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Authors: Gilbert Sorrentino
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owned the sort of white shirt I daily sported, was not carrying out my officious orders. Thus doing his best to obstruct my rising to the top of the company ladder. Just then, a woman who had ignored my presence in the company for some time, popped a LifeSaver into her weakish mouth, and the rabble of the shipping enclave unwrapped large baloney sandwiches in front of me, the silent message screaming its disdain! I saw, once again, my American cocktail-like dreams going up in smokes yet again. I must have fainted amid a tidal wave of chuckles, and soon found myself on the “bricks.”
For the past few months, I’ve been calling various colleagues of yore at three o’clock in the morning with stern words of anonymous hatred. Crazy Swedish person? I’ll be showing them crazy Swedish person! I’ve also stocked my larder and pantry, whatever the cupboards are called here in the land of dreams come true, with ready-to-imbibe Bloody Marys and Manhattans, and other alcoholic treats. They are not at their best at a room’s temperature, thus I wait for the electric company to accede to my wishes to turn the power back on. However, I am careful of my appearance, white shirt, bow tie, cardigan, all business. I have discovered this is called electric blue in color, what a book I once browsed through called “the color of madness.” The author is well-known to be a homosexual pervert, yet I must try to love him for all his improper moralistic leanings. I may give him a brief telephone call one early morning and we will just see how he likes them apples, as you say here. My goal of sophisticated cocktail-drinking with the smartest of the smart set is not, I assure you, but the goal of a feebleminded dumbbell! My Timex now informs me that my boiled potatoes bubbling tastily on my Sterno stove are ready. Along with a cup of savory instant coffee and a few choice pages from a good book, I’ll leisurely dine away, although I would prefer to exchange bon mots with discreet, beautiful women in the paled moonlight, as you may have guessed. It is good to be an alien in America despite the crudities encountered.
The Wheels Turn
The salesmen, dear new colleagues and friends, who are out in the field, have no time to be answering requests by clients or would-be clients for samples, information, direction, or guidance; nor do they have time to engage in amorous or sexual correspondence with these people. Unless, of course, they feel that such interchange will lead to a considerable account. Photographs of a compelling or arousing nature may accompany diverse missives, along with, at times, gifts of cash, and such items may be able to change the most focused minds. You, as correspondents, here in the Correspondence Department, are in no position, nor will you ever be in such a position, to judge whether or not the salesmen in the field will have the time or inclination to reply to such letters “personally,” if I may use such a word, freighted, oh freighted as it is with velleity and suggestion. It matters little, that is, what your opinions of such letters may be, since all letters that land—and I use the word advisedly—that land on your respective desks, cluttered though they may well become with odds and ends of folderol and impedimenta, will, of needs, be those that have already passed through the vetting process on the twenty-third floor, that is, in the Alpha Department of the School Division, Southwestern Branch, a department supervised by our Mr. Bjornstrom, a man known to our other supervisors—and they are many—as “the man with the rubber stamp,” or, as he often delights in roughly and somewhat jovially, even hysterically, describing himself, “the Stockholm Corporal.” Stockholm is, of course, in Sweden, Mr. Bjornstrom’s homeland. These instructions, then, are tendered you in the event that an unvetted letter from a client or would-be client lands on one of your desks, which will, of course, never happen. If it
For the past few months, I’ve been calling various colleagues of yore at three o’clock in the morning with stern words of anonymous hatred. Crazy Swedish person? I’ll be showing them crazy Swedish person! I’ve also stocked my larder and pantry, whatever the cupboards are called here in the land of dreams come true, with ready-to-imbibe Bloody Marys and Manhattans, and other alcoholic treats. They are not at their best at a room’s temperature, thus I wait for the electric company to accede to my wishes to turn the power back on. However, I am careful of my appearance, white shirt, bow tie, cardigan, all business. I have discovered this is called electric blue in color, what a book I once browsed through called “the color of madness.” The author is well-known to be a homosexual pervert, yet I must try to love him for all his improper moralistic leanings. I may give him a brief telephone call one early morning and we will just see how he likes them apples, as you say here. My goal of sophisticated cocktail-drinking with the smartest of the smart set is not, I assure you, but the goal of a feebleminded dumbbell! My Timex now informs me that my boiled potatoes bubbling tastily on my Sterno stove are ready. Along with a cup of savory instant coffee and a few choice pages from a good book, I’ll leisurely dine away, although I would prefer to exchange bon mots with discreet, beautiful women in the paled moonlight, as you may have guessed. It is good to be an alien in America despite the crudities encountered.
The Wheels Turn
The salesmen, dear new colleagues and friends, who are out in the field, have no time to be answering requests by clients or would-be clients for samples, information, direction, or guidance; nor do they have time to engage in amorous or sexual correspondence with these people. Unless, of course, they feel that such interchange will lead to a considerable account. Photographs of a compelling or arousing nature may accompany diverse missives, along with, at times, gifts of cash, and such items may be able to change the most focused minds. You, as correspondents, here in the Correspondence Department, are in no position, nor will you ever be in such a position, to judge whether or not the salesmen in the field will have the time or inclination to reply to such letters “personally,” if I may use such a word, freighted, oh freighted as it is with velleity and suggestion. It matters little, that is, what your opinions of such letters may be, since all letters that land—and I use the word advisedly—that land on your respective desks, cluttered though they may well become with odds and ends of folderol and impedimenta, will, of needs, be those that have already passed through the vetting process on the twenty-third floor, that is, in the Alpha Department of the School Division, Southwestern Branch, a department supervised by our Mr. Bjornstrom, a man known to our other supervisors—and they are many—as “the man with the rubber stamp,” or, as he often delights in roughly and somewhat jovially, even hysterically, describing himself, “the Stockholm Corporal.” Stockholm is, of course, in Sweden, Mr. Bjornstrom’s homeland. These instructions, then, are tendered you in the event that an unvetted letter from a client or would-be client lands on one of your desks, which will, of course, never happen. If it
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