EPISODE 5

I got back to my room, took a shower and got dressed.  The shower helped wake me up out of the fog I was in and I was feeling alert by the time I hit the elevator and started my way downstairs.  The ballroom where SlipNot was holding its meeting was on the second level of the hotel, tucked away in a labyrinth of conference rooms.  SlipNot had rented out three of these rooms, but instead of being adjacent to each other, they were spread out throughout the entire floor, making it easy to get confused.  I took a couple wrong turns, stepping first into a meeting of travel agents and then into another one that appeared to be of some kind of sex toy manufacturers.  The display of multi-colored vibrators along the left wall looked like something out of the barroom set from the Star Trek: Next Generation cable TV show.  After a quick walk through, taking time to carefully examine a pile of edible fruit-flavored condoms, contemplating just what the etiquette was for consuming them, I headed out the door, down the hall and into the main SlipNot conference ballroom.

Bosco had arranged for me to demonstrate one of his more ingenious marketing tools.  He and Allan had rigged up a tiny video camera with a 200X lens to a laptop so that it would take close-up pictures of a person’s scalp.  They could then upload the pictures to a Web site that Allan had designed allowing the user to do an analysis of the deterioration of the hairline.  These pictures were so detailed that you could actually see the individual follicles.   The idea was that if you could show someone how much hair he or she had already lost, you could then get them to wondering how long it would be before all the hair up top was gone.  In many ways, this camera gimmick told a lot about how hair was sold.

When I first started working for Bosco, he took me aside one day and asked me if I understood our clients.  I don’t recall exactly what I answered; something to the effect that I thought they lacked self-esteem.  He smiled and shook his head.

“No, Michael.  That sounds like a cheap TV commercial.  No, the reason our clients call us is that we show them how much pain they have.”

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about and it must have been pretty obvious because Bosco took a long breath and continued.

“Look, let’s say you’re a single guy and you go out to bar to try to find someone who’ll come home with you.  Now, you may not be the best looking man in the place.  You might even be ugly as hell.  It doesn’t matter.  You can still always get laid, any night you want to.

“You’ve got to look over the women at the bar, size them up.  One of them will go with you.  You just need to listen to her and get her to tell herself that she’s more afraid of going home alone than you are.

“If you aren’t good looking enough to get the girl, then make her feel desperate enough that she has to take you.”

I rolled my eyes, but Bosco insisted.

“We’re not about selling to greed or glamour.  We don’t sell our clients.  Our job is to ask questions.  Specifically, we ask coldly clinical questions that are designed to elicit an emotional response.

“I’m not kidding,” he said evenly.

I walked into the ballroom and saw that it was filled with a couple hundred people already.  On the stage towards the back of the room, a quartet was banging out salsa music.  Some of the attendees were dancing while the rest milled around and spoke to one another.  I was trying to take it in when someone sidled up to me and put a hand on my right shoulder.

“Michael!”

I looked over and there stood Frank Rotella, one of SlipNot’s biggest clients and also one of my favorite people on Earth.  He had a face that just lit up when he turned his attention to you.  He was impeccably dressed, as usual.  A guy he’d met in Florence years and years ago made his tailored Italian suits for him.  Frank flew over to see him every couple years and always came back with the most amazing outfits you’d ever seen.  That day, he was wearing a light yellow suit that appeared to be made of linen, a silk charcoal shirt, and solid cream colored tie.

“You want to see something amazing?” he asked.  I figured there wasn’t much more astonishing than the way he was dressed, but Frank nodded his head out to where the people were dancing.

“See that guy over there in the green sport coat?” Frank asked.  About 20 feet away from us, a man who looked to be in his late fifties was slowly gyrating to a mambo tune.  His upper body barely seemed to move, although his feet shuffled enthusiastically to the beat.  His eyes were closed as he danced by himself to the music.

 “Watch this.”

Frank put his hands to his mouth and shouted “Hey!  Phil!”

The guy on the dance floor didn’t appear to hear him, so Frank yelled louder a second time.

“Phil!  Over here!”

With that, the dancing man whipped around to his right to see who was calling to him.  Unfortunately, the hair on top of his head didn’t keep up with the rest of his body and it all flew wildly through the air, landing on the floor, a few feet away from him.  He quickly reached down, plopped the wig back on his head and waved over to Frank before continuing his dance.

“Can you believe that? Frank chuckled.  “The bastard doesn’t believe in tape or adhesives or nothing.  He just lets it all hang out there.”

He shook his head.  “I can’t believe I’m in the same business with guys like that.”

Frank was a perfectionist in everything: his clothing, his manners (which were impeccable), and his work.  I knew him from the first time I had worked with Bosco.  It was almost two years before I found out that he wore hair himself.  The job he’d done was so good that you simply couldn’t tell it wasn’t his.  The color blended perfectly, the hairline was natural, and he always had his best stylist cut it in for him.  He felt strongly that he should be a walking advertisement for the high quality work his studios were capable of.  Like all studio owners, he required that his technicians wear hair, if they were thinning on top.  He also made sure that their hair looked as good as his own.  Rotella Hair was something he was proud of and he wanted to make sure that he and his employees had every reason for that pride.

I guess I really respected Frank.  He was one of the good guys.  He was generous too, giving money to charity and lending wigs for free to cancer patients while they underwent chemotherapy.  He wasn’t the only studio owner to do this.  In fact, it was common practice in the industry to offer wigs to people who’d lost their hair while undergoing chemo.  It was just that Frank never made a big deal about it.

“You don’t call attention to your good works,” he once told me.  Frank was a devout Catholic and he would no more brag about his charitable work with the hospitals than he would about how much he put in the collection plate on Sunday.  He was a proud man, but not prideful.

He was also funny as hell.  The little gag with Phil and his flying hairpiece was a good example of his spontaneous flair for making a joke.  He knew that Phil wouldn’t care if his hair suddenly took flight, but he also was aware of the humor of the moment, particularly in context of where we all were.

We chatted briefly and then I had to beg off.  I still had to get my laptop set up so I could show the micro camera and the Web site.  Frank let me go, but only after I promised to meet him later for a drink.  

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The next installment will be posted on October 7.

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