Ups

I

“Hey, look. It’s that fat kid from recon. And he’s running.”

Aaron pointed to Kevin, a haughty, portly, unpleasant fellow from our detailing shop. It had begun to rain and Kevin was high-steppin’ across the parking lot. Neither Aaron nor I had ever seen him run; usually, Kevin lurches around the dealership like he has mortar blocks for feet. “He runs like a fat kid,” I said, then take a drag from my toke up.

“He is a fat kid,” Aaron said, laughing as he exhaled.

“Yep. But it doesn’t mean he has to run like one.”

“Fuckin’ right.” A pause. “Gay people all run the same, though.”

“You know, I think you may be on to something there.”

“I’m fucking sure of it.”

“I knew a mechanic with a wife and two kids that turned gay.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Tis. One day he dumped his wife, kissed his kids goodbye, and went of to live with this dude.”

“Was the other fag rich or something?”

“No. He just genuinely loved this other dude. And the other dude was really gay. Like, so gay that if he passed you doing 100 miles an hour on the freeway, and you didn’t even see his face, you’d know he was a fucking faggot.”

Aaron laughed and pulled a drag. His eyes danced through the car lot, looking for browsing customers. I did the same, dillegently alert for even the briefest appearance of an “up”–slang in the car business for a customer.

“Oh, and the homo mechanic? Yeah, he still ran like a faggot,” I said, flicking my cigarette away. I caught a glimpse of a car slowing down. I checked my pockets: pen, pad, used car list, incentives and rebates, and, most importantly, business cards, ensconced it a silver inlaid card holder.

The guy in the car stopped and dashed from his 1998 base Chevy Lumina (fuck), leaving the door open and car running. He ran to a new Camry LE, with pie pan wheels and a four-cylinder engine. Twenty-three grand. That means I’m gonna offer this guy a thousand bucks for his car and he’s gonna be pissed. On top of all that, there has to be a reason he’s still driving a fucking 98 Lumina. Either he’s extremely pleased with his 98 fucking Lumina, which is highly unlikely. Or he’s trapped by bad credit. One I can handle. The other will crumble and annihilate three hours of work.

“I’m gonna go talk to the douchebag in the Luminator,” says I.

“Take an app with you,” says Aaron. He means take a credit app with me and have the gentleman fill it out on the hood of his car. It doesn’t happen these days. But it did back in the grand ol’ days of the car business. Everything happened back then.

I laugh. Four and a half hours later, that guy drove home a car. He ended up paying $23 grand out the door. But his credit was shit, so his payments were $549.11 a month for 72 months. That means he would have to pay back forty thousand dollars for a car that cost 20. You know, I think it’d be easier just to throw that money into a fucking fire, man; rather than have to spend four hours with me jawing at you to buy the fucking car.

II

I know a very abrasive Jewish salesman. First of all, he kind of mumbles when he speaks, so I’m always saying, “excuse me?” or “pardon?” (I’m not the kind of guy who says, “huh?”). So then the abrasive Jewish guy gets angry when he has to repeat himself; “Get. The. MSO. FROM. LINDA. THEN, Give. It. To. Gina. Do you understand the words coming from my mouth?” He hisses under his breath so I have to strain to hear him berating me. He treats everyone the same: management, his colleagues, even his customers–who hate him, for the most part. His job is to present Toyotas, and he does it well. He knows his product forward and back. But he’s certainly not passionate about cars. No, he knows the product because he’s great at his job; he has no great love of vehicles. He is a consumate salesman who is overbearing, arrogant, snide, and, worst of all, intelligent. People have to work very hard to like him. But after you put an effort in to something, you tend to relish the outcome more–even seemingly trivial things. So all of his friendships are based on the effort put in to learn to like him. But I do like him. Immensley. His name is Frank. He’s a bastard.

Car customers, in general, are confrontational. And salesman are, for the most part, inviting, even stoic. Frank is also confrontational, which produces a strange sociological effect, wheras the customer and Frank are forced to become confrontational with each other to satisfy both their needs. Like two wildebeast fighting over a water hole. Salesman as wildebeasts usually just welcome the other wildebeasts in for a drink, tell them about all the features of the water hole, then ask them, politely, if they’d like to own it. Not Frank. Frank defends the water hole, berates and bewilders the other wildebeast, then, grudgingly lets the other wildebeast buy it at substantial profit. He clobbers customers with Consumer Reports and facts and trivia about Toyotas. He convinces them that they are fools to buy any other car on the road. (Just by hanging around him so much, the feeling has rubbed off). He says things like, “You’re just shopping? You drove 60 miles just to shop? That’s ludicrous. Of course you’re buying a car.” And, “I’ve answered this question for you six times. Let me write it down for you.” And the immortal, “Ma’am, you just called me a liar. Please leave.”

The last lady, the one he asked to leave? Yeah, she bought a car off of him. A used Camry. He clubbed her like a baby seal; maximum gross, something like four or five grand. I had to deliver the car because she loathed him that much. But she was happy in her purchase, believe it or not.

Frank is the top salesman at our dealership. He consistently pulls down at least six grand a month. When he’s not talking to customers, he’s reading. When he’s not reading, he’s belittiling.

I”ve loaned this guy dozens of books. He reads voraciously. He likes historical fiction and sci-fi. (As do I.) He also digs fantasty, but I don’t hold it against him.

III

Salesman are as gossipy as school girls. I know the service manager has only one testicle. I know that Neil, one of the detail guys, has a raunchy porn mag and a bottle of Jergens in his car. I know that the chick in the body shop will suck you off if you infer something about her tongue piercing and the price of Vicoden these days. I know my manager and co-worker are having affairs. (My manager is discreet; my co-worker stops a car in the middle of the car wash and fucks his college co-ed in her white Scion TC.) The internet manager was in jail for six months for vehicular manslaughter. My business manager–yes, my business manager–was in jail for four years after robbing countless convienent stores at gunpoint. The chances are very great that he was repeatedly raped. I know about bastard children, ex-wives, penis sizes, and all about the smell and size of pretty much everyone’s bowel movements. Car dealerships, it seems, are smoking craters of depravity. Or perhaps the people who work there are just brutally honest. Or maybe just brutal. Or maybe just.

I used to work as a director of a christian non-profit. (Although I’m a devout atheist). I had a board of directors who believed very strongly in morals and just behavior. They were pedantic and fueled by dogma. They were my colleagues and I found them proselytizing naysayers. Now, in the past week, I’ve seen 13 pictures of naked girlfriends, one grainy cell phone video of a colleague getting a back-alley blow job, and one manager that came from behind me, put his hands in my pockets and checked out the size of my cock and balls. And I couldn’t be happier.

Presently, the people I work with are real people. Previously, I worked with people assembled from the same manual. Built by The Book. They didn’t want to get their souls dirty.