ISSN 1758-6488
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Men in Love Fiction |
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DAY JOB.
I stand by a big American flag in front of the garage. Inside blue neon glows dim. Bright ceiling spots shine on shining Vette, blueprints, sign-up tables. Cold air-conditioned air leaks onto the hot Boardwalk. No sign, no logo, no words. We don’t want you to know what we want: Your money. I give out slips of paper and ask you to step inside, get a free gift, a chance to win a beautiful new car. A percentage of all our proceeds go to research a cure for AIDS, or breast or prostate cancer, or, he’s a genius of scam, Send a Care Package to our Troops Fighting for Peace in Iraq. The slips are marked with my initials, I get a dime for every one he collects. He gives you a pen with an extra hyphen, a printer’s error that creates a new religious CEO: WILDWOOD-BY-THE-SEA-GOD, the scammer’s friend. You have to turn it over to find our religion’s only prayer: BLESS AMERICA. The pens cost a dollar a thousand. When they write at all, they stop after two lines. He needs you to fill out a form on your free chance, so he’ll know where to send the car he’ll never send. It’s a sucker list he sells to junkmailers and telemarketers, happy to pay twentyfive cents for name, address, phone, social security, race, income range, marital status, names and ages of children. All the things you write on forms, worth money to people who don’t want you to know what they want: your money.
The season’s started. My wife, my curlyhead, my debts and jail stop mattering. A scammer’s life becomes his scams.
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