It is July 1969, and a man is walking on the moon. Daniel, 19-year-old high school dropout, father of a baby girl, supposed seller of printing and bindery supplies, and extremely flawed individual, is with eight other salesmen in the waiting room of the buyer for Women’s College Hospital.

None of Daniel’s friends have a square-john job like his. Most of them are growing their hair down to their knees and half of them are in Goa smoking joints the size of his arm, dropping acid, and fucking on the beach. This is not how he expected things to turn out for him. He doesn’t know exactly what he was expecting, but he knows that it wasn’t being a salesman.

Sales calls, especially cold calls, are not something Daniel enjoys. He only took the job because it paid enough for him to escape the House of Pain. Before becoming a salesman, he worked in a factory for $1.25 per hour. Fifty dollars per week was not enough for him, his wife and daughter to live in their own place. He was tired of having to sleep in their bedroom in his wife’s parents house that was barely big enough for both a queen-sized bed and a crib. He was unhappy living in a house he shared with his mother and father in-law, three sisters-in-law and a brother-in law, all of whom he did not enjoy sharing space with.

Moving into the House of Pain introduced him to an entirely new world. Initially it seemed like a much better world. I was a much nice house. There was better food than he was used to, nobody expected him to do stuff around the house, and he had access to a car. It came as a surprise to find out both his mother and father-in-law were upper-middleclass alcoholics. His parents didn’t drink, and he had never met an alcoholic. He soon learned that his father-in-law’s real job wasn’t as a petroleum engineer but as an overworked beast of burden. He worked so the rest of the family could spend all he earned and then demand he earn some more. Except for Daniel’s wife, Jan, his father-in-law’s children treated him with a complete lack of respect. They said things to him that Daniel could never imagine saying to his father.

Daniel learned that his mother-in-law was a recovering alcoholic. As near as he could determine, she quit drinking so she could lord it over her husband whom she often describes as a weak man. Daniel had never heard a wife badmouth her husband in front of their children. It was an even bigger surprise that they slept in different bedrooms. His father-in-law slept in his young son’s room. The son slept his mother’s bedroom. Daniel couldn’t get his head around that even when he was told it was only because his father-in-law snored and it kept his mother-in-law awake. The situation was far too Freudian for Daniel to contemplate. As for his three sisters-in-law, when they weren’t stealing his cigarettes, they spent most of their time screaming at each other and languishing in the basement smoking dope.

Daniel’s job as a salesman paid $100 per week and provided access to a car. It was his ticket to freedom. Or so he thought. He hadn’t counted on being told by his boss to get his hair cut, not once but twice. He was also instructed to always wear a suit and a shirt and tie. He no longer looked like any of his friends. Now he looked like a guy from a 1950s movie. He was relieved he didn’t have to wear a hat the same way the older salesmen did.

As Daniel sits waiting his turn to plead his case with the buyer, he catches sight of his reflection in the glass door of the buyer’s office. What Daniel sees comes as no surprise. He is wearing his one and only cheap, blue, windowpane-check, suit that he got married in and has his green, faux leather, plastic briefcase on his lap.

As Daniel looks around, he realizes he is by far the youngest person in the room. Only his moustache keeps him from looking like the high school-aged kid he is. None of the other salesmen warrant more than a short look. Except for one.

Daniel is focused on a guy in the corner of the room. He is older than the rest of the salesmen, and as near as Daniel can determine, he is asleep. The old man’s socks have fallen around his ankles exposing what appears to be varicose veins on his lower calves. The grey suit the old man is wearing is rumpled and several years out of fashion. His blue and red striped tie has been tied so many times, the knot has all but turned into a grease spot on his collar, the points of which are turning up. The old man’s suit jacket is unbuttoned and his paunch is pushing against his almost white shirt causing the area just under the button closest to his belt to gape and expose part of his white, hairy belly.

The old man seems familiar. Daniel is sure he has seen or met him someplace before. But where? As he continues to stare, the old man opens his eyes and looks directly at him. As they lock eyes, Daniel hears the old man’s voice even though his lips aren’t moving. He quickly glances around the room. No one else seems to be able to hear the old man.

“Take a good look sonny Jim. Don’t be so judgmental. You think I planned on ending up like this? You think this is how I wanted my life to turn out? Every decision you make or don’t make eventually has some real consequences. What you are looking at now is the amalgam of all my life’s decisions. You might want to keep that in mind.”

Daniel is tempted to respond. But nobody else in the room seems to be able to hear the old man’s voice and he doesn’t want to be seen talking to himself.

“I was once like you, my head full of dreams and fantasies about what my life was going to be like. And then I made a fateful decision. Look at where you are now and ask yourself if because of what you have done, you have fallen down a rabbit hole you will never escape from.”

Daniel does not want to do that. He does not want to think he is drifting down a bottomless hole. He wants to believe he can be a good husband, a good father, a good provider and have a good and meaningful life.

“Good luck with that sonny Jim. You are fooling yourself. Admit it. You are trapped and you are going to stay trapped until one day you find yourself being just like me.

This statement from the old man rocks Daniel. Is the in a trap or is it just a temporary bad time in his life?

“Oh, it’s not temporary. It’s your life. Think of your existence as an overcrowded lifeboat with limited food supplies. The fewer the passengers, the longer you survive. How many people do you want in the boat with you? Are you willing to push some people overboard to ensure your existence?”

This last statement shocks Daniel. He has never considered his wife and child as impediments to his continued existence. Can he only achieve his dreams if he is on his own? The thought of that disturbs him greatly. Daniel needs to get out of the room. He leaves and goes to the washroom. He stares at his face in the washroom mirror for several minutes before he returns to the waiting room. When he gets back, the old man is no longer there. He turns to one of the other salesmen he has been sitting with.

“Is the old guy in with the buyer now?” he asks him.

“What old man?” is the salesman’s response.