What up, pimp-hammers! Big Man gonna lay some knowledge on all y’all!
Or, in other words, hi, how are you? I’d like to tell you about my semester away from Wesleyan. I worked at Guitar Center, which is a fun-loving, warm-hearted transnational music-retail corporation.
One of the most interesting things I learned is that people in the real world, which is where my Guitar Center was located, don’t talk like people at Wesleyan. (Compare! Wesleyan: “The Unicorns are definitely in my top ten bands, maybe even top five, depending on my mood.” The real world: “That sounds like a fag band.”)
But I didn’t just pick up some hip linguistic characteristics. (Notice the rhyming words? That’s called “flow.”) For instance, not everyone in the real world is young and sexually active. In fact, the huge number of miserable, misshapen people who came through my store blurred in my mind into one ghastly cavalcade of human anguish!
One of my favorite customers had the loving nickname “Old Smokey.” He would stop by and, in a voice like a wrench rattling around in a box of wrenches, sexually harrass the one woman who worked at the store: “Hey, Blondie. I’m only buyin’ dis ‘cuz yer cute.” Then he would pause to take a wheeze from his permanently-implanted oxygen tank. Then he would go outside to smoke a cigarette. I don’t know if he smokes with his mouth or with the hole in his throat or what.
A lot of middle-aged guys came to our store. Some of them would try to assuage their fading senses of self-worth by purchasing high-end brand-name guitars on which they could haltingly hash out a pitiful “blues” solo, but these guys were generally pretty friendly. The middle-aged guys to look out for were the ones buying gear for their kids:
“Now, why is this amplifier so much more expensive?” they’d ask, looking at you as they might look at some dog poop or a Mexican.
“Well, sir,” you’d say, “it has four twelve-inch speakers instead of one eight-inch. And it puts out a hundred-fifty watts instead of ten.” But they would still have that poop-or-gardener expression. “And it was handmade in America,” you’d say, and then some small glimmer of understanding would cross their dour features.
One thing I’m grateful for is that I learned to communicate with men like this. The trick, it seems, is to couch all your explanations in golf or car metaphors. For example: “Sure, your ten-year-old son might be happy driving a Volvo. But would Tiger Woods drive a Volvo? Would Jack Nicklaus drive a Kia Sportage on the fairway greens?”
“No,” these men would reply. “Jack Nicklaus would have a sharply-dressed, well-mannered negro named Henry to drive his Rolls-Royce.”
Looking them square in the eye, I’d cut to the heart of the matter: “The Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier, sir, is the well-mannered negro driver of the guitar amplification world.”
And I’d sell, and sell, and sell. And I’d drive my brother’s Volvo home at the end of the day and cry and throw up at the same time. Peace out, plimpkin.