the circuit >> by michael largo >> *spark-online issue ten

"The beginning of time," he said, looking at his watch on the ledge next to his papers on the lectern, "has only one point of origin." Oh Christ, he thought, three more seminars this week before he could get back to his honey. One person in the 28th row got up to leave. And then another in the 32nd followed. The pack mentality of attention spans. A chain reaction of boredom. "But the answer lies in the scientific proof of our experimentation." Better get to the slide presentation--don't want to give out any refunds.

Arty was selling solar panels a couple of months ago, had a display model of a small plastic house with two glass slabs propped and slanted on the roof, took his pencil and pointed out how the pipes went below to a bulky water heater in the cut-out wall. He punched a lot of numbers in the calculator to show how over five years the thing damn near paid for itself. Most of his leads couldn't see past the next month's power bill. And it was a hard sell in rainy season; talking about the weather was no hook.

"Time is the medium. Let me show you the slides. Lights, please," Arty leaned into the microphone. Had to sound knowledgeable, must never appear flustered or stumped. Let the bolters escape in the dark while he used the laser pointer to highlight the big screen of star clusters and good reproductions of the Milky Way.

"It's unbelievable," his buddy had called him on the phone a few months ago. Got Arty's number from his mother. "You can't disprove what we're saying and we sprinkle it with a little science. Spirit market is the ticket. Religion too cornball. We got tapes, we got books; the seminar is 75 bucks a head. Last night we had 153 showing up."

"Whoa." Arty didn't need to do the math. Have to sell a lot of solar panels with full upgrades to get a hold of that much commish. Arty knew all the sales jargon.

"And beside the books and tapes we have no perishable product, nothing to deliver."

Arty's buddy, Falstaff, had roomed with him at FSU. Both philosophy majors.

"I'm getting tired of cold calls." Arty was in his one-room studio then, the TV on mute, the vertical blinds blocking the glare of the sunset, his daily logs and pink callback memo sheets scattered on the coffee table. He wore gym shorts, no socks, no shirt. Sipped a tallboy. His new girlfriend was on swing shift. The place was a mess.

"We have script and slides. All you have to do is present. Point."

"What do you need me for?" Arty asked

"Where am I calling, this area code, out west somewhere?"

"Seattle."

"We're ready to go national on this. You can take the Northwest, 60-40. Forty split your way on attendance, 10 percentage overall on product. And believe me, the back end is big."

Was it Nietzche? Probably; they were finished with Descartes--the two girls, freshman they met in the bar when they were seniors in college, drove them down the narrow dirt road to the only hill rise in 50 miles. A break in the field and them sitting on the hood of Falstaff's car, a bottle of Chianti in a straw-bottomed bottle looking at the dark swath of sky, stars, shooting meteors. The theory of God as an abstraction made viable because of the existence of the concept in the human mind. Shit like that, they had said. No it wasn't Nietzche, but it was the soft spiralling thread of theories and concepts which had captivated, made them bold. Mind engineers, Arty and Falstaff were. Thinkers, non-frivolous purists, not like the MBAs, the education majors, the Lit goons with their encounter writing circles. It was Socrates and Plato, a touch of the Americans, Dewy, Pierce, Quine, the cosmic exile, back to the French, the latter day Germans, Husserl and Heidegger. They were to invent a new school of techno-post modern thought, Arty and Falstaff. It got them laid.

"You'll have to be on the road some, " Falstaff explained. "We get corporate apartments arranged ahead, a staff. I'm talking a staff to make your life easier. You in?"

"Fifteen percent on the back end."

"Twelve and a half to start."

Arty conceded and here he was with the lights out in an auditorium in Phoenix. The Northwest quadrant was dry and they thought they'd do a spin into the paranormal, his red laser light pointing out an oblong loop in a star cluster. Would Socrates be doing this if he was born now, with his bald head and his round, bulldog face? Probably sharing a cubicle in a community college somewhere, clipping the school's pencils and notepads, washing his underwear out in the sink between pay checks. Yeah, this was the meaning, Arty thought, pressing his thumb on the clicker to bring up the next slide: an orange tailed comet. The only thing that ever came close to the question of existence was in his apartment, in his bedroom, sprawled on the cool sheets, the pillow folded up behind his head and his girlfriend down there, the soft round swell of her lips doing it for him, wanting to do it, not coaxed (or so she said), his honey with him looking down now and then but mostly up at the paddle fan swirling around and around slow enough to see each blade, again, again, again.

"Horseshit." Someone coughed, one of those cough words that got blurted out when the lights were down, when he lost them, when the crowd wasn't buying.

"You must be looking too stiff up there," Falstaff had said before he switched Arty to the Southwest. Give him one more try. "You got to look cool, lose that salesman smell. This script I gave you works. Money, man, you got to have it. That's the only juice now."

Arty finished the slide presentation. Stood behind the long folding tables where the books and tapes were stacked. Arms crossed in front listening to a marginal--always a marginal or two in the audience with their own Rubik's Cubes of nonsense. Sold a few books, packed them away, strapped the boxes to the hand truck. And when he made the call to Falstaff on the night's numbers his old roommate told him it was time to go back to solar panels, or maybe windmills.

"You can't fire me," Arty said, standing there at the pay phone in the linoleum hall, the janitor with the buffer pad machine heading toward him. "But my girlfriend's working in the main office now. I thought we were partners. Like-minded thinkers. My girlfriend..."

"And man, she's every bit of what you said."

"Is this the philosophy of loyalty?" Arty asked. Was he where Descartes had been, fallen into a deep whirlpool--couldn't touch bottom with his foot or swim to the top? He leaned against the wall so as not to get splashed with the speck of goo from the spinning waxing pad.

"When it comes to money..."

"Loyalty. Ethics."

"Hey man, if you learned anything, you know it doesn't exist on the circuit."