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The Salesman - by Joshua Harris-Kirkwood
The Salesman
The stranger who buys the final copy could be anyone. To him, they are all strangers. And he is a stranger to them. Which is how it must be. How much worse, how much more degrading, to take money from friends or relatives than from strangers. He can pretend it is just a business. He is just a salesman. Today, he has been a good salesman. He has sold every copy. He will have a bed tonight. It is easier to sell when there is a certain distance between him and the customer, and there always is, because he buyers buy a copy to formalise their relationship with him, to emphasise that he is separate to them, different, apart. A stranger. By buying a copy, they reassert the division between him and themselves. They are buyers, not sellers.
He does not feel shame anymore, because shame derives in part from guilt. Why should he feel guilty when so many people do not give to him? Those people are privileged. Those misers, they are the guilty ones. And shame derives in part from actions inappropriate to your position. There is no shame for those at the bottom. They are society’s rank hell-pit, the leeching dependents who suck goodwill and generosity until there is nothing but dry earth where once there was a luscious spring. Sometimes he thinks of himself in those terms, but only on the good days, when there is room for self-loathing. He cannot feel shame or even think when he is dominated by loneliness and hunger and cold and bitterness towards men.
His name is not important, because he is a stranger to us. But tonight he will have a bed to sleep in. And tomorrow, he will have more copies to sell. |
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