EPISODE 3

We landed in New Orleans sometime just after noon.  This was a couple years before Hurricane Katrina had come ashore and the levees had collapsed.  The ^9th Ward was still intact and the French Quarter was a prized destination for college kids, weekend bingers, and conventioneers.  Allan and I fell into the third group. 

Allan had gone to grab a bottle of spring water at a vending machine inside the airport.  He was a health nut, which contrasted nicely with my own gourmand attitude about the world.  Concisely put: food is to be eaten and beverages are to be drunk.  Allan bought into that concept, but only part way.  The list of things he wouldn’t eat was nearly as long as the one that was comprised of all the beastly little items I prized most when dining.  Allan was a vegetarian - I, an omnivore.  He avoided meat, mushrooms, and anything from the onion family.  I felt that anything short of cat entrails could be cooked in a combination of all of the above.  Entrails however must be cleaned and steamed in the tradition of classic Cantonese dim sum.

When it came to keeping fit, Allan was driven.   He ate his strict diet, hiked and ran, keeping his body in fine tone.  He never drank alcoholic beverages either.  Given how much time we spent traveling around the country, I could not imagine how he dealt with the near psychotic expansion and depression of stress and exhaustion.  He always swore that living clean eliminates all stress.  I contend that it just leads to boredom.

Allan purchased his water and we walked down to the long line of people looking to book themselves on one of the shuttles to the hotels.  We were staying at the Renaissance, just a couple blocks from the bottom end of Bourbon Street, a short car ride really, but our employer had decided it was best if we took a $15 shuttle instead of a $38 a day car rental.  It didn’t make much difference to me, although Allan really wanted to drive.  He always liked to knock around the cities we visited by car, whether he knew his way around or not.  Actually, he had an amazing sense of direction.  He’d come to an intersection, look both ways, ask me which way I thought we should go and do the opposite.  It worked almost every time.

Our driver wasn’t a big talker, although he did point out the Superdome (you’d have to have been asleep, with your head pressed against the right side window to have missed it) and Harrah’s (dozing on the left side this time to achieve the same effect).  We arrived at the Renaissance about 45 minutes after we’d gotten into the shuttle, which wasn’t bad, even though there’d been absolutely no traffic to contend with.  Things are just a little slower when you’re south of where I come from and I happen to like that sensibility.  I worked in New York, where one good friend of mine joked that all the people looked like they were walking with the most intense urge to take a leak and that they might let go at any moment.  I prefer to take my time when I walk, which is something that Allan and I always shared.

Allan got out first and stretched his legs.  He was almost a foot taller than I and sitting in the cramped shuttle bothered him.  I shuffled out behind him, grabbed my bag and we headed inside.  We were standing in line at the check-in when I saw Bosco.

I first met Bosco Ignatz when I was 37.  I was broke and he offered me a job, selling hair. 

As anyone in the industry will tell you, men have been using potions, lotions, and dead animal hides to cover their balding heads for thousands of years.  The ancient Egyptians were big believers in the afterlife, but they were even more ardent adherents to the concept of facial and cranial hair coverings.  This gave me pause to reflect.  How would you feel if your body was exhumed and it was discovered (among other things) that you had a toupee strapped on your decidedly posthumous forehead?  Well, aside from the fact you were stone cold dead, I suppose not a hell of a lot.  However, it’s a little like that weird thing that mothers used to tell their sons about always putting on clean underwear in the morning. Somehow this was supposed to be helpful in the unlikely event that you were be struck by a bus that day, rushed to the hospital and the doctors and nurses were then forced to remove your pants to treat you.  At least they would know you were a “nice boy” when they called for a priest to administer the last rites.

I started off with Bosco by making telephone calls to people who’d responded to one of those late night infomercials that touted a mysterious way of restoring a man’s (and presumable, a woman’s) balding hairline.  I talked to people, mostly men, who wanted to know if I could grow their hair back.  They all wanted to know how I was going to do it.

So did I.

Initially, Bosco wouldn’t tell me what the secret process was.  Every time I would ask, he’d smile and tell me that knowing would make me less effective as a telemarketer.  I had to be able to honestly tell these people that only the consultant at the hair studio knew the answer to their questions. In that way, I could book an appointment.  It turned out that I was pretty good at it and soon I was filling up hair replacement studios for Bosco’s business and for his clients’ businesses as well.

Bosco was the best known of a group of consultants who sold their expertise in sales and marketing to hair replacement studios throughout the US and Canada.  He was quite something to watch when he worked with a single client or a larger group in a seminar.  His lanky body would sway ever so slightly when he tried to stand still, so he moved around almost constantly when he was upright.  The only time he ever could keep still was when he was seated.  Likewise, his manner was far more sedate when he sat than when he was standing.  He spoke more slowly, turned things over in his mind a little longer and appeared far more relaxed.  Sitting in a meeting with him could be a very pleasant experience.  He made you feel at ease and used this to probe you by asking questions and carefully gauging the reactions he got.

After four years of booking Bosco’s appointments and helping him with his consulting business by cold calling for new clients among the vast list of hair studios that he had worked with over 20 years in the business, I left.  Bosco had told me that I was a good salesman, as good as any he’d ever trained, but the fact that I was embarrassed to talk about my job made me less effective.

“You don’t have to believe in what you sell,” he told me once.  “That’s convenient, but not necessary.  But you can’t hide from it either.  I bet you’re ashamed to tell your friends that you sell hair.”

“I don’t sell hair!” I protested.

“That’s right, you sell advice to people who sell hair.”

“Right.”

“But what do you tell people when they ask you what you do for a living?”

He was right, of course.  I felt like a complete idiot about it.  But how the hell you explain that you sell consulting services to people who glue someone else’s hair to other people’s heads?  There’s just no way to make that sound right.  The more I thought about it, the less I found I could deal with it.  So, I left.

Almost seven years later, I walked back into Bosco’s office.  I’d left my job working for a computer network design company.  I’d sold a ton of equipment, but after the dot com collapse in 2000 and 2001, at the 8% markup that the market then would bear, my end was laughable.  So, I’d called up Bosco and asked if he needed a salesman.  He’d chuckled and told me I was welcome anytime I wanted to drop by.  A few weeks later, I gave my notice and told Bosco I was on my way.

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The next installment will be posted on September 23.

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