The Confidence-Man

I just chased a door-to-door, magazine-subs-for-charity huckster from my threshold. He somehow circumvented the tenant-controlled front door, knocking instead at my kitchen door, which leads to the fire escape!

I remember my neighborhood in Tucson being lousy with such garrulous, darting fiends. They'd flagrantly ignore "No Solicitors" signs to pay me calls that, no matter the hour, were always awkward. An equally awkward exchange would inevitably follow: I'd pinch my chin and shift from foot to foot (nervous tics), while he (never would a woman appear at my door) would fast-talk me, pleading on behalf of orphans of some undefined disadvantage, or for his own educational and recreational prospects—a curious melange of college matriculation and sunny idylls at some Mexican resort formed the prize after which he was striving—bidding to overtake some "girl who's won the contest year after year," an unvarying element of the schtick supposed, I guess, to play upon some masculine insecurity of mine. My purchase of a wildly overpriced subscription to Maxim would thus consecrate some freemasonry of manliness between us.

All bullshit, of course. I stood and heard the pitch as long as my patience allowed before rehearsing my standard excuse for demurring. I told him that the interest employing him doesn't offer the magazines I like to read. If it offered The Economist or Harpers, for instance, then perhaps I'd be inclined to assist him in his battle of the sexes. This was generally effective in years past, icing further converse.

Today, however, the salesman parried my feint by producing a tattered list of a book I could purchase for a local children's hospital. This unexpected sequel brought me up short; I care about children's well-being very much, and I'm all for kids reading, so in spite of myself I began to warm to his spiel. Enough caution and suspicion remained with me, however,to check me after I asked him if he'd leave me with some literature about his program (I happened to see he had a pocketbook of sorts filled with yellow and blue cards), a request he refused to honor, claiming his overseer "charges him for anything he leaves with customers." I thought, How much could a yellow card possibly cost? If its a draconian sum, then he'd best find another line.

I think he found me a bust, and he left as briskly as he came. I felt angry and depressed—angry and depressed enough to compose this blog entry. The experience returned me to my contempt for contemporary existence. An existence where come-ons, rip-offs, Ponzi schemes, usury and con-games buzz around me like blowflies, mostly because of my modest, slightly downmarket address. Do these salespeople ever infiltrate gated communities? Does one really need to pony up a premium just to be sheltered from such intrusions. I don't hate the salesperson; he's just a stooge whose dimwit cupidity's been harnessed by a cleverer but just as money-loving sociopath. I blame the system that produces such individuals. Just one more symptom of the Republican Revolution, begun in the Eighties, whose "supply-side" deregulation, along with an almost pathological antipathy for entitlement programs, have incubated such grubby little monsters.