Notes, from the Upper West Side. A novel by Dan Wrench. Chapter 73, Demons. So there we were in the coffee shop, only now Parp was wearing the purple shades, which I guess were important for the next part of the pseudo theory he was telling me.
Or maybe he just wanted to stop squinting. All I knew for sure was for the next 10 minutes I couldn't see his eyes. The shifty fuck. It was Parp's theory that religious people, and by that he meant people like Kurt Libby's wife in the seminary and Sheyman's in Sheyman Land, plus all politicians and cable news pundits gave credit to God for what was really the product of these slices of consciousness.
I call them demons, he said, in the Inox operating system and now Linux, a demon is any subsystem, a printer demon, a mailer demon, what a geek. Plus, he went on using that word of noise people who believe in supernatural demons. Parp was an atheist raised by fundamentalists, and he was still grinding that axe. What did this have to do with me?
Well back then I was pretty sure Rick Cutter calling me at the same time I was getting in shape with just a coincidence. But Parp thought I shouldn't discount the power of these little subsystems of my consciousness to open me up to new opportunities. New adventures. Parp's musings.
He has to talk about them I guess, but why do I pay attention? Okay, some of them make sense, but like I said before, most of them are siren musings. Since I'm trying really hard to be completely honest, I'll say I pay attention to the siren musings for the sheer, flattery, right? It isn't luck that's making Rick Cutter call me up about the modeling job.
Now it's little slices of me, slaving away on an invisible staircase in my head. But see, if I'd thought the call from Rick was dumb luck, and if I'd had a friend with a sense of reality instead of slight of fantasies, I might have thought it through a little farther. I might have been a little more skeptical. I might have known from the outset that at best I was being set up to look stupid and at worst I was being set up to look stupid in front of chicks.
So there I was on the phone talking to Rick Cutter on fuck date 2-10 days. Hey poorly, looking for like? He asked. But of course, I said I was at home.
The wife was at Millhym. Harry was at school. Sammy was flashing through the apartment in a jittery way. Quiet Sammy, I yelled.
Rick faux laughed. He was trying to be gregarious but it came off fake. Like talking to the talent was the one part of his job he couldn't stand so he overdid the act a little bit. You and those kids?
He said like he saw me more than once a year. He was trying his amateur best to sound like a man of the people. Some guy slapping my back at the barber shop. I think we were friends on Facebook.
Maybe he saw some pictures the wife put up there of me and her and the man squad. He said. He said. He said.
I'm sitting there listening and all I can think is holy moly if it ain't Paul. Turns out the gig was for Magellco. You know the personal shaver company? You see their commercials late at night when you're watching some Seinfeld rerun and the guy pops on and says, now men can shave those sensitive and hard-to-reach spots.
Men have personal places to shave in the current century more than they had when I was growing up. Back when I was a kid, the only thing a respectable man shaved was his face. If he was gay or a porn star, he might shave his balls. But out in the neighborhoods, which is what New Yorkers call Brooklyn, even nowadays one of the worst things you can call a guy, is a ball shaver.
I say we whack the fucking ball shaver. Well, the Magellco people made these shavers for all parts of the male anatomy and also the female anatomy. A hundred bucks says they had an R&D team looking for something to shave off six-year-olds. But as it turns out, the go-see Rick sent me on had nothing to do with the Magellco line of ball shiers.
It was for a nose and ear hair clipper and they weren't trying to cast a TV spot. They were looking for a guy to appear in the photo on their packaging nationwide. So I put on my little suit and headed downtown where I did the full shiny face for strangers. I met the attic sec, Blanchechick, curvy with cleavage.
I tried to make eye contact, but for some reason she spent the whole interview looking at something just over my head. Then the photographer, then some other guy from the ad agency who together with the curvy exec were obviously the big choosers. The guy smiled at me a lot. Then the chick and the photographer smiled.
Long story short, they really liked me. I could tell when they were about click 25 into the digital and still laughing at my little jokes. They didn't tell everybody else to go home so I figured they'd pick at least three of us and then call our agents. Did you crush it?
Rick asked me on the call afterward. All I can say is, when they call you up, call back fast. It's my pool. Rick fo laughed.
Ha ha ha. Notes from the Upper West Side is a work of fiction. The people depicted in this work do not exist. Notes from the Upper West Side copyright 2020 by Dan Rench.