Sales, Continued

As I've probably mentioned before, I got into sales - the way I've made my living, for better or worse, since about 1982 - by accident. I had been refinishing furniture for a man named John Knight, who owned several furniture stores on College Avenue, but after my main partner in that venture had moved to Oregon, I found the work lonely and more difficult. So when the manager of one of John K's stores decided to do something else, John offered me the job, because 1) I literally knew the furniture inside and out, and liked talking to people, and 2) he sensed I would work cheap.

True and true.

As a couple of years passed, and especially after my first child was born, I realized I was not going to make the kind of money I needed by selling furniture, and took my friend Andy's invitation to apply for a sales job at ComputerLand. Twenty-five years later, I'm still in technology sales, because I still find technology interesting, and the money can be good. (Except when it's not).

But why sales in the first place?

A few reasons. 1) There are always sales jobs available. Seriously. Just check any job web site - or even the classifieds in a newspaper. "Now Hiring - Sales". I didn't say they were GOOD jobs. But they're available. 2) I had no other training. I have a Bachelor's in Creative Writing - Plan A was to be a famous writer. When I realized I lacked the discipline to isolate myself and write for hours each day, and I started playing in a band, Plan B was to be famous musician.

(I never said they were well-thought-out plans).

But maybe the key reason was, I somehow sensed that there was less kissing of the corporate ring involved in being a salesperson, since your work is so objectively quantifiable; as long as you make or exceed your numbers, you're usually left alone.

And that is still the reality, overall. What I underestimated, going in, was that making your numbers is not just a result of your skill as a salesperson. If you represent a badly-run organization, or if the economy stalls or dips, you can do everything right and still fail.

I know more about this than I wish I did.

And I still feel some serious pangs that Plans A and B did not pan out. But despite all this, I still take pride in my sales skills, because, when it all comes together and you're closing, it's a kind of magic. Something is happening because you MADE it happen.

Memory, Empathy, The Future

When Michael Jackson died, a lot of people felt a great deal of pain and loss, but, with no disrespect, I was not one of them. Though I thought the tunes on the early 80's albums had some great beats, and the videos were a lot of fun, I never felt truly excited about any of it, and to this day, the only stuff of his that really rings in my heart is the early Jackson Five songbook: "I Want You Back", "ABC"....you get the picture.

Plus there was the whole matter of his very public and visible mental illness, over so many years. Even people who were heartbroken over his death weren't what you'd call surprised.

Nevertheless, when Michael died, there was a tremendous outpouring of reflections on what he and his music meant to people. And though I was not among the bereaved, I could at least understand it on some level.

What began to irritate me, though, beyond the ghoulish death cult aspect - which, to be fair, ain't exactly a new phenomenon - was the outlandish hyperbole of some of the praise, statements like, "he was the greatest singer and dancer who ever lived."

Really? My initial good will began to grow thin.

Then a memory came to me - and like many of the more compelling ones, it rose up from the deeps without warning; clear, detailed, and solid as a swinging fist:

December, 1980. Typical Bay Area winter; not too cold after the morning haze burned away, most days; I was living with the woman I loved,  who would be my wife in a couple more years; we were both working steady and money wasn't too tight, so we could keep our car running, and even hit a movie or a decent restaurant when we liked. A lot to be thankful for.


But the band I'd been in for a couple of years - and had grown really fond of - had moved away, and in fact most of my gang of musical brethren had left the area. With help, I would eventually put new musical projects together, but at that point, I felt a great hole in my life, and at times I felt just like a ghost.


Tom Dunn, my long-time friend and the bassist for my now ex-band had taught me how to strip, rebuild, and refinish old oak chairs and benches, and we'd had a decent little piecework business that we'd been operating out of the ground floor of a decrepit rental property owned by the dealer whose furniture we were working on. It was a good two-person process; one of us would strip the old varnish or paint off the chairs while the other would clean the solvents off the ones we'd already stripped, knock apart the pieces that were loose, then glue and clamp them; then we'd unclamp them, sand them, varnish them, and drive them up to the dealer's showroom, collect our pay, and pick up the next batch of work.


But Tom had moved away, and the job was much slower - and lonelier - as a one-man gig.


Pretty much every day, I would break for lunch, walk to the McDonald's on Telegraph and 45th, buy an afternoon paper from the machine out front, order a fish filet sandwich, fries, and Diet Coke, sit by myself at a plastic table in my paint-solvent-sawdust-encrusted work clothes, eat, read, dispose of my trash, then return to work till it got too cold or dark to keep going.


The day after John Lennon was murdered, I had spent the morning trying to work, but with the radio playing his music all day, I was mostly just trying to not cry too much, and trying to remember not to rub my eyes with all the crap I had on my hands.


Lunchtime came, and, mostly out of pure routine, I trudged over to McDonald's and had my usual. But of course, the newspaper was full of news about the killing, and despite being surrounded by total strangers - most of whom were black teenagers who probably didn't know John Lennon from a hole in the wall - I cried quietly but continuously throughout my meal. I could tell my fellow diners looking at me like I was a lunatic but I didn't care very much. I threw away most of my meal and went back to work, at least for a little while.

Thinking back on all this, I realized, you pompous prick, who cares how over-rated you think Michael Jackson was? People's hearts are broken, and maybe not even mostly about the death of a pop singer. You don't know. Hell, THEY don't know. So would it kill you to have some kindness in your heart for them?

I suspect a lot depends on this.

Early July, 1985

Gratitude, Continued: The Dining Room Table

My wife loves to set a nice table and to show off her considerable skills as a cook - I think "home chef" may say it better - and hostess.

She sometimes gets a little, shall we say, wound up during the preparations, which often include selecting the tablecloths, plates, silverware, and flowers the night before. Not to mention menu selection, shopping, and the actual cooking. So, my job is be on call and to execute any instructions quickly and efficiently, which after thirty-three years as a couple, I can now do with admirable adequacy.

Part of why I'm so grateful for these gatherings - beyond the fine food - is that we've had some fascinating casts of characters at the table, over the years. And we've always made a point of including our children and their friends, which has given us the opportunity to have the kinds of conversations with all of them that I sure as hell did not have at my parents' table.

Now, as with all gatherings, the dialogue is not always witty and warm. In fact, there have been a few visitors whose presence became harder and harder to enjoy as the evening progressed. But overall the spirit of each get-together has been benign, and more often than not, affectionate. And aside from a few carving-knife mishaps, no blood has been spilled, to date!

I like to to think that each dinner party here has been a nice little outpost of Civilization. I hope we can have these for years to come, and I especially hope that our children take the trouble to keep the tradition going. It's a thought that makes me happy, even when so much of the future is in doubt.

Sons and Daughters

As most parents will tell you - at least those parents whose daily lives are not entirely devoted to finding food and shelter for their children and themselves - the first child is a terrifying experiment for which we've had no practical preparation. If through some deeply obscure jumble of genetics and luck, Number One escapes death or serious injury or illness long enough for our selective memory to kick in, though, we start thinking about having another. (An even MORE lunatic notion: "We escaped calamity, so --- let's spin the wheel again!")

Of course, this questionable if not outright delusional behavior is why we're all here on this planet today. And I'm mostly happy about that.

But my happiness about our own kids' existence, and the lives their mother and I have lived while raising them, and the lives they are creating for themselves, is specific and conscious - perhaps not unique, but not just the result of a biological imperative either.

We in fact had to overcome a lot of serious obstacles to get Child #2. Six miscarriages. Three different really good OB/GYNs and a battery of tests couldn't tell us why they were happening or how to prevent them. Ultimately, their advice was, if you can stand to keep trying, you may eventually get lucky; or give up, spare yourselves  the anguish, and enjoy the one healthy living child you have now.

We were almost ready to throw in the towel - I was steeling myself to schedule a vasectomy - when Teri became pregnant again, and this time, everything went OK. Jackie is sixteen as of this writing, and going strong, knock on wood.

So, why was having a second child so important to us both (because it really was both of us wanting this)? Some part of the drive was hard-wired, certainly; and some may have been stubbornness in the face of Stupid Fucking Fate.

But I think it came down to two things - first, we both believed that having another person with the same parents as you can help you make sense of their strangeness, and of the uncharted Land of Childhood: you have someone to compare notes with, and someone who knows exactly what you've been through. And second, though of course this was pure gambling on our part, we were somehow sure that Child #2 would be a girl, and we would then be able to experience raising both a son and a daughter.

And why should that matter? After all this time, I still can't say, and, without a doubt, after what we'd been through, a healthy baby boy would have been perfectly beautiful in every way. But we were still especially pleased to have the chance to experience what I can only describe as the complete adventure.

So, how has it been? Like every aspect of marriage and child-rearing, more frightening, ecstatic, exhausting, and satisfying than I could have ever imagined.

I've read that there may be millions or billions of alternative universes, each of which embodies a different way all the variables of circumstance could have played out. But for the life of me, I'm incapable of imagining a world that didn't have my family in it, just as they are.

This may be one decent definition of happiness.