viagra ain’t cheap

I use to peddle pharmaceuticals. I sold a boat load of haloperidol to a psychiatric hospital my first week on the job. The lady sounded fat and annoyed when I asked her if she needed to restock. Hoping to woo her I skipped the Freudian / Jungian trivia and went straight to the crazy cousin. She told me how to sort him out and then bought five thousand doses of anti-psychotic.

(Later that same cousin, who really isn’t crazy at all just very clever in the ways of making you think he is, would mock me: “You spent four years in school just to sell drugs? Sheeeeet, I can do that without a degree”.)

My big break came with Pfizer. I was working through lunch when I took the call. A European distributor wanted a quote on Viagra. “One million please.” I crossed my legs as I figured up 5% of one million $7 tablets, gave him the info in a super sexy voice (Momma didn’t raise no fool) and then chatted to him about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how “yes, of course I look EXACTLY like Sarah Michelle Gellar“.

My manager shot me down “No way can we supply that.” So I went straight to the VP – on temporary relocation from San Fran. “Do it,” he said. So I did it. I sold $7 million dollars worth of Viagra to a Swedish dude named Magnus.

Too bad for me, and really awful for Magnus, he was killed in a plane crash a week later. While his office was busy reassigning his accounts I had to catch my own jet plane to London and a postgrad program. I could have hung around and waited on Magnus’s successor. Took the money and danced like Cuba Gooding all the way to the bank. I didn’t. To this day I couldn’t tell you why. Honest to goodness.

I know I made the right decision. No doubt about it. A gorgeous set of brown eyes tells me this every day. But I’d be lying if I said I never think about a Swede named Magnus……….and a whole lotta Viagra.