finally,
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a novel by
delicious tacos
For Courtney
What Do You Do
He was on Tinder. What do you do, she asked.
He was a secretary. His company provided data driven solutions to optimize cross platform branded content. He might have done something else but he’d spent 20 years drunk. The want ad said room for growth.
He built Powerpoints. When a client was on the phone he hit spacebar. Today, a Webex with Wentworth. The media planning agency. They represented the Clear and Clean Skin Care division of the Nonmedicated Facial Cleansers and Body Washes/ Poufs division of the Consumer Packaged Goods division of Johnson and Johnson. Wentworth was a subsidiary of UAG, which was a subsidiary of Group J, which was a subsidiary of PWW Group. PWW was a holding company based in Paris. Chartered in Ireland for tax purposes. PWW bought advertising time from television stations en masse. Sold it on arbitrage markets it created. The purpose of UAG and thus Wentworth was to help create demand for advertising time. PWW could then buy low and sell high. This was illegal in America. All advertising agencies were therefore subsidiaries of three conglomerates out of Europe.
The Webex was about Clear and Clean’s possible cross platform branded campaign with Ellen! Its thesis was that J & J should buy in, even at Ellen!’s stratospheric-seeming 46 CPM. J & J’s own market research found that teens and tweens identified with civil rights and related ideals. Engagement hadn’t been this significant since Vietnam. Cementing the brand to environmental awareness and/ or social justice was correlated to a 38% uptick in urge to share branded content. Teens and tweens were tough. But you could seed brand elevation if you got to the moms while the moms still controlled CPG spend. Ellen! had moms.
Ellen! planned to profile a transgender teen. There were two candidates. Candy, 14, was a figure skater from Oklahoma. Sparkle, 15, a cheerleader/ poetess from Utah. Sparkle was the new face of Clear and Clean’s campaign. Candy had signed with Unilever. Both CPG behemoths wanted in on trans teen anti-bullying. But Unilever’s Dove line was entrenched with overweight over 25’s. Plus, Sparkle was biracial. Her optics were better for Ellen! and frankly, Candy wasn’t hot. Ice sports don’t test well with Hispanics. Unilever would thus be ill-advised to match the 46 CPM Ellen! was asking. Even with the surge in show engagement from Ellen’s newly adopted Pomeranian, Duchess. But for J & J it made sense.
Clear and Clean’s flagship cleanser was a proprietary solvent derived from Butane. It had been used to hose out tanker trucks that carried juice and other food grade fluids. When it had been found to cause cancer in rats this use was discontinued. R & D tried it as an upholstery cleaner and a mentholated cooling wipe for genitals and armpits. Neither tested well. They settled on a new facial product for teens. From 12 to 17 many young people develop acne. Whether they use facial cleanser or not, it arises, persists, then simply goes away. But brand affinity established at 12 drives purchase through adulthood.
There were 30 slides. He only fucked up once. The pie chart over a photo of Sparkle. Ass aloft in a strong boy’s hot palm. Silky hair and pom poms flying. She was the spitting image of the star of a video he’d seen on motherless.com. Teen Tranny Gets Rock Hard Riding Bro’s Cock. A Mexican boy with the face and body of a 14 year old girl and a narrow hairless penis with an angry curve like a scimitar bobbed on another boy’s lap. She had moves. He’d been disturbed by his erection. Quickly x’d out the browser tab. He lingered a beat too long until the Regional Brand Outreach Manager impatiently cleared her throat.
It went well. His team knew Ellen! They’d optimized Target and Tide’s co-branded Ellen! cross promotion of Jane the Virgin. It told Hispanic moms about Tide’s soothing effect on neonatal skin. Tide was a viscous blue serum derived from volcanic ash. The co-branded online video segments garnered 2 million views per day. 1/10th that of motherless.com. If J & J bit: room for growth. A career. In ten years he could run the division. Fifteen more and he could die. It’s boring to talk about, he said.
Tell me
It has to do with marketing, he said.
What do you do exactly
Why do you want to know so bad
I’m rad and I deserve a guy who’s rad, she said.
She did makeup for infomercials. Don’t match dog pictures, he remembered. Small dogs replace a child. Big dogs replace a man. Women with dogs always die alone. She had a pit bull mix. It wore a bandana.
He messaged her “cunt.” Waited for the three dots in a bubble to know she’d seen it. Unmatched her and opened motherless.com. It was his birthday. He was 39.
Nest Egg
He was reviewing his finances. He’d worked two years. Now he had six months of money.
If I get fired tomorrow and couldn’t collect unemployment. Six months of the lifestyle to which I’m accustomed. About half to rent. Car payment. 30% of it’s interest even though the loan is 6% interest. The car was 16 grand but I’ll end up paying 29 grand if I stay on schedule. How financing works.
What do I have, he thought. The car. Some guitars. What else. My bike got stolen by the citizen offspring of undocumented whatever you call them now. Rent sixteen grand a year, shit not bolted down always stolen instantly. Like a doughnut on the beach snatched by seagulls. A laptop. An Xbox One with a used copy of The Witcher 3, which replaced a wife or girlfriend. 20 grand cash. 8 grand in credit card debt that had been charged off by the bank for two years now. That he’d been paying down 1% and 1% and 1% to keep Bank of America– actually Banc of America, their credit card division, from suing him. Garnishing wages. After paying 8 grand I owe $13,000 on a $16,000 car. If I pay a grand a month I’m out in about a year. Then hack away at the charge card. Call your creditor, Suze Orman told him. Ask to negotiate up to 50% off by offering one lump sum. They said fuck off.
Once the debt’s zeroed out I’ll still have the 20 grand. At that point I’ll have paid 21 thousand for the car; it’ll be worth 12. Other possessions clocking in at $1,100. I’ll have a net worth of thirty three thousand. The median for Americans my age. Except for school and a few months here and there he’d worked since fourteen. Farmhand on a cranberry bog. House painter. Laborer scraping pipes on a ladder on a scaffolding. 90 degree heat, face by a fan with sharp blades that sucked up every fume for miles. Brain damage. Body damage. Assembly line at a candle factory. Short order cook. Door to door salesman. Telemarketer. Register at a drug store in a neighborhood filled with Soviet Bloc Jewish elderly yelling and yelling about the flyer not applying to 32 oz. vs. 48 oz. Sunsweet Prune Juice with a Hint of Lemon. Views on Hitler softening. $4.25 an hour. Minus taxes. Janitor.
When I’ve paid off the car it will break. Wouldn’t put it past them to have a chip in it. It reads the balance from J.P. Morgan Chase. If you read that in the paper it wouldn’t surprise you.
Another year and a half and the debt’s gone. If no additional purchases. No new TV with a higher contrast ratio. Deeper blacks. Even though a lot of The Witcher 3 takes place in caves. He needed a new mattress. Hips like an Irish wolfhound about to get mercy killed. Bones grinding into old springs. He needed new pants but $24.95 from H & M was fine. Who gave a fuck what he looked like anymore. He’d taken a work trip to Japan. An audition for his promotion. Selfie at the Imperial Palace. His eye bags in sunlight like a skin graft from shaved scrotums stitched together. Black people get stomped by cops but white people wake up in their 30’s with a face that better be rich.