Cuba Is A Long Way To Go For A Drink

I have just had the shortest employment I’ve ever had in my life. I started working for a sales and marketing company off Ebrington Street, not far from where I now live in Plymouth. It seemed like a promising job, especially since I was interviewed by a beautiful woman called Fran. She sat and told me I was perfect for the job. She told me I seemed enthusiastic, really keen and a real people person. How wrong can one woman be?

The others I met, mostly men in cheap suits, are all very excited. They talk loudly and enthusiastically about everything, especially THE COMPANY, and the opportunities it presents. I try and smile like they do, but after half an hour my face starts to ache. I find my self slowly retreating into my usual half frown, half emotionless look. These guys wouldn’t last five minutes on a London Tube train. As far as I’m concerned this is just a job and one where I will get paid at the end of the month and go home moderately happy. Clock in at nine and clock out at five. Simple.

The suits adjust their ties and talk football. In comes their boss, a twenty seven year old man in a better, very expensive looking suit and broad smile. He’s not bad looking, with short brown hair and dark brown eyes. His body language is full of positive messages. He writes on a white board, lecturing the men about marketing themselves in a positive manner. I wasn’t told what these men actually do. I was taken off for another chat and told to relax and smiled at by Fran.

‘I don’t want you to worry about anything. Really. Just relax.’ Fran said and smiled in her blonde and beautiful way. She reminded me of Christina Aguilera, but nicer and sweeter.

I had left University and Plymouth nearly seven years ago and now I was back. Some months before I left London I had been listening to a self help CD, one with a title about changing your life in seven days. I listened to the soothing voice and read the accompanying book, my head on my pillow, giving my self positive messages about my self. Free the negative energy through my feet, it told me. Imagine yourself as handsome and strong, being positive.

It’s hard to believe in these sort of self help tapes or CDs. It’s as hard as believing in yourself, when your shy and see a hideous creature looking back at you from your mirror. I did my best, trying to imagine a better, more perfect me. I visualised my goals, pictured me talking to attractive women and winning them over with my wit and a perfect smile. Try not to vomit.

I have a degree in media studies, the good it has done me, and that makes me immune to bullshit. When you’re adept at taking apart film and television, you start doing it with everything, including yourself. Two good things came of my time at University and those were my friends and my love of Plymouth. Here I am again.

Fran is telling me not to worry about anything over the next two weeks, while I get slowly accustomed to their company. I’m to learn about a particular client over the next few days and I’m not to worry. They are beginning to make me worry, with all their talk of relaxing.

The next day I meet Dave and Cyrus. Dave is quite quiet, but his frame bubbles with a slow sure confidence, while Cyrus is like a second hand car dealer on speed. I notice straight away that is eyes are too close together as he greets me with a firm handshake and a radio announcer’s voice with more than a hint of a Plymouth accent. They talk about THE COMPANY and the opportunities it presents. They talk about the joys of being rich.

I chat to them and try and come across as enthusiastic- a real go getter. I nearly choke on all my positive sounding statements. I spend time with the guys, talking lots of marketing and stuff, my smile burning into my cheeks.

Later, apparently, Fran tells me that the lads seem to think I’m perfect for the job and I’ll fit in perfectly. I smile. I’ve got the job.

‘How do you feel, now that I’ve offered you the job?’ She asks, brightly, her full red lips parting.

‘Great.’

I spend the afternoon alone, my landlord and friend, Rich being at work in his actually media related job. Much later, he is phoning me and saying, ‘We are in Cuba, come for a drink.’

Bar Cuba is brightly painted bar that sits back a little on North Hill. You can watch the young male and female students pouring into the thin bar, the walls lined with chairs and small tables. Your eyes jump to the large framed picture made up of the sort of sweets you use to buy for a penny in sweet shop.

This is what being in Plymouth is all about. Sitting in relaxing bars, having a drink with your mates and watching young gorgeous girls wander in and out of your life. Sometimes, you might even talk to some of them. I’m thirty two years old, although I look older. This is too old to be afraid of girls.

I remember Cyrus and the other confident lads at THE COMPANY, and partly hope there is some secret waiting to be imparted to me, some formula they can tell me about and suddenly I’ll be all bright smiles and talking women into sleeping with me. It’s all about marketing your self, they say.

Another night, a few days later and I’m in Cuba again, this time with Rich’s workmates, enjoying a drink, talking crap. The next thing I know, I’m surrounded by beautiful blonde women. Right then, I’m thinking how great it would be to be confident like Ben, the managing director of THE COMPANY, with his bright smile and expensive suits. I imagine he has no problem with attracting women, like the guys I’m drinking with in Cuba, with their easy chat and wit.

I find my self being talked to and look round and see one of the girls talking to me. I try and ease into the conversation, but I find my self with that continuous voice inside my head, telling me that I’m going run out of conversation and she’ll be bored. Sometime later, I’m dancing after pouring several beers and shots down my throat in the desperation to get drunk. Deadening the voice in my head is the only way forward, but he’s having none of it.

I’m then dancing on a small stage upstairs, trying to look relaxed, thinking how the lads at THE COMPANY are probably doing the same sort of thing right now, but with much more style, not afraid to have a good time.

I listen to the CD again, the night before I go into work, my first proper day on the job. So far, I have learnt about another company they are supposed to be marketing, but I don’t know what the lads really do. I put on my suit again and kid myself I look like one of them, and I try and walk like them too, all cocky. All I’m missing is the cigarettes they all seem to smoke with a relaxed air.

I’m suddenly in a room filled with other guys, all suited, speaking loudly about sales and marketing, some writing facts and figures on a board. Cyrus comes in and starts a meeting. Ben is away and Cyrus, who’s climbing the ladder quickly, is in charge, even though he’s about twenty two. I suddenly feel very old. I look at the security ID with my face on it, noting the balding hair and haggard expression.

Cyrus boldly walks round the room, congratulating members of his team on their results over the last week. I start to get a strange feeling running through me. There’s suddenly something very familiar going on and I don’t like it one bit. After putting my suspicions to one side, I’m stuck with Steve, a suited wide boy with a sly smile and fast mouth. In a neutral accent he tells me all about being positive and about sales as we climb in another guy’s car and head off to Cornwall. Alarm bells are ringing. I look out into the country side that rushes past, the dance music that’s coming out of the stereo blasting at my ears. The beat is fast and suddenly, like the others in the car, I feel a strange exhilaration. Steve turns to me occasionally, as he holds a cigarette out the window and talks about his success and the BMW he’s picking up in a couple of days.

I don’t ever mention that I don’t drive.

Behind Steve sits an attractive young woman that is new like me, but she’s been there a few more days. Steve chats to her with that subtext in his voice, telling her about the BMW he’s going to pick up next week. He also mentions a family do he turned up at, only to be given the cold shoulder by his ex-wife. ‘I was called a murderer. She didn’t even let my own son take his present off me.’

Most of the suited men I’ve met all seem to have an ex-wife story, including James who starts recalling the fact that his wife took herself off his credit card a few days after she bought herself a BMW. Now, he tells us, it’s sitting somewhere in Plymouth going rusty and he can’t touch it, while his wife lives abroad in some sunny country. I imagine her having sun tan oil rubbed into her skin while she smiles.

The next thing that happens, is that I’m in another large office building filled with more suits, all interchangeable with the ones I arrived with. I look at my self in the toilet mirror and see another shark in a suit, except for the face. The face is worried and suspicious.

I’m taken to meet another top guy, in his large office over looking an industrial waste land in Cornwall. He smiles and loosens his expensive tie. He talks about selling. He echoes what everybody else I’ve met has said about marketing, the fact that you are trying to sell yourself. The product, he informs me, always sells it self.

Imagine a bomber opening its bowels and a large black bomb dropping through the sky. It lands on me. The suit before me tells me that they want me to work my way up through the company, to sell door to door, working only on commission. He tells me that I’d be great, that I’d fit right in to THE COMPANY. I have to sell my self, he tells me.

I don’t know if he can see the doubt in my face, but he persuades me to go into the field with some other representatives and give it a go. They drop me off on a housing estate, telling me I have to try and get some housewives to sign up to the telecom group they are marketing for. They tell me what to say and how to say it. They leave me there, telling me that I will fuck up and to except it.

After a few doors where men and women told me they were not interested, I ended up standing in the middle of the estate, staring at my mobile phone. I had tried to sell my self, feeling my smile stretch across my face, while my gut told me to walk away.

Suddenly a man appears from one of the houses and approaches me. ‘Are you lost?’ He asks and I smile. ‘Not at all mate,’ I tell him. It’s a lie.

I phone Fran back in Plymouth and tell her I quit. I phone Dave and tell him the same and then walk through Cornwall alone, feeling like a failure. On the train, I begin laugh about what’s happened that day and I picture the lives of these salesman in their cheap suits and their desperately excited voices. I remember the stories about their ex-wife and estranged children and smile to myself.

I keep smiling as I remember the CD I had listened to in London, the one that said I could change my life in seven days. That was back in London, just a few weeks ago, when I had a different life.