f*cking pieces of pumpkin f*cking pie. Jesus.

He pulled a magazine out from under the bed, opened it to the central spread, stared narrow-eyed at the girl’s tits and jerked off. Jesus.

He got up off the bed, zipped up his pants, and went outside to sit on the steps.

“Look, Joe,” he said. “Things can’t go on like this. Do you hear what I’m saying? This can’t go on.”

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 f*ck 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 a*shole 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.”