Santa Cruz

This is how I ended up with a wife who wasn't my daughter's mother. In Santa Cruz, California, I didn't have a job.

I had been there four months, now, and the money was running out. Playing guitar on the street corners never netted me more than a couple of dollars. But it was good practice. I finally got a job as a telemarketer.

As a telemarketer, this is what I had to do. Every afternoon at about four o'clock I would go down to the Santa Cruz hotel on Main street and go up the old marble stairs to the large rented room which had rows of folding tables and chairs and telephones, two each to a table. I would get a strip of paper from the front desk that had a three digit number on top and then below that a column of twenty five four digit numbers running from 0001 to 0025 or 1026 to 1050 or maybe 3175 to 4100. Some set of numbers like that. There was every four digit number between 0000 and 9999 on those strips of paper, and a different colored set for every three digit prefix.
I would take my strip of twentyfive numbers and my script and an order book and go sit at a table. I would start dialing the numbers. Some of the numbers did not exist. Some of the numbers were no longer valid. Some of the numbers were businesses and we would politely say, "Sorry, wrong number." and hang up. When we got a number that was just a regular person's number, I would read the script.

"Hi, My name is _______ and I've got Good News for You! Are you ready to hear some Good News today?"

If they gave any indication that they weren't going to hang up right away, I would go on.

"This Good News, and the Free Gifts that go with it, is only for people over 18 years old. Are you over 18 years old?"

If they said no, I would ask to speak to someone who was over 18 years old. Then I would have to start all over again.

"If I could show you a way that you could get over three hundred dollars in free food, merchandise, entertainment and services, would you be interested in that?"

We had been told never to vary from the script. The script, they told us, has been carefully formulated by telemarketing experts to solicit the maximum response. The script will work, they told us, if you are sincere and follow it faithfully. What I was selling was entertainment books. They cost $39.95, and whenever you sold one, you were supposed to go immediately to the front of the room and hand in your sales slip with the name and address and put a mark under your name on the board. The marks were to indicate our progress. The guy in charge would then call one of his drivers on the CB radio and the driver would go right over to the people's house and take the money and hand over the book. The telemarketing experts had found that this was the best way to get the money.

I lasted four days. I sold maybe two books. The only thing good that came out of that was that I met a woman who ate grass. Not pot, Not marijuana, but grass. She lived in a van and she wanted to have sex with me. She smelled like a meadow, down there between her legs.