absolutely no reason why all should not come to pass exactly as he had described it. All he had to do was find some people prepared to hire those nineteen ladies, and it was a done deal.
It was time to approach the business community.
He made a point of going straight to the top. People who have worked in personnel for a number of years, he felt, tend to think in clichés and be resistant to new ideas.
He presented the product as a solution to the issue of sexual harassment. Without, obviously, going into a lot of unnecessary detail in his introductory letter.
He wrote to 1,000 companies. 800 didn’t bother to reply.
A lot of people said they had everything under control.
Twenty agreed to see him.
The first time was the hardest. He had thought it over a million times, but he had never gone into someone’s office where he had made an appointment and sat down and explained it out loud. He had deliberately gone straight to the top, which meant he was talking to a guy who had what it takes to succeed in a competitive industry and had made it to the top. The guy was wearing a suit as expensive as Joe’s. He stood up and shook hands when Joe came in and then he invited Joe to tell him what it was about.
Joe covered the points he had to cover. The guy was in his early fifties. He listened without much expression, putting in a couple of questions. When he was sure he understood what was being suggested he said, “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. I won’t take up any more of your time.” And he buzzed through to his secretary and asked her to show the gentleman out.
That was the only appointment for the day. Joe went home and took off the thousand-dollar suit and hung it up. He took off the red silk tie and unbuttoned his collar.
He lay on the bed. This time he had a fantasy about a football team that had a hole in the wall of the locker room. The locker room was next to the changing room for the cheerleaders. One way of doing it would be for the cheerleaders to take it in rotation to provide an outlet for the players. Another way of doing it would be for each cheerleader to go once, and each player to go once. Another way would be to have an initiation for new cheerleaders, where a new cheerleader would be serviced by the whole team. They would have the try-outs for the cheerleaders, and the girls would work their butts off to make the cut, and then the head cheerleader, a real bitch, would have a new girl kneel on some kind of thing that rolled through the hole. The hole could be either right out in the open in the locker room where the players would line up to take their turns, or it could be in some kind of cubicle like a toilet stall.
Or you could have a row of holes in the wall, with all of the girls lined up, and the whole team could tackle them at the same time. You could have two installments. Offense and defense.
You could see them being rewarded in that way if they won. But what if they lost? What if there was a really major defeat?
The coach would probably be pretty pissed off.
Are you a bunch of asskickers or pussylickers? he’d shout, and when the cheerleaders were lined up he would order the team to go in with their tongues.
Aw but Coach
Move it! the coach would shout. Anyone who’s not in there in the next five seconds is off the team, and that means you, Jerkovsky!
On the other side of the wall, an expression of incredulous bliss would gradually spread over the faces of the cheerleaders.
Or it might be that one guy screwed up royally. Dropped a pass. Missed a kick.
All right, the rest of you can go, the coach would say. Jackson, you’re not leaving until each and every one of those girls has had ten minutes by the clock.
Aw but Coach
Get moving.
But what if one of them has her period?
Do it.
Jackson would get started and every time he came up for air the coach would ram his face back down. A good coach knows that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Because at the very next game Jackson would be in a completely different league.