The Ugly Guys Club

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The Ugly Guys Club is a whimsical tale about a love-starved youth who came to the United States as a grumbling child many years ago. One day, he meets a beautiful girl who really makes him feel like he’s living inside an everyday paradise. She doesn’t care about his looks or the depth of his pocket, and she shows him warmth and companionship unlike he’s ever felt before. As time flies by, the boy swears to dedicate himself to tying the knot with her once he starts making money. However, he fails to realize that the girl he loves now has a suitor and is scheduled to be married soon before returning back to her home country. So with time running out, this hopeless romantic tries to frantically convince the girl that he’s really the “Right One,” and that he’s truly dedicated to consistently bringing her happiness and joy. But the problem is…this boy is nearly 30 years old!

 

The Ugly Guys Club
Copyright © 2017 by Dan K. Oh
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the
prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial
uses permitted by copyright law.
Tellwell Talent
www.tellwell.ca
ISBN
978-1-77302-159-1 (Hardcover)
978-1-77302-157-7 (Paperback)
978-1-77302-158-4 (eBook)

 

Sample Excerpts:

PROLOGUE:

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I like movies. One of my favorite movies of all time is RUDY, a true story about a short little white guy from a blue-collar steel mill-working Catholic family in Illinois that struggles all his life to play college football for Notre Dame. But nobody in his family supports his retarded ambitions, discouraging and reminding him that they are poor, even mocking him that he doesn’t have a chance in hell to make it into the team, let alone be admitted to the university. But he proves them wrong by doing just that, after tussling rigorously to transfer from a nearby junior college, and once he gets in, starts sweating pure blood and guts to gain a small spot as a walk-on player for the defense team. Then he puts out more sweat and guts day in and day out for the practice squad until one day, he finally gets his opportunity to actually dress-in for the final game of his senior year––the last regular game of their winning season against Georgia Tech. It would absolutely be the last time Rudy would ever put on the Irish uniform, even if it meant he was just going to be watching the game from the sidelines, wishing he could play, nonetheless, fulfilling his lifelong dream. However, he is soon overwhelmed by thousands of boisterous Irish fans including his family members watching him from the stands, becoming louder and louder, as they start rooting and chanting his name, “RUDY! RUDY!” so that he could be pressured into being put in the game. But he isn’t put in the game because the coach is an asshole. Soon the boy living his dream finally gets to play the lousy last thirty seconds of the almost-won, victory-clinching, pointless game. The most inspiring part however, is at the very end when only seven seconds remain in the fourth quarter; this former-loser-about-to-turn-into-a-role-model-and-become-a-motivational-speaker-in-real-life blitzes right through the offensive linemen and sacks the quarterback! The crowd goes wild and they chant his name even louder and harder, unable to contain their excitement and glee. Then his teammates carry Rudy off the field in an exuberant celebratory debauchery and they say even to this day, no other Fighting Irish player has ever been carried off the field. Well, until they did it to some other fool back in ’95. Anyway, it’s truly a beautiful and inspiring film. I still get the chills every time I watch it. I even dig its soothing, sweet, mellow theme music when I hear it. I still cry every time I watch it because it’s a true tear-jerking story of an underdog. I AM AN UNDERDOG. We, the underdogs, have it tough. I think I can personally relate to that Rudy guy more than any other guy on the freaking planet because I, like Rudy, am not considered handsome; I am short and broke, and just about all the pretty girls in the world have rejected me. Much like him in the movie, except Rudy, for some reason, he isn’t too much into girls. But I am. ALWAYS. And that’s pretty tough.

Anyway, that’s what I like. I like movies. I wish they’d hire me at some film studio to at least move their cables, so I could get close and get a glimpse on how those fascinating jobs get made. That crazy stuff really intrigues and captivates the hell out of me! I wanna make like mad, crazy dough! I once thought about attending film school, but I was like, “How much you say the tuition is again? Daaaang, ya’ll crazy!”

I tend to be one of those annoying guys in movie theaters shouting at the screen, especially during those long, annoying, unnecessary previews they show before the feature presentation, yelling stuff like, “Awww, that crap looks garbage!” or, “Ludacris can’t act for shit, man!” or, “That shit looks fake—that don’t look like no KEANU!”

To this day I believe The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the best movie I’ve seen. I tip my hat to the curly-haired director. I remember I was watching it in the movie theater by myself as usual, and towards the end of the movie, in the fiery Mordor scene where Frodo lays out in exhaustion while climbing Mt. Doom and his best friend Samwise Gamgee, played by Sean Astin, who also played Rudy, carries him over his shoulder, I yelled out at the top of my lungs––voice rattling, “RUDY! RUDY!” I actually got the whole crowd in the theater started. It was one of the few moments I actually felt charisma plow through my veins. It was really awesome…

CHAPTER 5

I feel like I oughta mention next that I woke up very confused and dizzy at the hospital after my accident. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Things were so blurry. After all, I was badly hurt. My left pinkie was broken and I had bad contusions on my right elbow and both of my wrists. I guess that meant I couldn’t play the guitar anymore—play medleys for the ladies. My dream car was totaled and I had nothing left to live for. Yep, my life was truly over. Plus, they said I had a broken clavicle. No crap, I could see it and it hurt like a mutherfreaker. I don’t know what it’s like to be banzai dropped (that’s a wrestling move where the late Yokozuna sits on your chest from the second rope), but it’s five times worse, I bet. Or better yet, it’s just like being flying elbow-dropped by “Macho Man” Randy Savage right on your collarbone from a second-story window. I should be dead, as they said, because my neck could’ve easily buckled too far forward onto the top of my gearshift and stabbed my eye, but instead, I just got big lacerations, cuts, and deep gashes around my scalp and temple, with lots of bandages for punctures from other glass pieces that scarred my face as well. But they still had to remove one piece of metal from the top of my skull surgically. I should be considered very lucky. Had I died, then the pictures of my bloodily torn up sack of blubber mixed with bone tissue would’ve been uploaded to www.ogrish.com. Somehow, despite bearing all this pain, I’m still amazingly able to sit, talk, and cuss at the little devils that keep running around and kicking my bed. One of them stole my Kool-Aid and I got mad, so I threw a Motor Trend magazine at them. Somebody put too much sugar in their churros. They should hand me a plaque for my patience dealing with annoying little kids. I should however, complain to the nurses why they hadn’t given me stronger painkillers. I never felt so much pain in my life except the time I got circumcised and watched Baywatch later on the same day. The stitching popped and I was bleeding worse than John Wayne Bobbitt the moment he woke up. One doctor said earlier that he saw an immediate quick full recovery, but also said that he had never seen such a big crybaby who also cursed at little children. Whatever… Anyway, my regular nurse had been very nice to me, no kidding. She giggles at me a lot and she’s very gorgeous and pretty. She’s Asian too, who actually isn’t Filipino. I didn’t catch her name yet, but I remember looking at her skinny little finger and she wasn’t wearing a ring. Man, that’s a real bad habit that I have, always searching for a ring on a woman’s finger first, as if I can make something happen. I’m sure it’s a sign of desperation saying, “Time is running out!”

CHAPTER 6

There were three significant events in my life where I could’ve actually fulfilled my dream of scoring lots of cash and women. I would break down those affairs into three categories: The Pyramid Scam, The Nightclub Episodes, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico City. Then I would label one more, just for the hell of it, calling it, Straight Outta Watts. Heck, I had the opportunity to seize the whole oyster in my hand. But it seemed to me the harder I chased those goals, the quicker they got away. I really blew it big time. In all those attempts, I have nothing but regrets and resentment, and all the credit goes to The Creator who oversaw all of it and did nothing. I hope to remain sane enough to explain thoroughly what happened to me, and if I do, I hope someone will acknowledge my dissent towards life in general. No one feels sorry for me. No one is here to say, “Poor old Dave, there, there now…do you feel better?” after tucking me nicely into bed. The only person that could’ve done that for me was Jeannie, besides my own folks of course, but she’s gone now, not even aware that I got hurt—just happy to be married to some punk USC graduate who earns a salary-based income at some mobile communication company that I have never even heard of. If I ever met the guy, I would’ve knocked the crap out of him for stealing away my dream woman. That was pretty pathetic for someone who was considered to have “higher standards” than me, someone who was deemed worthy to be her crowned prince. I don’t even think he carried a good family name to tell the truth. That’s what Jeannie kept telling me anyway, that one’s education and good family values did matter to people a lot more than I would know. Strictly for fossils. She told me that at Barnes & Noble bookstore before it all went down, which was another spot where she chilled to study for her exams. I remember she said, “People meet people with similar standards, Dave. I told you that already, otherwise relationships don’t work.” I remember I got really mad and I wasn’t even looking or speaking to her. She just sighed, sounded distressful, adding, “I love you, but like I said to you before a thousand times—I think of you only as a brother.” I then remember my face finally got really red, and I threw down my iPod and broke it, sick and tired of hot pussy keep eluding me all the time. So I raised my voice all the way up to hell and yelled, “WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT STANDARD? WHO THE FUCK CARES? Have you been using me then? Using me for MONEY? Is that what you’ve been DOING? Is that how you were raised, WOMAN?” I was really hot like a Chinese firecracker, raising my voice probably through all three floors. This was almost five weeks after she spilled the beans about getting married to that USC punk alumni loser. I must’ve been enjoying the moment of scolding her hot though; I was on a roll, kind of spitting and taunting nasty rhetoric at the same time. I then continued, “Is that what your old-ass parents taught you—to take advantage of people? I thought you’d be smarter than this, you conniving wench! Do you still judge a person by his cover? How could you have those words come out of your conniving, wenching mouth? If you were a guy, I would sock you right now, YOU WENCH!” But again, I never felt so much pain my whole life. I was losing everything that meant so dear to me. It was hard to accept that I had to let her go. But as you know, I had to let the frustration all out of me and tell her like it was. I thought about going overboard and even gently slapping her cute face, after making her apologize to me for breaking my tender, feeble heart. I couldn’t do that, of course, even make a motion of slapping her because there were too many white people around us and I was a beater off to women, not a beater of women. I got really pissed at her for not realizing what I wanted even when I first met her inside that stuffy little office. But Jeannie was still Jeannie. She was very distraught, shocked, sad, and totally shaken when I yelled and screamed at her like that—my first time directly cussing at her. She broke down and cried, sobbing like a little girl, which was kind of refreshing to see to tell the truth. She wept and groaned, choking first, then slowly stuttering, “I-I don’t understand, I thought you’d be happy for me! W-Why are you acting this way? Why are you cursing at me?” She further gasped, sobbed, and then let her tear levee drop like a dam had burst. I felt very sad and captivated too, seeing her cry like a baby like that. It didn’t feel good seeing her drowning and trembling in shock and dread like there was no tomorrow. Finally, a lesbian couple approached and told me to stop tormenting her. I have to admit that two evils didn’t make a right. But I wasn’t finished! Awakening my dark evil side like the Dark Sith was what I needed to finish off doing. So whether there were witnesses or not, or consequences, I said one more nasty thing to her so she could remember just how much she hurt me and how much she made me bleed inside. So I said, “BECAUSE YOU’RE A DUMB FUCKING WENCH AND I FUCKING LOVE YOU! THAT’S WHY! YOU DUMB CUNT!!!”

I was hurt—she was hurt—we were all in pain. So I digressed. I assumed she didn’t know what that “C” word meant, but I guess she did. What was done was done. It was simply my way of telling her that for the last time—one of my last chances ever to tell my beloved Jeannie—that I loved her more than anything in the world, definitely more than she would ever know and that I didn’t want her to leave…leave me rotting in eternal darkness because she was the only light source that I had. It was so sad, my life. I wished I could declare default like people did on their credit cards so I could restart my life all over again from infancy. I wished there really was a thing called reincarnation because I really needed it. I also wished there was a better time to tell Jeannie with all my heart that she was my H2O and O2 and I didn’t want to see her go and marry someone else because that would be a big mistake and it would just tear me apart; and that if she could only wait, then I was going to take care of her so richly for life because I was going to strive to be the best man that I could be and provide her with anything and everything she ever needed in life and make her fully, truly, and eternally happy. I should’ve told her that she absolutely completed ME! But I knew it was too late and there was nothing that I could do.

 

CHAPTER 7

I could relate some of my lonely feelings to one funny romantic comedy I saw a long time ago in high school. It’s called Other People’s Money with Danny DeVito in the lead role and Penelope Ann Miller playing his opposite. In it, DeVito plays Larry the Liquidator, the aggressive corporate businessman that takes over underperforming blue-collar companies before taking them apart to sell in smaller pieces for profit. Penny Ann Miller plays Kate, a super cute and sassy ginger lawyer that happens to be the stepdaughter of the President of New England Wire and Cable, played by Gregory Peck, the company that Larry is interested in wooing the shareholders into selling their shares to him. Upon her stepfather’s and several top shareholders’ interests, Kate leads the defense against Larry’s plans to take over the company while Larry tries to win both the company and Kate’s feisty, spunky heart. Although there seems to be clearly a mismatch, where Kate stands towering over Larry by nearly a foot, Larry finds the balls to go up to Kate’s Manhattan apartment one evening to deliver a piece of his mind. Just when he spots her, beautifully dressed, leaving with her date to go watch some opera, Larry tells Kate in the lobby, totally catching her by surprise, that she should think about marrying him. As she tries to walk out on him, blushed, he stops her again and tells her how she is the last thought that he has before going to bed and the first as he wakes up. Then he mentions how they should have babies together, but Kate remains there shocked as if she was terrified that her baby would end up looking like him. Anyway, in the end, no matter how hard Larry tries, in a situation like mine, he totally fails to win her over and thus, becomes what I call, a womanless loser. Sounds pretty identical. I could’ve tried more sweet talks like that myself with Jeannie. Danny DeVito had a ton of money in the movie, so he was more poised and self-confident to be crafty. Maybe I could’ve taken more good footnotes and ripped off clever and witty lines from films like Love Actually and plagiarized them to use on my sweet Jeannie. I thought I was doing some of that already with memorable quotes from As Good as It Gets and Before Sunrise, but things didn’t really work. The problem was, Jeannie wasn’t very much Americanized yet. So I had to keep telling her how idioms, hyperboles, and metaphors worked. For instance, she would say, “I’m so hungry, I am a cow.” I had to tell her that it oughta be, “I’m so hungry, I can eat a cow,” and that it wasn’t even a cow—it was a horse. And then she said, “Really? But why a horse? People eat cows. They don’t eat horse.”

Then I rolled my eyes and told her, “Exactly, that’s the point! That’s why people say a ‘horse.’ ‘You’re so hungry, you could eat a horse!’”

And then I observed her go silent and trying to work something out brilliantly in her little head, but she didn’t say anything, just kept her mouth open like she was going to add something, so I continued, “Besides, you don’t say, ‘I’m a cow.’ If you say that, then you’re saying that you’re fat. And that’s not good to say if you’re a girl and say that you’re fat like a cow.” Then she got pissed and started screaming and yelling at me, like she was about to hit me, “I’M NOT FAT!!! WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT???” She was so mad, her pretty eyes got even bigger and I thought she started melting her glasses with the red laser beam she shot from her eyes like Ursa from Superman II.

“No, I’m not saying that!” I said, nervously, “I said when you say you’re hungry like a cow, you’re admitting that you eat a lot. Like a pig. Both cows and pigs eat a lot and they eat all the time and they—”

“JUST SHUT UP, DAVE! JUST SHUT UP!!!”

In the end, I was the one being molded and verbally assaulted. It felt like she stuck a stick of dynamite up my ass and lit it before shutting the door. She wasn’t so cute when she got mad though. She had an ego problem too. She never considered herself that pretty (of course she vehemently abhorred being called fat), although to me, she was the Aphrodite of the Orient. I believe she considered herself a rocket scientist compared to riffraff like me. At least, that’s what she made me feel like when we went out. It was almost as if she was embarrassed to be seen with me sometimes. But only sometimes. Thus, the reason why she said everybody has standards, and therefore she would not ever be caught rolling in bed with yours truly.

Anyway, I was really tired at some point of being just her brother. So even though she made clear the boundary between us, I still planned to sweep Jeannie off her feet, whenever there was a chance, have her swap out her old glasses and put on the new; and make her see me for who I really was—an uncrowned king that had yet to fulfil my lust-filled destiny. But I didn’t have a Plan B.

CHAPTER 7

I could relate some of my lonely feelings to one funny romantic comedy I saw a long time ago in high school. It’s called Other People’s Money with Danny DeVito in the lead role and Penelope Ann Miller playing his opposite. In it, DeVito plays Larry the Liquidator, the aggressive corporate businessman that takes over underperforming blue-collar companies before taking them apart to sell in smaller pieces for profit. Penny Ann Miller plays Kate, a super cute and sassy ginger lawyer that happens to be the stepdaughter of the President of New England Wire and Cable, played by Gregory Peck, the company that Larry is interested in wooing the shareholders into selling their shares to him. Upon her stepfather’s and several top shareholders’ interests, Kate leads the defense against Larry’s plans to take over the company while Larry tries to win both the company and Kate’s feisty, spunky heart. Although there seems to be clearly a mismatch, where Kate stands towering over Larry by nearly a foot, Larry finds the balls to go up to Kate’s Manhattan apartment one evening to deliver a piece of his mind. Just when he spots her, beautifully dressed, leaving with her date to go watch some opera, Larry tells Kate in the lobby, totally catching her by surprise, that she should think about marrying him. As she tries to walk out on him, blushed, he stops her again and tells her how she is the last thought that he has before going to bed and the first as he wakes up. Then he mentions how they should have babies together, but Kate remains there shocked as if she was terrified that her baby would end up looking like him. Anyway, in the end, no matter how hard Larry tries, in a situation like mine, he totally fails to win her over and thus, becomes what I call, a womanless loser. Sounds pretty identical. I could’ve tried more sweet talks like that myself with Jeannie. Danny DeVito had a ton of money in the movie, so he was more poised and self-confident to be crafty. Maybe I could’ve taken more good footnotes and ripped off clever and witty lines from films like Love Actually and plagiarized them to use on my sweet Jeannie. I thought I was doing some of that already with memorable quotes from As Good as It Gets and Before Sunrise, but things didn’t really work. The problem was, Jeannie wasn’t very much Americanized yet. So I had to keep telling her how idioms, hyperboles, and metaphors worked. For instance, she would say, “I’m so hungry, I am a cow.” I had to tell her that it oughta be, “I’m so hungry, I can eat a cow,” and that it wasn’t even a cow—it was a horse. And then she said, “Really? But why a horse? People eat cows. They don’t eat horse.”

Then I rolled my eyes and told her, “Exactly, that’s the point! That’s why people say a ‘horse.’ ‘You’re so hungry, you could eat a horse!’”

And then I observed her go silent and trying to work something out brilliantly in her little head, but she didn’t say anything, just kept her mouth open like she was going to add something, so I continued, “Besides, you don’t say, ‘I’m a cow.’ If you say that, then you’re saying that you’re fat. And that’s not good to say if you’re a girl and say that you’re fat like a cow.” Then she got pissed and started screaming and yelling at me, like she was about to hit me, “I’M NOT FAT!!! WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT???” She was so mad, her pretty eyes got even bigger and I thought she started melting her glasses with the red laser beam she shot from her eyes like Ursa from Superman II.

“No, I’m not saying that!” I said, nervously, “I said when you say you’re hungry like a cow, you’re admitting that you eat a lot. Like a pig. Both cows and pigs eat a lot and they eat all the time and they—”

“JUST SHUT UP, DAVE! JUST SHUT UP!!!”

In the end, I was the one being molded and verbally assaulted. It felt like she stuck a stick of dynamite up my ass and lit it before shutting the door. She wasn’t so cute when she got mad though. She had an ego problem too. She never considered herself that pretty (of course she vehemently abhorred being called fat), although to me, she was the Aphrodite of the Orient. I believe she considered herself a rocket scientist compared to riffraff like me. At least, that’s what she made me feel like when we went out. It was almost as if she was embarrassed to be seen with me sometimes. But only sometimes. Thus, the reason why she said everybody has standards, and therefore she would not ever be caught rolling in bed with yours truly.

Anyway, I was really tired at some point of being just her brother. So even though she made clear the boundary between us, I still planned to sweep Jeannie off her feet, whenever there was a chance, have her swap out her old glasses and put on the new; and make her see me for who I really was—an uncrowned king that had yet to fulfil my lust-filled destiny. But I didn’t have a Plan B.

CHAPTER 8

Traditionally arranged marriage, which I did not know still went on in the world today, was part of the reason why I got screwed. Frankly, it hit me like a 54-ton bulldozer. I didn’t know it was a factor to be reckoned with. There was once a time in Asia when young people came of age to be married, they could not choose their own partners. Instead, it was decided by their parents who told them how to run their lives. It was ridiculous. The parents of one family got together with the parents of another and tried to hook things up; first assessing how much wealth each family had, then assessing a quick background check, then sharing some accolades of their children. Then it was all good to go. It was like opening an escrow nowadays, for Chrissakes. Not only did the parents play the matchmaker, it was like they were the merger & acquisition intermediary company. Much like Larry the Liquidator. Then what the son got from the other family was a picture of his bride-to-be, and what the daughter got was the picture of the groom-to-be. (I would’ve sent her a dick pic.) Then the parents from both sides set the date, sponsored them with sufficient money, and all of their children’s future worries were now over. This of course, was a big problem if the groom or the bride was butt-ugly, but they somehow worked their ways around. Nonetheless, this went on for centuries, and I guess in some places it still exists, especially in rich and noble families. I’m considered a scum that was Americanized so I couldn’t get near their daughters. But even back in the gay nineties, the aristocrats of New York and England stroke the similar pen (like in the movie Titanic) and I suppose one of the biggest worries that those power mongers had, was probably letting their privileged children choose their own spouses and risk tainting the good family name by inviting the weak and feeble to their upper class family tree. Such was the case with Jeannie’s family. I was told her family wasn’t that wealthy, but they were nonetheless considered noble because everyone was well-educated and well-respected in their community. All of Jeannie’s siblings got married this way, and they were all happy bound. Yeah, right.

If you watched the movie The Last Emperor, then you would know what I’m talking about. In it, you see John Lone’s character as a little boy getting married to a much older but very hot and sexy Joan Chen by arrangement. Then you see how they grow up together happily like they were always meant for each other. You also see how they live out their whole lives without having any marital problems or drug problems, like opium, whatsoever. (I’m being sarcastic.) But if you also watched the more recent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, then you see how the new young bride-to-be—a governor’s beautiful daughter played by very hot and sexy Zhang Ziyi—doesn’t want to live her life being married to a big, fat, ugly bastard named Gou through family arrangement, and she gets so bitter and pissed that she runs amok while running away and kicks everyone’s ass after stealing the Green Destiny Sword for the second time.

So you see, having an old-fashioned, noble, and aristocratic style family values in some society really tend to leave some poor old bloke like me in dire straits. Like I don’t exist. It’s true. Jeannie’s parents were the culprits, guilty of nearly sending me to my demise. They’re the ones who ordered Jeannie to get married so that I could dig myself to an early grave. They wanted to crucify me. It wasn’t totally 100% Jeannie or the damn USC guy’s fault for making me depressed, although they were certainly guilty for not stopping it. Her parents were rotten and simply had Jeannie on a leash, tugging her string every now and then, although they lived 6000 miles away from Jeannie’s small L.A. apartment. I then realized how seeing her buying all those prepaid phone cards in the recent months since Christmas whenever we went grocery shopping all seemed to make sense. As far as picking her social life, Jeannie didn’t have very much freedom at all. She may choose her platonic friends, but not someone she was going to have kids with. Hell no! I could see her spending hours on the phone with her mother, asking, “Do you think this guy sounds good? Or what about that guy? What’s his name again?” asking for her advice while the old hag on the other line just scoffs at her, preaching to her, “Listen, sweetie, just drop everything and you go meet this boy named Thomas who currently lives in Santa Barbara. He has a house over there and a degree in engineering, but he’s going to move back down here. He has good education and he’ll be good for you. We know his parents because one of his oldest brothers is an attorney who went to school with your second oldest sister. His uncle is a magistrate down here, who is also a former student of your father’s. They are great smart people.”

To tell the truth, that was really messed up. And to think that USC guy didn’t even know he was going to marry Jeannie six months ago really ticked me off. He was probably just sitting at home picking his nose after graduation and drinking Monster and Red Bull while playing Starcraft 24/7 like a total loser. I mean, if Jeannie had been dating some guy for a while with or without my knowledge and she happened to fall in love with him and decided to marry the turd the normal American way, then I would’ve probably stayed real and stepped aside although I’d still be pissed. But I’d let it go and find another life knowing she kept it clean and didn’t have the intention of misleading me. That’s understandable. But in the clear view of my narrow-squinty eyes, where I spent so much time and effort to make my relationship with Jeannie work so I could make her love me back in return, while the whole time, she foolishly led me feeling like I was the only male figure in her life that mattered, giving me the impression that she could say one day, “Who knows? If you’re still good to me, maybe I’ll love you later on!” it was just clearly a falling anvil on my head. I felt like I lost my goodwill. That USC guy couldn’t even dare compare to me in appreciating how precious and wonderful Jeannie was to a man. He didn’t make her smile and giggle like I did; he wasn’t there to console her when someone hit her car, got out, and stole her purse after shoving her to the ground. He wasn’t there when she felt she got swindled and cried her eyeballs out over the phone after buying her first car—which I was there to help her fix her pink slip. And he would never find out what made her feel “peachy” when she saw a rainbow in the sky through the window of a bathroom inside the ferryboat on the way to the gorgeous California Channel Islands. He didn’t do any of that stuff. Well, maybe—from now on, the bastard! Anyway, the hell with the traditionally arranged marriages! Somebody was going to pay.

The pain of being snubbed like that could also be explained by mentioning another famous movie to prove my point. (By now, you must realize that I’m quite a movie buff.) Remember how Indiana Jones always busts his ass traveling around the world to find these rare artifacts, like the Golden Idol in particular, and right after he grabs it, some Nazi dude always pops out with a gang of thugs and snatches it away from him? Indy goes through all sorts of hell trying to acquire these rare contraptions, like Sydney Bristow seeking the Rambaldi artifacts, and he always ends up getting his treasures jacked! That’s how I feel. It’s like you’re about to have your finest dessert, the one you waited too long to dig into because you did something good for yourself, and you’re finally ready to muff dive into the freshest and the tastiest fruit-caramel Meringue pie you ever laid your eyes on, and the minute you are about to sink your teeth into it, some punk fool with glasses and a USC diploma steals it away from you whether he ordered it or not, saying, “Uhh, I’m sorry—but somebody said this belongs to me!” and before you know it, it is gone. He may or not return the plate with some crumbs left, but you will never be the same way again. You are simply left with dreams of how that pie could’ve tasted in your mouth and how badly you wanted to play with it, lick it, stick your fingers in and out of it and roll it around and bring it up to your tongue to taste some more. You’d feel so infringed and indignant. It was like that for me all the time. I really wanted to marry Jeannie first. I would’ve rocked her world.

CHAPTER 9

The Pyramid Scheme

I was taking a couple of classes around the time I worked at that sandwich shop I mentioned. That was a long time ago. I just took four units at one of the most prestigious universities in town called UC Vermont. That was a nickname for all the UC hopefuls on Vermont Ave. that wanted to transfer to one of those UC schools so badly. I’m sure that wasn’t easy to do, so I didn’t even bother trying; I dropped out soon to work for this new, rapidly growing environmentally-conscious company that was hiring some money-hungry knuckleheads. They were looking for good-spirited, aggressive, and teamwork-oriented people that wanted to help change the world and make a lot of money while doing it. You know that grabbed my attention. So I agreed immediately to the interview. This chubby Rosanne-looking woman was doing a survey in front of the L.A. Convention Center the day my dad got his citizenship and the only reason why I was there was because my old man didn’t want to drive anymore. She was asking me all sorts of dumb questions at first on the street, like how I felt about global warming and the growing hole on the ozone layer, and saying the rainforest and the endangered species didn’t have many years left in them to survive on our planet. I didn’t care about any of those things, and could care less if it exploded or not. So I became annoyed and told her that I didn’t have any money to chip a donation. But then she said, “Well, precisely, that is what I’m here to talk about and introduce to you a great job opportunity that gives you back more for your effort. Hi. My name is Lynn and I work for a great new groundbreaking marketing company that has simply become revolutionary and astronomical in our present time in U.S. history. We put the ‘working people of America’ on the threshold of massive financial success—allowing everyone to achieve their genuine American dreams. We’ve spent the last five consecutive years as Fortune 600’s top rated, the fastest-growing private company in America, for which, we are currently looking forward to expanding our continuously growing domestic market at the global level. We seek to achieve this level by hiring great, self-motivated, young and fresh-minded people like yourself, who could be indeed searching by all means to achieve their financial dreams—their financial freedom. We would like to give you information on how you can become a part of us. Now, would you say you’re one of those hardworking people that are tired of climbing the corporate ladder? Then let me introduce you to a perfect company built at the perfect time.”

It certainly was a smelly trick. If she hadn’t used the words, “financial freedom” and “American Dream” so convincingly, then maybe I would’ve walked off and told her to read that brochure to someone else. But instead, she grabbed me by the balls. She dressed like she worked at Costco and handed out free food samples or something. But I became jubilant, translating every word to my old man, telling him that I finally had a chance to work for an American company, and maybe have a white boss—something that I always wanted to do. (I always wanted to work for Sony Pictures.) It sounded like a job offer. So I said yes to her and asked her when I could start. I thought the opportunity had finally come a knockin’.

Little did I know it was a glue trap I wish I hadn’t set my foot on.

This emotionally charged, “environmentally conscious” company was called Everlife Intercontinental, a network marketing company that was built from scratch by this slick, fortyish, self-made multi-millionaire guy, a pioneer named William Mulder. That’s what they said. It was basically just another Amway pyramid scheme, but with military style rankings, like Lieutenant, Major, Colonel, etc., instead of the usual managers, directors, jewels, emeralds, sapphires, and such. I was pretty much begging to be duped because I didn’t know what Amway was at the time, let alone, what “network marketing” meant. I thought it had something to do with advertising for an internet company. “A huge advertising company at a global level.” That’s what I told mom.

They brought me in on a Saturday morning for an open group interview. I thought that was a little weird at first, wondering how they could manage to interview more than one person at once, but I told myself that it was just probably how white people did business. They told me to dress formally, so I put on a clip-on tie and a dress shirt probably for the third time ever. But I didn’t have a jacket, so I prayed to Jesus they’d still let me in. I was overly concerned as it turned out.

This meeting, the group interview, was being held inside a large office building in Westwood, just blocks away from the 405 Freeway. The minute I got off the elevator on the third or fourth floor, I was shocked to see so many people walking around the hallway excited as if something exceptional had just occurred. I thought I arrived late, so I checked my watch and said to myself, “No, I’m not. I’m fifteen minutes early!” The whole place was packed. I started getting nervous. I didn’t think they were holding a job interview—I thought they were hosting a post-election victory party. I heard Bruce Springsteen singing Born In The USA from the huge room in the back hall. Everybody was walking around animated and energized, smiling in every corner in their sharp business attire, greeting everyone and shaking everyone’s hands. A lot of them were holding a white plastic water bottle that read, “Forever Potable” written in thick bold letters. Many people were wearing shiny badges on their chests with different designs and stripes meant for distinguishing their rank. They were reminding me of the way the shiny happy people were smiling at the end of the Shiny Happy People music video by R.E.M. Some people were old, some were young, some looked like they were just fresh out of high school or college, some looked like lawyers, and some looked like just plain homemakers. Almost all of them were white, but there were several blacks, Hispanics, and practically only one Asian—yours truly.

On my way up the elevator though (if I can backtrack a bit), I overheard two tall guys talking to each other. One was black and the other was white. The black guy first said to the white guy, “I can’t wait till we begin. We have a lot of people here today.”

There was also a tall old white lady behind them, but she was reading something on her clipboard.
“Yeah. Hey, by the way, did you hear John just bought a new house in Malibu? Boy, it’s unbelievably huge. He invited me and several Majors last Thursday to have lunch. The view was incredibly breathtaking! He’s so great. He’s fantastic,” said the white guy.

“Yes, he certainly is.”

“Oh, did you hear about Sheryl?” She made General last week,” said the white dude again.

“Yes, I did.”

“Boy, she’s so great.”

“Yes, she is.”

“She’s fantastic.”

“Yes, I know.”

I didn’t know what the hell those two dudes were babbling about, but I didn’t want them to get off on the same floor as me. They kinda made me feel small for some reason, because I had only about $9.75 in my pocket. I did want to hear more about the rich guy with the cool house though. Judging by what they were wearing—real ties and fancy shoes—they looked like they made decent amount of money. I only made $5.75/hour plus tips.

After hearing Steven Van Zandt doing a guitar solo in the background, I walked up to the blonde receptionist, working my way through the crowd, and told her that I was there to find Lynn Johnson, the woman that invited me to the interview. I had to squeeze in to get to her because everybody was so tall around me. She said, “Yeah. Please sign in here,” but suddenly, she got up to cordially shake hands with a thirtyish-looking, well-groomed white guy in a nice suit and tie, who popped up from the tree next to her and greeted her with a huge Jack Napier-style grin from Tim Burton’s Batman. He had a Rolex. He too, I’m sure, was loaded.

I started to get even more anxious. It was my first time being around so many non-Asians in the same room since high school. My self-esteem felt a little shoddy and I really didn’t want to screw anything up. I didn’t want to ruin my native people’s image by doing or saying stupid things.

First they put everybody in this huge office room with lots of folding chairs. There were about 150 to 200 people breathing in the same room, with lots tables in the corners with long chalkboards hanging from each wall. Thank goodness the AC was on. No one was to sit yet, not until everybody shook hands with everybody and had been properly introduced to their “sponsors.” Sponsors were the semi-freeloaders that introduced you to the company and they reaped commission from above what you reaped. They were really phonies that truly acted like they were generous and cared about you. Everybody just appeared too damn excited for some reason, and I tried too, in order to fit in. I was trying to groove and whistle to the new song they were playing, We Are The Champions by Queen. I’m a pretty good whistler in my opinion. I can impeccably whistle the song, Patience by Guns & Roses. Axl Rose got nothing on me.

Anyway, I soon heard someone shout, “Hey, Brad, how’s your sales volume this month? I heard Simmons quit. But you still got Lynwood coming up, right? You sure you still up for golf tomorrow?” Did I need to mention that the place was loud and boisterous?

I was just looking around and pacing myself nervously when I managed to grab crackers and punch from the back of the room. Then I thought to myself, ‘Man, do I feel like the thirteenth wheel! What’s gonna happen here? Are they gonna close the door and smoke us?’ Honestly, I was starting to get a little fidgety.

Then I heard someone suddenly call out to me, “There he is! There is our future star! Hi Dave! I’m so glad you’re here. Look here, this is Dave. Dave—this is Zonda. Zonda Foolidge. He’s a Captain with our company. He’s the one that introduced me to Everlife. So, what do you think so far?” It was Lynn. She dyed her hair orange. She had colossal tits, but I wasn’t interested in seeing them.

“Nice to meet you, Dave,” said this French/African guy, going by his accent. Well, I didn’t really know what he was. To me, he looked just like Seal.

I had to quickly swallow the cracker, but I didn’t have enough punch left in my cup. So I just stuffed them in my mouth and tried to smile back while I shook his hand. But some seeped out of my mouth and I was drooling all over my clean shirt. I was mumbling and about to cough.

“So Dave, tell me. What-do-you-do?”

I was going to fabricate, or embellish, as someone would call it, but I wasn’t really good at keeping a straight face sometimes under pressure, so I said, “I’m a waiter at a sandwich shop.”

“Oh really? I didn’t know sandwich shops had waiters,” said some Screech-looking dude standing next to him.

Smart-ass. Anyway, Lynn introduced me to another big guy that walked up to us from behind. He had a tall female friend with him. She was hot. Lynn looked nothing like her, who was short and round. But Lynn did look better that time than when I first saw her standing out in the bright sun with an ugly sun visor.

“How are we doing here, fellas? Oh—who’s this little fella?”

It was some freakishly tall, slick-looking white bastard with an unbuttoned shirt. He looked pretty stuck-up.

I was smiling.

“Brad, this is Dave. Dave—this is Brad. He’s a Major with our company. He’s Zonda’s upline. Dave here just told us he’s been in the restaurant business,” said Lynn.

“Oh, really? I was a waiter once. I was a waiter at Marie Callender’s making about thirty-nine hundred a month until I found this business and applied all of my efforts into building my own success. Now I’m a huge part of the company making three times that much, and the company is definitely a huge part of me,” the guy said. He was a snoot and a bluff if I ever saw one. There was no way you could make four grand a month working at Marie Callender’s. Or could you? I don’t know. I wondered why I didn’t apply there. Anyway, his shiny badge in a shape of an oak leaf nearly blinded me. I must admit the guy was a very clean-shaven, sharp-looking dude. There was some cockiness about him. He then shook my hand, and man, did he have huge hands. I have very small hands.

The chick next to him kind of grabbed his chest and pulled him towards her. I guess she was proud to be sleeping with him. She looked like a total slut, if you want to know the truth.

“Has anyone seen John?” asked Lynn.

“Yeah, I saw him-talking-on-the-phone-a-few-minutes-ago. I think-he’s-ready. He’s-ready-to-come-out now,” yelled Zonda.

“Has anyone seen his house? He just bought one in Malibu. Boy, his house is huge, and the view is so great!” said someone else from the back. I was really getting intrigued by this rich guy.

“Really? Wow…I bet it’s fantastic!” said a young woman with a short business skirt that reminded me of Holly Hunter from Broadcast News.

Then the guy named Brad asked me, “Do you know why you’re here, Dave?”

“Nope,” I said, “Nobody told me anything yet.” I replied.

“You’re here for the chance of a life time, Dave! You’re about to witness true magic. Perhaps watch and observe the greatest financial institution on earth, stretch its wings. We’re going to blow the roof off! You’re here to accept the prospects of changing your life, Dave. Tell me—are you a winner?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Then come on, let’s get excited! Let’s all grab a seat and listen in. The presentation is about to start!”

The presentation started off with this young Hispanic guy in a nice suit stepping up to the mic after fixing his tie, then welcoming everybody and thanking everybody for coming out. He also looked cocky and arrogant. He was around my age. I was barely twenty-one at the time. I didn’t like that bastard.

I noticed several props they had laid out in the front, starting with a giant satellite video screen with a small camera and a laser disc player to the right, and then a very nice long wooden table in the middle with a whole lotta crap of weird stuff on top of it. I wondered if Carrot Top or Gallagher was going to perform and smash things. On the table, I saw a tall water pitcher filled with water, a dropper, two water filters, that white plastic water bottle I mentioned that a lot of people were carrying, few household cleaning products, skin care products, hand soap, laundry detergent, toothpaste, breath spray, a large basket full of vitamins; several liquid mineral bottles, suntan lotion, an air filtration system, power energy bars, nutritional drinks, dietary supplements, books, catalogs, T-shirts, etc…too many to mention. I was able to see all of them clearly because Lynn and her sponsors made me sit way in the front. Obviously, it didn’t take a genius to find out what they were doing. They were looking for more people to sell all that stuff.

Then I saw a guy dash in from the side door, grinning widely as he waved his hand and greeted everyone. Those who already knew who he was, stood up, screamed, and gave him a standing ovation, like he was a game show host. It was the same white guy with the Rolex I saw earlier greeting the blondie. He was still all phony smiles, pretending like he was glad to be there to make a speech instead of kicking it on a Saturday morning with his woman back home, showing off his watch.

“Okay, okay. Thank you. Thank you very much,” he said, “Thank you. Hi, my name is John Martin and I’m here to introduce to you the most dynamic company this country has ever produced, perhaps the most influential and inventive financial establishment in the history of American capitalism. I’m an Intercontinental Marketing General here at Everlife Intercontinental, and I must say that being blessed to be working for this exciting company for the last four and a half years is an understatement. And boy, are we growing ever so fast! We are growing at a remarkable rate, faster than the speed of sound! I mean, who can stop us? The U.S. military?”
The whole damn room laughed at that silly dumb joke. I don’t know why he even tried. I shook my head. That guy Brad saw me though.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking. ‘Why did this good-looking, sharply dressed man originally from Salt Lake City wake me up to be here at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning? I’d rather be asleep, dreaming about that house on the prairie or dream about sending my kids to college, like an Ivy League school. Well, friends, let me tell you—I did go to an Ivy League school wanting to study business, and when I got out of Columbia with a degree in Landscape Design, I thought to myself, ‘My life is fully ahead of me. Nobody will be able to slow me down!’ But what I didn’t realize at the time was that soon I was racking up $80,000 in debt and for two years, I could not find a job. Nobody wanted to offer me the work that I believed I was suited for, the work I deemed to apply my hard-earned skills to. After all, my expectations were somewhat ostentatiously demanding.” He took a breath, sipped a clear glass of water that said, “Everlife” imprinted on it, and continued, “But then, one day I met an entrepreneur—a self-made millionaire businessman living in San Diego named William F. Kennedy Mulder. I knew right away that not only was he a genius, but a true American visionary, as he turned my life upside down and inside out but all straightforward. He helped me rediscover my beliefs about our great country and its democracy and freedom, consider the potential to take advantage of its vast wealth, and allowed me to incorporate these findings to help not just myself but others as well to achieve the same parallel goal: financial independence! On one evening he invited me to his magnificent home in San Diego for dinner and he asked me, ‘John, do you know why some people are successful and some are not?’ And I said, ‘Yes, some people work harder for their money than others.’ He then looked down, somewhat disappointed in my answer, and responded with a pout on his face while holding his Martini, ‘That is incorrect, John. I bet that’s what everyone at Columbia has taught you to believe and say, isn’t that right? What if I told you that you just wasted four years getting your diploma if you truly believe that? The fact of the matter, John, is that everyone tells you the same things over and over again that you don’t need to hear. They teach you the same philosophy since grade school—that if you stay in school, study hard, get a good job, and work hard, then someday your boss is going to reward you for your efforts. He or she may give you a gold watch on your retirement day after you slaved for forty years. But the truth of the matter is, John, you know that the only people who ever benefit from your hard work and reach true financial success are the ones that are at the top, those who employ the efforts of other people. Let me ask you, have you ever even met anyone truly wealthy in your life before you met me?’

“You know, for most people,” John cut himself off, before continuing, nodding his head, “that would’ve been declared darn-right intimidating. He was brutally arrogant. That would’ve gotten most people jumping out of their seats saying, ‘Mr. Mulder, you’re incredible! No thank you and goodbye!’ But I didn’t. I stayed until the man finished the sermon he specifically designed for me to hear. And by the way, his Martini was really good! So I wanted to finish it!” He got another cheap laugh from everybody with that one. The guy Brad looked at me to see if I was shaking my head again. He sure was a nosy bastard. I wanted to kick him. Then the guy went on to say, “After all, I thought to myself, ‘Man, this man is right on the money!’ I simply sat there as my mind went blank and my eardrums opened, and I let wisdom stream in! So I asked him, ‘What do you have in mind, Mr. Mulder? Would you mind sharing your idea with me?’”

Your old Dave was fidgeting in his chair. I’ve had a real bad habit of twisting and turning after sitting for a long time in one spot. But it hadn’t been that long. My butthole couldn’t take it. So I got up and walked all the way over to the back of the room where they had more punch. But I was approached by this big slick dumb-looking guy in a navy suit flashing a single silver stripe badge and an earpiece telling me, “Sir, you can’t eat or drink during the orientation. Please, you have to stay seated.” But then I was like, “All right, all right, don’t break my back,” and grabbed the closest seat to the snack table. So I sat next to this nice looking, plump Hispanic lady with really big huge hooters. Her massive jugs I did want to see. They were like two magnificent medicine balls squished tightly together. Her husband was a very lucky man. She seemed totally immersed in that guy Martin’s speech, though. A lot of people turned their heads and were staring at me. I guessed they thought I was going to take part in the presentation or something.

“I know some of you came off a long, hard night’s work,” Martin continued, after grimacing at me from across the room, “Some of you probably came from drudgery all week. In fact, you deserve that extra hour of sleep. But from here on out, ladies and gentlemen, your lives are going to change. And let me tell you, after hearing about the Everlife opportunity, you’ll not want to sleep. You won’t get any…because you’ll be up all night counting your rebate checks. Those that are accustomed to making $1000, $2000, $3000 per month, will now soon be depositing $5000, $10,000, $15,000 checks through our revolutionary Everlife Payment Plan! And it won’t stop there. I’m an Intercontinental Marketing General of Everlife Intercontinental. Do you know what that means? That means that I’ll soon break eight-figure income. That means, as long as I am with this business, I’m guaranteed to make at least $9,000,000 a year, every year, until I decide to leave this company. And why would I do that? Let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to make you an IMG as well so you can also make the same kind of money that I’m making. At Everlife, we don’t quit. We thrive. We explode. We don’t go on and say, ‘Oh man, this is hard! This is not for me.’ We breathe in success by tackling challenges and overcoming them to reach our goals. Oh, let me rephrase that. We breed success. We help each individual involved in Everlife earn his or her economic freedom unlike any other company in history. Corporate America doesn’t do that. Corporate America wants you to slave all week for the next forty years just so you could receive a gold watch on your retirement. Every day I’m sure you’ve seen your bosses’ wealth grow and multiply at the expense of your dedication and hard work. At Everlife on the other hand, we offer an extraordinary economic opportunity for those who are eager to invest and build equity for their future and their family’s future, while incorporating the same success principle of the rich and famous—that true hard work equals true hard gain. Unlike the traditional job, where you slave eight hours a day and forty hours a week just to make ends meet, Everlife offers an unprecedented equal opportunity—one in which you can reap as many personal and financial rewards as you desire. Regardless of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin, the Everlife opportunity allows each and every one of you to profit directly from your very own efforts and the efforts of others, rather than dedicate your time and talents into building financial security for someone else.”

He received a lot of praise and applause with that one. He kind of sounded as good as a damn good politician, so it must’ve been all bullshit then. Nonetheless, he got my attention as well.
“And get this: there are senior IMG’s in this company and Mr. Mulder, the founder of this great young company, who make almost a nine-figure income. Unbelievable, isn’t it? But now you know it’s possible. Financial security is within your reach with Everlife. It is the ‘sculpting cornerstone of the true American dream!’”

All of a sudden, somebody closed the blinds and turned off the lights. They were about to run a video. I was finally beginning to indulge in that guy’s words after all. I dug the part where he said, “I’m guaranteed to make at least $9,000,000 a year.”

The video began with a colorful bird’s eye view of a rainforest, a lake, an ocean, and a desert. Then a fade to black, and we were suddenly out in space, getting a shimmering look at the Earth, the moon, the sun, and the distant planets all in one single line. You could hear the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey in the background, which also happened to be the intro music to my most-hated pro wrestler of all time, the wretched Ric Flair. And you could hear a deep-voiced narrator say, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light…”

A minute or so later, after showing a slew of computer animated images of Adam chillin’ with Eve lying naked in the Garden of Eden, the ominous voice again said, “But Man has corrupted the world.” I thought it was going to show something sexy next, which got me sort of interested, more than the entire presentation thus far, but the narrator just continued to announce, “Since the beginning of the human race, primeval harmony, balance, and perfection have all but perished. History documents the ignorance of a race bent on extinguishing itself and destroying its perfect home.”

To make the long story short, the video was basically trying to point out that mankind was out to assassinate the Earth—one of the greatest accomplishments that The Lord had made. And by poisoning and deflowering it, it was just a matter of time before we see its doom with our very own eyes. Unless, we, the few self-conscious people become willing to fight to keep it and take a stand and do something, we are surely to inevitably head toward the extinction of our own breathing kind. Nothing new that I hadn’t heard since grade school. That’s what global warming and the greenhouse effect were about. Anyway, then it began showing disturbing images of people stripping the rainforest of its juices, dumping toxic chemicals into the ocean, causing catastrophic oil spills that leave thousands of precious species dead, conducting nuclear and biological tests underground and water that contaminate our natural resources, expanding chemical research on animals and plants that later become our food, overfilling our landfills that can spread more bacteria and diseases, belligerently drilling for oil on natural habitats at the expense of their true beauty, producing industrial pollutants that corrode the ozone layer, and slaughtering poor animals from all corners of the earth. (It briefly showed an old Asian couple boiling and chewing on dog and cat meat.) Well, you get the picture. I thought it was a propaganda video made by the World Wildlife Fund or PETA or something. The narrator then said again, “But not all men are created evil,” which made me laugh.

The video then went on to say how one man started to change all that. One brave man had a vision to end all rapes of our planet and restore its natural juices back into our Mother Nature’s deep hole. Because it was the right thing to do and the perfect time to do it. This man realized that change was imperative. He knew that people wanted to once again breathe fresh air, drink uncontaminated water, and eat wholesome foods. Revitalize our once immaculate and pristine planet. Therefore, he started a company and introduced a full line of environmentally safe and toxin-free products like water filters, cleaning products, and herb formulas—backed up by certified experts—that were not only good for us to use, drink, and consume, but actually help save the environment. That man’s name was William Mulder, and along with a group of scientists, product developers, and marketing managers standing behind him, he started Everlife Intercontinental. It was supposed to be the turning point of our doomed environmental crisis.

But the creation of these so called, ‘natural and environmentally safe products’ and ambition alone could not find ways for everyone to start living healthy. It needed cooperation from numerous people. This guy Mulder had to have spontaneous assistance, especially in the field of product distribution. So he started manifesting ways to properly market his innovative products wisely, as well as with immense speed. That meant selling these products directly to consumers, a process called “Direct Sales Approach,” which eliminates middlemen and high advertising costs, giving ordinary people the opportunity to establish themselves as independent sales representatives, capitalizing on product distribution. The guy always knew that those who could provide the solution to our environmental quandaries could earn billions of dollars. And with his claimed “proven hands-on experience” and a “championship track record” in marketing, who was also considered to be one of the foremost experts in the cooperative marketing industry, he knew that success was imminent. He then devised a remarkable compensation plan for the company’s representatives that allowed them to capitalize maximum income through three decisive steps: retailing, rebates, and bonuses. He also wanted his company to be unique, so instead of giving his representatives the usual titles: managers, supervisors, directors, etc., he imposed the military style ranking system intended for commissioned officers, like in the Salvation Army: Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, etc. This was so that people would extend more admiration and regard for their uplines, or sponsors as they called them. And finally, the guy also founded the Sophisticated Marketing Summit, or SMS, which was a paid two-day business seminar, conducted to properly and adequately train the ordinary and inexperienced “soldiers,” as they were sometimes called, that became independent officers with the right amount of guidance, support, and the know-how to succeed in the business—a business so intriguing, but extremely rewarding if well-administered. Now he and his group of specialists could start to lead a revolution, taking on the challenge of triggering an environmental reversal of momentum through the extraordinary products that could restore the balance, purity, and perfection that once made this world so remarkably awesome.

This, I had to hear all of.

“When people ask me all the time how I went from being a school cafeteria worker to becoming one of the top money earners for Everlife, I talk mainly about one thing—support. I was blessed to have William Mulder as my mentor, and I continue to learn from him. The biggest impact he has had on my life is the fact that he has always believed in me,” said this wrinkly, middle-aged redhead in the video, standing next to her car with a big house by the beach seen in the background. It was a video testimonial. She was acting like she was pretty as hell, still wearing a pink sheer-through dress fit only for teenagers. She had a face so wrinkly you’d wonder what she was doing with all that money instead of getting a facelift or Botox first. She had a cool car, though. It was a Mercedes SL500 convertible in pink to match her dumb-looking dress.

Then someone else spoke in the video.

“After struggling in the Kipling Luggage business for several years, my wife and I found ourselves in debt and were forced to shut down our business and file for bankruptcy. But soon we met Mr. Mulder and were shown a new vehicle to success. In his training, he taught us a step-by-step method of achieving our goals and success. Now not only has he changed our attitude towards life, he showed us how to have fun and enjoy what we are doing. Through the systems and techniques we’ve learned, Mr. Mulder and his ‘Sophisticated Marketing Summit’ have given us back our dreams.”

Then there was another testimonial from this one guy, who really tripped me out.

“After four years at Harvard School of Business, I moved to Manhattan and entered the financial world of Wall Street. But the constant influence of drugs, alcohol, and sex, topped off with overworked/underpaid hours, stress, an egotistical boss, an unfaithful wife, and corporate scams dropping left and right, left me, a twenty-seven-year old father of three, divorced and extremely downcast. With no hope of revival, I attended Mr. Mulder’s Sophisticated Marketing Summit two years ago, and I must say that my life changed instantly. I learned more in two days about success than I had during my whole four years at Harvard. Moreover, I found my American dream that weekend! Thanks to Mr. Mulder and his SMS, I now own a yacht, have new girlfriends, bought three houses in Orlando, and have a flexible traveling schedule to see the world and above of all, help other people. Your dreams do come true with Everlife! Kudos to Mr. William Mulder and his incredible company!”

Another guy now spoke in the video, but the guy looked familiar. It was John Martin. You could hear people immediately cheer and yell.

“I never thought I would follow in my father’s footsteps; he was drowning in debt. My Landscaping Design degree at Columbia University turned out to be futile, only burdening me with $80,000 in debt after spending another $45,000 on other loans. I didn’t find the job I wanted even a year after I graduated from college. But then I met Mr. Mulder and he showed me the most effective way one can obtain wealth in a short amount of time. He taught me in his training that Everlife allows us to not only gain profit from our own efforts, but also profit from the efforts of others—a true winning principle. Now I’m 100% debt-free and earning more in a year than my father earned in his entire lifetime. Now I’m teaching people to do the same!”

Another one, this time a female doctor, spoke. She had a thick Jersey accent. She kind of looked freaky, like Elvira the Mistress of the Dark and more like a fortune teller than a doctor.

“I see patients coming into my office from time to time who are tired of taking drugs and don’t like side effects. They want something other than drugs. So I offer them my Everlife all-natural herbal supplements, Neurolife. I myself am a regular user, and I recommend a lot of these to my doctor friends. They love them and they also recommend them to their patients. The fact is that there are many patients who are sick and tired of the toxins and poisons that come from our pharmaceuticals. We need pharmaceutical products that are not only natural, but also safe for the environment. On a very grassroots level, Everlife is achieving that, using high technology to ensure the purity of our health. So I tell my patients about Everlife, a true alternative towards a safer way of taking medications. I commend William Mulder for finding such a remarkable company and thank him for inducting me into his prestigious ‘Millionaire Guild’.”

There were so many rich people giving so many damn intimidating testimonials. I was damn growing tired of seeing so many happy faces of rich people on a giant screen, that get a big heap of tax cuts anyway. But we were merely halfway through.

Some sexy brunette in a bathrobe then started talking on the next video clip while I looked around and noticed some people were starting to yawn. The woman on the screen had a very nice and clean bathtub. The woman smiled while turning on the water and said, “For several years now, I’ve been hearing about the problems with our Southern California tap water. My husband and I never paid attention to it until our daughter Brooklyn was born. When she was just a few weeks old, she developed a skin rash. After many trips to the doctor and numerous prescriptions, no remedy was found.

“But I thank my sponsors Danny and Patty Putnam; they gave me the EVL-60 Shower Water Filtration System to use before bathing Brooklyn. Well, I was so amazed to find that my daughter’s rash cleared up in minutes, and she no longer cried when I bathed her. It turned out to be the levels of chlorine in our tap water that were too much for my baby’s delicate skin.

“I have since purchased the EVL-600 Countertop Water Filtration System, the EVL-60 Shower Pal, the EVL-Forever Portable Potable Sports Bottle, the EVL-Portable Potable Tourist’s Kit, and the EVL-666 Entire House Water Filtration System and I must say that my family is feeling better, healthier, and sexier each time a faucet is turned on. And as for me, I get amazingly smooth, clearer skin. My husband loves it and I love his. We now both enjoy great lovemaking on a nightly basis because of our beautiful skin. Thanks to Everlife and its amazing innovations, we get more out of life!”

Finally, the last testimonial clip was filmed on somebody’s porch. There was this extremely old white hunky-dory redneck with a cowboy hat on, a red shirt, denim overalls with suspenders hanging from his ass up to his chin. He was talking with chewing tobacco in his mouth. He looked about ninety at least. He said, “Hell, where I was born, we didn’t have faucets! We used to drink right out of a horses’ trough when we was kids. Then, I was sent off to war—can’t remember which one—and then the Berlin Wall came down. And then, one day my great-grandson came up to me and asked me to try drinking out of one of those strange lookin’ contraption water bottles with tiny hoses in them. I was too scared to try at first, because them edges on them hoses looked real sharp, but then my great-grandboy said, ‘That’s a straw, double G-pops!’ and boy, do I hate things sharp. But then I said, ‘Oh, what da hell!’ and tried it. Well, let me tell you—it was the most rewarding experience of my life since his great-grandma died. The water tasted fresh, my eyes became clearer, and my gout is gone. And I can breathe better ‘cuz that damn nasal polyps damn gone. Well, I don’t know what’s in them bottles, boy, but boy, heh-heh—that boy Bill Mulder sure knows what he’s cookin’.”

Slowly the video faded out and then a huge image of the Statue of Liberty suddenly appeared with a slick-looking guy with his hair combed backwards, wearing a sharp, ivory-colored suit standing in front. He had his back towards the camera, tilting his head upwards and raising his arms out to the side. The guy was marveling at the Lady Liberty. Then all of a sudden, the film panned back to the intro of the film, where they showed the satellite image of the Earth, the moon, the sun, and the distant planets all lined up in a straight line. Then as the image zoomed in on Earth, the guy finally spoke with his back still facing us, “The quality of our planet’s environment depends upon the survival of the tropical rain forests. Look,” he said, pointing at South America, particularly at Brazil, “those magnificent forests occupy only two percent of the Earth’s surface, yet they contain more than half of our planet’s trees, plants and wildlife, while producing oxygen necessary for our survival.” He turned around and for the first time, we got to see his face. I screamed, “Hey, look—it’s Gordon Gekko!” He did look and sound just like him, with that cocky, arrogant smirk on his face. He then said, “Hello. I’m William Frederick Kennedy Mulder and I’m the Father of Everlife Intercontinental!” He wasn’t a super good-looking dude, but he did look like he was made of a million dollars. I mean, he was practically Bruce Wayne. Truly gaudy to impress. You could tell he was pretty snobbish, though. But the funny thing was, when you looked at financial moguls like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett on CNBC doing interviews, you would normally see them wearing a corny sweater or some slack suit, not the kind where they would cause the young chicks to get dripping wet with mad desire, but this guy was truly a white-collar bling-bling magnet. I mean, he put on the works with huge diamond rings on each finger, more than Michael Jordan with his Championship rings, a diamond studded chain, a Rolex, white gold cufflinks, a $10,000 Armani suit, Gucci shoes, a Ferragamo shirt…well, you get the picture. I bet the guy went to Switzerland twice a year to get his cells rejuvenated through injections from young sixteen-year-old virgins over there. Which would be very nice. What a life! I myself always dreamed of owning a business, walking around flaunting my big money like that everywhere. I could imagine what kind of cars he must’ve owned. Probably a Porsche, Bentley, Lambo, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Maybach… He really got me listening to him, no doubt, wondering if I could ever find the American immigrant’s dream.

Anyway, the guy went on to say how he was once so poor he had to sleep at a train station in Denver and eat the doughnuts and coffee a Salvation Army officer brought him every morning. He said what changed his life was when he read an article written about G. Paul Jetty, one of world’s first billionaires, the part where Jetty was asked to describe how he came about amassing his massive fortune, and Jetty replied, “First, find products that no one has and everyone needs—products which are swallowed and must be replenished—and market them. Then position ourselves so that we can earn moola from the efforts of others instead of our own in the marketing process. I’d rather earn 1% on the efforts of 1000 people than earn 1000% of my own.” That kinda stuff really didn’t interest me too much though, because first of all, I disliked math, and second, it just made me feel sad for some reason. It made me wonder what the hell I was doing while some lucky fools like Mulder climbed towards the summit of economic wealth and losers like me ditched school and played Mortal Kombat all day at the Liquor store near my house. He sounded like my philosophy teacher at the community college I used to attend. He said, “I have worked hard to gain wealth by writing books and teaching people at conferences to believe in themselves and in themselves only to change and turn their lives around. I myself was once a poor man in his twenties, but once I gained faith in mankind and not in some foolish invisible divine hand, I gained pure strength and the energy to achieve any of my hard-set personal goals. I learned that believing in mankind is the true key to success and only what matters, not in some invisible and unreliable deity, and that the greatest challenge that life has given is to challenge life itself.”

I nearly got my head blown off when I told that to my youth pastor one time during our weekend Bible study sessions. I’m a pretty weak Christian to tell the truth.

 

CHAPTER 10

My butt was getting moist from all the shifting and squirming, mixed with sweat despite the air conditioner. It was because I had bad back since I was a kid and I couldn’t sit on a crummy chair for too long. So I fidgeted a lot, just to relieve some of the discomfort. But this woman who sat next to me, that middle-aged Hispanic woman with big hooters I told you about, kept looking at me with disgust. I guessed there was no way she was going to show me her tits now. Anyway, by the time we broke into a recess and everyone got out of their seats to stretch and relax, my shirt came out of my pants, all wrinkly, like I just had a drunken bar fight with someone.

During the intermission, I saw everybody walk around and start talking loudly again. They appeared very ecstatic. They reminded me of the way some people came out of theaters all excited after watching a kick-ass movie. I remember I felt like that when I saw The Usual Suspects—one of my favorite mind-blowing, shock-and-awe films of all time. I was totally blown away by its awesome crazy ending. I remember I went back inside the lobby and decided to play a cruel sick joke/prank on the unsuspecting moviegoers, still waiting in line to see the next showing, which I ran from one side to the other end of the line yelling and screaming, as loudly and fast as I could, so they could all hear me shout, “IT’S THE CRIPPLE!!! IT’S THE CRIPPLE!!! IT’S KEVIN SPACEY! HE’S KEYSER SÖZE! K-E-Y-S-E-R S-Ö-Z-E!!!!” It was so funny to see the expressions on all those shocked-and-awed faces, some even cursing and threatening to kill me, but the guy that worked at the theater actually followed me all the way to my car in the parking lot and gave a warning. But then I did the same thing later with Primal Fear and The Sixth Sense.

Anyway, I was also pumped up during that break, just like everyone else, wondering when we were all going to hurry up and join the exclusive, the “Millionaire Guild” club. I always had a bad habit of picturing myself standing on top of the highest rooftop without considering that I would have to actually climb the stairs first, which was a big flaw. It was sort of like the way I wanted a college diploma, but didn’t want to study. As I started walking around, I too, became emotionally jacked, excited about the thought of driving around in a Mercedes and living large, like that old redheaded bimbo in the video. But first I had to talk to Lynn and ask her what I needed to do next in order to turn into another John Martin. I found her eating cheese next to Brad and his crew amongst the crowd, but she seemed to be caught up in a conversation with an old white lady holding a walking stick. I realized I wasn’t the only person she had invited.

“Oh, Dave, where were you?” Lynn asked when she saw me. “You got up and left your seat all of a sudden. We thought you were mad and walked out in the middle of John’s speech. He’s really sensitive about things like that.”

“Yeah, don’t do that, man, that’s just disrespectful,” said Brad, standing next to some freckle-faced redhead that I hadn’t been introduced to yet. I wanted her too. I also saw Zonda drinking coffee and talking to Brad’s girlfriend.

“Well, are we almost done? What are we going to see next?” I said quite confused. My excitement had quickly subsided when I felt like I was being dogged on. I was jabbing my back with my pen, which finally broke, and blue ink started leaking out. I wasn’t at all anxious anymore though.

“Relax, Dave, the day is very young; we’re only halfway through. Soon you’re gonna see the product introduction, and then you’ll hear John explain to you about how the business works,” said Lynn.

“About the Compensation Plan and all,” said Brad’s hot girlfriend. I don’t know if she noticed it, but I was checking out her ass the whole time through my peripheral vision, and she had the finest, roundest ass ever.

Soon the presentation resumed and I saw John Martin take the stage again and ask people to settle down and take their seats. My first seat at the front was taken by some blonde dude with a flattop, so I had to take the back seat again, the one next to the snack table and the Hispanic woman with big hooters who didn’t like me. Maybe she was racist. John then asked if everyone was still very excited. And people shouted, “Yes!” So John asked, “Is everybody ready to make money?” And the crowd shouted, “YES!!! YES!!!” I remember shouting myself, “SHIT, YEAH! SHOW ME THE MONEY!” which caused everybody to turn their heads. I guess you could say that I was pretty thrilled about being there after all, although I flip-flopped a lot, having been shown the opportunity that would open many doors to wealth since I had already given up trying to gain it by studying hard. This was my shortcut to economic freedom.

John then stood behind a table with a glass pitcher filled with water, a dropper, a bunch of other crap like water filters, a can of Pepsi, vitamins, and etc. It looked like he was about to do the water quality test. I knew about that stuff because when I was little, when we first immigrated to the U.S., my old man used to clean pools, and I saw him do those tests often. He then said, “Did you know that we are the first generation in history to knowingly consume water containing unhealthy chemical substances?” His face distorted like he was disgusted. “I didn’t know that either until I had the privilege to speak with Dr. Sandy Crawford, one of our Marketing Generals at Everlife—also a chemical biologist at UC Davis. She couldn’t join us today because she just had another miscarriage and she’s still in the hospital, but if she were here, she would tell you that our tap water, once considered fresh and chemical free, is no longer safe for our children to drink. Our water must pass through municipal water treatment plants before it can meet even the minimal safety standards, which many experts like Sandy already believe to be inadequate. These treatment plants pour in additional chemicals in an attempt to kill resistant bacteria in the pipelines delivering water to our homes and schools. Thus, this ongoing contamination/treatment cycle deteriorates the taste of our tap water to the extent that people are finally realizing the need for solutions and demanding alternatives. Well, as you know, this has given birth to the multi-billion dollar bottled water industry. You know it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that just in the past several years, bottled water sales have skyrocketed to billions of dollars annually.

“And look,” he continued, holding up a can of Pepsi with his right hand, “Soft drinks have also become another ‘solution’ to this water dilemma. We are the first generation to consume more soft drinks—like this one I’m holding—than water. While soft drinks may make an acceptable taste alternative, they are certainly no substitute for the natural goodness our bodies gain from drinking fresh, pure, clean water. In fact, this cola creates its own health hazards like obesity, calcium loss, osteoporosis, kidney stones, liver problems, adrenal exhaustion from excess doses of caffeine, gastro intestinal distress, gastric lining erosion, etc., not to mention, numerous trips to the dentist because of tooth decay.”

There was slight laughter in the room. I didn’t laugh because it happened to me. I still idolize cola. It kind of explained why my teeth were so yellow, and I didn’t even smoke.

John also added, “With all this in mind, nothing could be more obvious than the fact that there is a critical need for a safe, efficient, quality system that filters water without us having to pay an arm and a leg at the supermarket. To put it in better terms, there is a tremendous demand for high quality, home water treatment systems.” John pointed towards the water filters he called the EVL-600 Countertop, the EVL-667 Undercounter, and the humongous contraption lying on the floor that looked like a boat engine, the EVL-666 Entire House Water Filtration System.

“And after researching the world’s latest technologies and comparing all the most recent findings, the team at Everlife has developed the most advanced, highest quality water treatment systems available.”

John then dipped the small dropper into the bottle of orthotolidine (the liquid solution for testing the chlorine level in pool water) and held up a clean glass of water with the other hand. He then said, “The Everlife solution combines the taste and quality of the best of bottled waters with the convenience and cost efficiency of turning on the tap. It provides the entire family with all the great tasting water needed for only pennies a day. It is the solution of all solutions to the growing water contamination problem.”

John then dropped a droplet of OTO into the clear water glass, right after a quick explanation of what he was about to do, then held the glass up high so everyone could see it. Then everyone watched in awe as the water immediately turned to piss-like yellow. “This is normal tap water,” he said again, wearing a goofy grin on his face. “As you can see, it contains good ol’ chlorine, and this solution detects it because it is what they use to detect chlorine levels in swimming pools. Now you know the same stuff runs through our tap water, and if you drink this enough, you’ll most likely damage the cells inside your mouth. Now check this out. This next step is miraculous. I want you all to see this clearly.”

He took another glass of water behind a pitcher and raised it up high and said, “Inside this glass is more tap water but filtered through our revolutionary Everlife EVL-600 Countertop water filtration system. Right now, I’m going to attempt the same demonstration: I’m going to drop a droplet of OTO and see if it also turns yellow—meaning, if it does, then it still contains that awful smelly chlorine.”

He did it, but nothing happened. He even dumped in ten drops of OTO and the water was still crystal clear. Not too bad. I noticed some people were “wowed” and totally impressed; after all, some of them were going to sell that stuff and mimic the same gimmick. “You see,” he started to boast, “the EVL-600 easily filtered out the chlorine, up to 99.9% of it, and I must say that it clearly took away the odor as well. But if you’re not even a little bit impressed, just wait till you see this next experiment.” Well, even some skeptics had to be overwhelmed by what good ol’ Johnny did next.

“This tiny thing I’m holding that looks like a coffee mug and a funnel linked together, is called the EVL-Portable Potable Tourist’s Kit, a fully functional Everlife water filtration system, nonetheless. This and the EVL-Forever Portable Potable Sports Bottle use the same technology that is used in the EVL-600 series and the EVL-666 Entire House and still manage to filter out chlorine, carbon, pesticides, and other toxins that flow in our plumbing system. Now, if you want to see something really mind-blowing, then stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen. Let me demonstrate just how great Mr. Mulder’s little innovation really works.” John said that proudly, setting up and placing the so-called Potable Tourist’s Kit on the table and hollered, “This is the same can of Pepsi I opened few minutes ago. It’s probably warm. And this is the Everlife EVL-Portable Potable Tourist. After I finish setting this up, which takes only about thirty seconds to do, I’m going to pour the entire can of Pepsi into the Tourist to see what happens, to see if it can filter out the carbonated water. You’ll have to witness this, ladies and gentlemen.”

Everybody was glued to their seats. Nobody thought John could get away with such an attempt. Clear liquid started dripping out into the mug-like portion of the small filter. I didn’t see a trace of brown cola anywhere at all. It was indeed fascinating.

“There! Do you see it? Clear as crystal water again! This is the very reason why success comes so easily with Everlife. We believe in these scientifically-proven products that virtually sell themselves. We continue to manufacture products that will revolutionize the world. This whole organization was founded on pursuit of finding new innovative ideas in products to change and improve our lives. Make things right again. And do you want to know how it tastes, people? This water? Well, let me find out for you.” He took a big sip and said, “Well, it just tastes like warm sparkling water, that’s all. Like San Pellegrino.” He then stared into the mug. “Not the kind you would actually want to indulge in right after making love to your wife or girlfriend, but surely, it proves how excellent our Everlife water filtration system, even this small, really works.”

John got plenty of applause after that. But I didn’t know why the hell he had to mention that last part. It was pretty evident that I was the only one in the room that was not getting any. Even that old lady with a cane was probably getting some DP action. So anyway, I thought he was doing a pretty swell job. I had to give him props. But then the mood got all corny after what he said next.

“In fact,” he added, “This demonstration we just completed kind of reminds me of this one scene in an action movie I saw a couple of years ago. Remember that movie that was supposed to be a huge big hit Hollywood blockbuster but instead, turned out to be the biggest major flop domestically of all time? Especially after receiving such harsh negative reviews and publicity even before it was released? Everyone was talking about that film, I remember. It cost so much money to make it! What was the name of it?”

Some people proudly raised their hands and yelled out, “Last Action Hero!”

But I already had my hand up the highest because I knew the answer. I’m a pretty big movie buff. I think I mentioned that already.

“No, that wasn’t it. This movie I’m talking about wasn’t that horrible.”

Then someone else yelled out, “Cutthroat Island!”

“No, that one deserved to be a flop! This one had Kevin Costner in it.” John continued.

“I know, Wyatt Earp!” yelled, that big, dumb, slick-looking guy with a blue suit that told me earlier that I couldn’t drink punch during the presentation. I kept holding my hand up.

“No, this one came out after that. It was also regarded as the highest budgeted film in recent history—”

“OK, I got it! Robin Hood: Prince of Crap!”

“No, no, it’s not. Oh, shucks. Adrian, I need some help here. Do you know which movie I’m talking about?” The guy shrugged and shook his head no. “It was the one where its screenwriter during a TV interview defended his script because so many critics were forecasting it to be a flop. He used this clever metaphor saying that telling someone that a movie sucks before it even comes out is like telling a pregnant woman, ‘Now—that’s an ugly baby!’ I remember that movie also co-starred Jeanne Tripplehorn and Dennis Hop—”

“WATERWORLD!!!” I screamed. It just amazed me how people were so uninformed when it came to filmography.

“Thank you—the short gentleman in the back. But you didn’t have to scream out like that. As you should know, Everlife doesn’t make hearing aids for busted eardrums yet!”

Some people laughed again. They were laughing at me, the bunch of punk bastards.

“Anyway,” John continued, “Remember that movie, ‘Waterworld’?” Again, he was acting sarcastic and scowling at me. “Remember the opening scene when Kevin Costner stands on a wooden raft and relieves himself into this odd filtering device that turns his urine into a drinking substance? Well, if you saw it, the EVL-Portable Potable Tourist and the EVL-Forever Portable Potable Sports Bottle work the same way, except they are real and not make believe, ladies and gentlemen, and both fit right in the palm of your hand. In fact, our last month’s top-selling representative in San Bernardino County, Mr. Adrian Garcia, who just got back from his Safari African vacation in Tanzania, has somewhat of a remarkably similar story to share with you. Perhaps it’s not the right time to mention this in front of some of you, but Adrian, please come over here and tell us what you did. Didn’t you tell me last week that you drank your wife’s pee after filtering it through the Portable Potable?” John called out to this ‘Adrian’ guy standing by the door. He was the same Hispanic fool around my age that addressed the crowd before John began to speak. That felt like days ago. The guy seemed to be taken by surprise though, but he smiled and looked proud. “You told me that you and your wife both filtered urine in Africa while big game hunting right?” John continued, “And then you filtered each other’s again just this past weekend?”

I was envious of that punk because he was already married and got to see Africa. I couldn’t even invite a girl to go to 7-Eleven with me, let alone drink her piss. I would’ve wanted him to get speared in the ass by a rhino or something.

“Yeah, you bet, John!” he replied, the young disgusting fool, “It was to be done, man! It was for our record books! It was absolutely amazing!” Everybody in the room started cracking up. I couldn’t stand to look at him. I disliked guys around my age that were better looking and articulate as hell. Especially if they were a minority like me.

John then started to explain the tedious methods in which each Everlife representative got paid. It was a boring, totally non-thrilling segment for me. I tried to focus because it was important but couldn’t because I couldn’t follow the numbers and percentages he was writing on the board. If you want to know the truth, I was the only Asian kid in school that was so terrible at math that my teacher thought I was actually adopted by some indigenous tribal family. Besides, my butthole itched and I was still twisting around in my seat. I was instead, fantasizing and daydreaming about what I’d do once I joined their “Millionaire Guild” and how I would spend my first million. I’d drive around like the king of the world after selling about 10K water filters per month. Others were deadlocked on the drawing of a pyramid, illustrating what happened when each Everlife rep introduced five people into the company and each of those five then brought five each themselves and each of those five brought another five each, and so on… I wasn’t really worried yet whether I understood everything or not, because I knew I would eventually catch up with all the necessary info once I signed up. Like I said, I always tended to picture myself on top of a roof without caring if I have to climb the stairs or not.

Then about five minutes later, while I was still daydreaming about what a million dollars really meant to me, John said, “Ladies and gentlemen, hold your breath because we now have a big surprise for you! It is my privilege to introduce you to a man that made this whole opportunity possible. He wants to welcome you all!” He looked at Adrian and said, “Adrian, the lights and the blinds, please.”

Soon the lights were off again and we found ourselves staring at the large white screen. Except this time, we were looking at a live satellite feed coming from Las Vegas. Everybody was super excited.
“Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it is my utmost pleasure to introduce you to a great hero, a truly great American entrepreneur, the man who epitomizes true capital success, standing outside his gargantuan mansion in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s the one and only, the CEO and founder of Everlife Intercontinental himself, the venerable, reputable, honorable, opulent, and brilliant—MR. WILLIAM F. KENNEDY MULDER!”

Everybody started screaming. They really loved the guy. They exalted him like he was a rock star from space. They got intensely rowdy, especially the women. The woman next to me even got up and practically undid her bra so she could flash her humongous tits. You would think Elvis or James Dean was in the room. Everybody was in a good mood to see this dude live on screen, a slick self-made multi-millionaire that was about to speak to them and tell them how fascinating they all were. I admit I was decently excited too, but I was more interested in seeing his toys, his material possessions, if he was going show them off on screen or not. It appeared to be a really sunny early afternoon in Vegas. No kidding. The sky was blue and the air looked really clear and fresh. It was calendar picture pretty. It showed a fancy white mansion in the background, the kind you would see in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or on MTV Cribs. The camera shot was quickly followed by a zoom-in on the head of a middle-aged white man standing in the middle of a wide marbled driveway who appeared to have been waxing his cars on the side of his huge driveway. I got to observe his wrist and saw what I figured was another Rolex that probably cost him $80Gs. He really never thought twice about putting multiple diamond rings on his fingers even when he was chillin’ at home. The kind of cars he was waxing knocked me out, though. I couldn’t believe the Top Gear-headed freak. He had an orange McLaren F-1 and a silver Mercedes CLK GT-R in the front, then a red Ferrari F-50 and a black Diablo in the back. Just four of those cars which nearly all had either gull wings or scissor doors easily ran over $3,000,000! I couldn’t believe the whale—he was the real deal. I tried to remember the only time I actually got to see a Lamborghini Diablo—which was the time I was making a soup delivery on Venice Boulevard for the sandwich shop to some film company that produced XXX videos. When I saw the fast-ass sports car of my dreams fly by me from the opposite direction, I was like, “Who dat?” It wasn’t till after I took the same road back to the sandwich shop when I saw the same yellow supercar parked by the curb next to the Helms Bakery in Culver City that I stopped to take a look. It was a T-top, and as I leaned forward to peek at the interior, I saw five young black guys dribbling a basketball, approaching me from the side, so I said to them, “You like it?” acting like it was mine. It was then I saw a gay couple come out of the bakery and yell, “Hey! Get away from that car!” The black kids fled, yelling, “FUCK YOU, FAGGOTS!” but I didn’t leave. I had to ask them how much it cost. Stuff like that intrigued the hell outta me. So I stood there with my dirty green apron with visible stains still on, waiting until the couple took their sweet ass time walking over to me (while pinching each other’s asses) and say, “Hey, don’t lean on that. Do you know how much the paint job costs alone?” One looked like Adam West and the other like Burt Ward. I then asked, “Nope. How much is your car anyway?” The taller guy answered me right away, “Three hundred and twenty-five thousand! It’s obvious that’s more than you’ll ever make in your—”

“Stop, Steven! That kind of tone is not necessary out here, you know! Gawd!” yelled the other guy, before tugging at the other guy’s pink shorts and apologizing for him. He then said, “Please excuse him. He’s just peeved because I didn’t give him his birthday present. At least, not yet.”

Anyway, that was the kind of car that guy William had in his crib. I envied him. I always wanted a car like that, the kind he pampered with probably the best kind of car wax too, not the kind of cheap liquid shit that sprayed out of those hoses at self-serve car wash places. If I had one of those rides, then that would make everyone go more than just “Wow,” every time I drove by. That would be the day. That was what I needed in life anyway. I needed a car that would help me get babes because I couldn’t get jack shit driving the old beat up Ford Tempo anymore. That was the kind of car I had for ten years before I got my ZZT230 Celica, and even that car didn’t do jack for me. Ford Tempo was the ubiquitous L.A. Parking Enforcement standard vehicle as far as I knew before they switched to the Civic. Anyway, I really needed a cool sports car, so you didn’t have to say anything to a woman: just pull up to the side of the road next to a hot chick standing on a corner and utter two words: “GET IN!” That’s all—no mo’ no less. That would be like that one scene from the famous movie, Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere, plucks Julia Roberts off a street and takes her home and screws her, just because he was driving a borrowed Lotus Esprit V8 that he didn’t even know how to shift because it was manual. If I was rich, I would never stay home. I would always hang out at fancy bars and clubs and trip over countless chicks after telling them, “You may think I have a small wiener, but wait till you see what I got staring at you in the parking lot!” To be honest, I don’t think guys really liked sports cars anyway. It was the same thing with guys and dancing. We don’t really like to dance, but we end up learning how to anyway because girls like guys that know how to dance. Just look at John Travolta and Patrick Swayze. But it was more of a serious deal with cars because girls like guys with sports cars—just plain and simple. If there were no girls on the planet or just ugly ones left, then why in the hell would we want to buy a Ferrari? That’s why you don’t see red Ferraris or black Lambos in movies like Mad Max. Mr. Enzo probably dreamt of hot chicks as much as I did, except he got some and I didn’t. So it was imperative that I get a sports car because girls never even looked at me or practically talked to me my whole life. By the way, that Celica wasn’t even a sports car; it was just a sporty coupe and it was front-wheel drive. Yuk!

“How are all of you doing? How’s everyone?” said the rich white millionaire guy. He was kind of squinting into the camera because the sun was directly in his face. But he looked like he was enjoying life to the fullest moment because he wouldn’t stop smiling. I would, too, if I had his toys. I couldn’t keep my eyes off that orange McLaren. You could take two chicks with you in that car, one on each side behind you. And then you could slowly fondle each of their creamy upper thighs if your arms were long enough.

“How’s everything, Bill?” John responded, looking at the screen, “Boy, you look so busy over there. What you got going there? Shining your prized toy collectibles again?”

“Yeah, you know, I usually take care of my investments. By the way, you owe me another round of golf there, buddy. I said best out of five, not three!” He laughed.

“Ha-ha, anytime, Bill! You know, if I were a Japanese businessman, I would’ve let you win, but you know me. Since you taught me how to be a winner, I’m not used to throwing a game! One of these days I just might surpass your monthly gross sales volume too! You know what I mean? Then you’re gonna have to let me succeed you as the new CEO! You never know, big guy!” John flattered himself.

They appeared to be very close. Right there though, I imagined up something pretty dumb and pointless. Not necessarily about them, but I wondered if some millionaires or billionaires ever got together with other millionaires or billionaires and played golf at a fancy top notch golf course somewhere, the kind where they didn’t let you in unless you had like a $100K golf membership or something, and maybe one of them asked the other while teeing off, “You know what, Barry, I just can’t ever picture myself living with anything less. I mean, I don’t understand why there’s still poverty in the world! I just wonder sometimes, you know, like we the ‘chosen people’ are privileged to ask ourselves—don’t you ever wonder what all these poor and colored minorities are doing every day? Yuk! Eeeew…” Then I could see them laugh their asses off, eat their $3000 lunch boxes, and then go home in their private jets. I pictured myself doing that kind of stuff on a gradual basis. Except without the racist stuff.

William Mulder then replied, “Oh, man, God willing! I’ll hang up my business suit and tie tomorrow and move to Switzerland if you could do that for me! Can you imagine my commission checks if you did? I will officially retire before my forty-fourth birthday!”

“Anytime, Bill! Hey, we’re all incredibly excited to see you here. Thank you for joining us! How are you feeling at the moment?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m quite beat…I just finished waxing car #4 and I still got three more for today.” He then swung the towel to the other shoulder and said, “Maybe I suppose I’ll just get my servants/workers to wax the rest.” Mulder gave us a big thumb up and winked. I bet his tongue almost slipped. He probably meant to say “slaves” first.

“Wow! That means, wait—how many do you have now?” John asked.

“Twenty one…two…Thirty-three! I just got this one delivered yesterday.”

“Wait, what’s that silver one next to you? I haven’t seen that one before.” He was asking about the Silver Arrow. I thought that car hadn’t even been built yet.

“This is a Mercedes Benz CLK GT-R, the most expensive production sports car on the planet, as recorded by Guinness World Records, at the amazing sticker price of $1.54 million. There are only 25 others like it ever made. And it gallops from 0 to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. Incredible isn’t it? But this isn’t my favorite ride—that’s still in the garage. Come on, maybe I’ll show you!”

“Wait a minute, are you talking about the Porsche GT1 Strassenversion you showed me the other day? Or is it the Bugatti EB110?”

“No, it’s neither! It’s always been my classic, the one and only, irreplaceable, 1932 supercharged 320 hp Duesenberg Type SJ, one of 384 that are still extant, today. Now I have to definitely show you that one after all! But first, let me say hello to Westwood! Home of the UCLA Bruins! How are you all? My sister-in-law went there.”

F. Mulder waved to us and then introduced us to his butler as the camera followed him. He took us into his mansion through his mammoth-size doors and showed us his worldly possessions. Strictly a man’s castle, I thought, the way a real man’s crib should be. You could imagine the kind of heavenly material things he owned. Indoor swimming pools with a two-story diving board, a bowling alley, an underground pistol range; he even had a small roller coaster track built for his daughter that went from room to room, much better than that piece of shit train that Ricky’s dad rode in Silver Spoons. Back outside, he had a tennis court, a dwarf golf course with nets that stretched for a quarter of a mile, a heliport in the middle of a garden, and what looked like a tiny stable for miniature ponies. The crowd from the room kept “sighing” and “wowing” like the audience members from Wheel of Fortune. I recalled my old youth pastor telling me that material possessions didn’t matter to God when we all died and went to heaven or hell, but hell, even Job, David, and Solomon all had cool shit. And God kept supplying them with cool shit until they hardly ever ran out. You never saw so much vanity and opulence in your life at his crib. I took worldly possessions very seriously when it came to my pathetic life.

“As you all know, people say that money isn’t everything,” said Mulder, sitting on a luxurious Italian-made chair inside his gargantuan Victorian-style library. There, he lit up a cigar and put on a silver robe handed over by a good-looking Latina housemaid. He then let out a big puff and said, “Well, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, whoever said that must’ve been waiting in line to receive government cheese.” He puffed again while he steered a laugh from us. “Because let me be the first to tell you: Wealth is good. Greed is even better. Those that say money can’t buy happiness, are already dead from contracting ailments because they couldn’t afford common medications like acetaminophen and ranitidine for their back pain and ulcers. So why would you listen to them? Whether you agree with me or not, everything in this world costs money. So how can you condemn the ones that seek it? Money doesn’t buy happiness? Surely, I can tell you—neither does poverty! I’ve never met a person that was jubilant at the fact that he or she could not afford to buy bread for the family, and I could bet that neither have you. You see, obtaining wealth is the single most dynamic urge driving people’s minds in our society today. It always has, it always will. Everything is created through wealth. It nourishes and it levitates dreams and visions. You’ve heard that ‘knowledge is power,’ but I say to you, ‘wealth is absolute power.’ And now, take a look around you. You are gathered here today because you want to be wealthy. The hard working men and women that invited you here today cared enough about you to ask you to stop punching in the clock and be liberated from the binds that keeps you from seizing your true economic potential. When you were little, you were never taught that when you’d get old, you’d have to work forty hours a week for forty years until you’d turn sixty-five and then receive a gold watch when you retire. This ideology is repeated over time and time again, leading to what we now identify it as ‘America’s current middle class.’ Let’s face it. When you were growing up, you didn’t exactly hang your high hopes on working for the middle class, did you? You didn’t plan on working for the company that you hated working for, slaving for the company that kept downsizing around you and kept you on your toes because you didn’t know when you were going to be laid off, all the while your bosses kept getting richer and richer, at the expense of your hard work and dedication? You intended to live a life that is full—but now what happened? What happened to your dream? Better yet, whatever happened to your American Dream? When you were little, did you pray for your American Dream to be ordinary so you could live an ordinary life? Did you go up to your parents and say, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m not going to be kidding around. I’m just not cut out to be wealthy, famous, or extraordinary. I’m just going to settle for the middle class—earning an average salary, marrying an average-looking spouse, driving an average car, living an average life inside an average home, and die at an average age.’? Of course not! But what happened to you, and what are you planning to do about it? Some of you are working even longer hours today to get by; some of you will have to work fifty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, for the next fifty years…and then retire on fifty percent of what you can’t live on today. Your brilliant parents simply didn’t teach you well that in order to get on that magic carpet to propel you to the next level, your personal promised land, you would have to study hard and get extraordinary good grades while you are still young—so that you could reward yourself with a high-paying job, a good career, and then build financial security for yourself and for your family. It’s that simple.”

Mulder then lit another Cohiba the same pretty maid took out from the walnut cigar box and reclined cockily like someone who thought the world was his oyster. Everybody was silent in the room, spellbound by his speech. You could tell some were even sobbing. He was really rubbing it in. I felt a sharp pain through my heart like he jabbed it with a crochet hook. It was called guilt for not waking up sooner.

“Well, the fact of the matter is, folks, that some of the most priceless lessons in life, such as gaining wealth, are not taught, but replicated. Let me repeat that slowly for you—the most important lesson in life, which is gaining wealth, is not taught, but replicated. We replicate everything already in life daily. Just look around you. Look at the way you’re all dressed on a Saturday. Don’t we replicate each other? Don’t we replicate the latest fashion trend by reading magazines, replicate the way we follow politics, replicate the manners we show in public, replicate the way we study for test exams, the way we teach, the way we learn a new dialect, the way we prepare our food, the way we prepare our dinner table, the way we hug and hold our children? Don’t we replicate? In true essence, are we not counterfeiters always searching for ways to cut corners to save time and enhance our lives? So then, why don’t we counterfeit our ways to gain wealth? If they teach us countless levels of math in schools, why don’t they show us the formula for getting rich? Why don’t they take that formula, share it, and then replicate it so we could all be wealthy and economically secure? Replication is the key that truly opens new doors to affluent lifestyles. If you want to be rich, then just find someone who is rich and simply replicate what he’s doing!”

“That’s right, Mr. Mulder! Preach!” Several people in the room shouted and others clapped. I was agreeing with the guy, too. He sounded like a good motivational speaker.

Then he said, “Even if there is someone that didn’t receive good education, we know that anybody can learn to replicate. In order to be successful in this world, we have to find ways to work for ourselves and not for others. It’s that simple. You can’t get ahead in life if your plans only rely on working by yourself. You have to levitate. You can’t get rich if there is a person on top of you basking in all the glory. You have to levitate into the guy that’s above you and then find out what he’s doing. Levitating the skills and devotions of others is what I’ve been able to show and teach here at Everlife, the same that John Martin has been able to show at Everlife, and what other IMGs in the video you saw earlier like Sherry Horowitz, Michael Cohn, Ari and Ida Rosenberg, Dr. Fahda Feinstein, and Sara Schwartz all have been able to do—prove that replicating the “get-rich formula” simply works. If you are a committed individual like us who wants to bust your butt for this company, I guarantee you, you will become a millionaire within the first twelve months of employment with Everlife. You just allow us take care of the rest. If you work less, then you will obviously produce less. If you work more, you’ll produce more. Our company is radically designed to produce wealth through levitating the hard work of others so you can pass down the same formula for others to repeat and also pass on. That’s why I started the SMS seminars to thoroughly train those who really want to make it far in this business. Some of you will decide to join us right away today and some of you may not. Some of you will need more time to think about joining our team of greatly motivated, fantastic individuals who will stop at nothing to have anyone tell them what to do for the next thirty years. Keep in mind that once you join us, you are your own boss at Everlife until success no longer becomes a dream. There’s no telling how many times over you will become a millionaire. For those of you who may think ‘Oh, this is not for me, I don’t like door-to-door selling,’ or ‘I’m not good at socializing,’ let me tell you to do only one thing for now. Just close your eyes for a second and ask yourselves these questions. ‘Am I free?’ ‘Do I feel free?’ ‘Do I even know what freedom really is?’ ‘Even though I’m already sitting on the soil of the greatest nation on earth, am I feeling this freedom?’ Do you think you possess the freedom to do whatever you want? Or, are you ‘just getting by?’ If you feel that you’re not free, then aren’t you going to do something about it—in the greatest nation on earth that is free? Do you wish to find out what real freedom truly is? Then let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, in all essence, true freedom, or absolute freedom, is financial freedom! Are you yearning to taste what financial freedom is—the way our forefathers originally designed it to be? Are you ready to smell its aroma? Then, I simply say to you, look no further because you’ve already found that opportunity and have made that decision!”

Somehow, I was picturing myself enjoying my absolute financial freedom by driving through Malibu on the Pacific Coast Highway in a red Ferrari F355 Spider convertible on a cool sunny afternoon wearing nothing but Versace from head to toe and posing so everyone could see me and become jealous of me. Then I would turn on Rodeo Drive and kick it at only 4-5 miles an hour so everybody could see me and holla even more, especially the hot young chicks that look way better than Julia Roberts and I’d go, “Hey baby—Whazzup? You know what I’m saying?” and some of them would quickly reply back, “You are—on top of me. In five minutes. Let’s go.”

I practically drooled while I fantasized about that stuff. That impolite Hispanic woman gave me the eye again. She was really beginning to get on my nerves.

That would be the exact scene or image I would try to “replicate” when I promised I would become big and loaded. I would constantly remind myself that I made it and that I achieved the status big enough to let myself get away with fooling around with as many babes as I could find. I would have so many options up my sleeve—I would trip over them from all directions even from the ceiling. I would be more than the rock star from space. I may not even get married. I would totally be a smooth and slick playboy with the allure to woo the ladies of any nationality or color within seconds, just by winking at them. I would go to parties and nightclubs every night and constantly get more fine chicks and I would not stop because I was born a dog. My faithfulness to a single woman would be a pipe dream and it would be like asking a turd to stop stinking. I would live such a loose lifestyle like those rappers driving around in those fancy exotic cars, yellin’, “I ain’t no window shoppah!” You would never think I had all these terrible fantasies in my head and still called myself a Christian who went to church. I was really a phony to tell you the truth. I didn’t go there to find faith to be honest with you. I went there to dig around chasing chicks.

When the presentation finally ended, thank God, everybody got together with everybody and started raving about Mulder. Lynn then came up to me and tried to collect a $60 sign-up fee on the spot, which I didn’t have, and in return, handed me a thick introductory packet that included a contract, a video cassette (which I had to pay an extra $20 for), about four colorful product catalogs, a code of ethics pamphlet, company policy brochures, a new members newsletter signed by the founder himself, and additional paperwork like invoices, line sheets, order sheets, and other crap. I just had to pay Lynn back later. It didn’t take me very long to decide, although I already started getting a headache. I was very excited at first, but stress kinda took over. Lynn said I would have to read all the content and know everything by heart. Well, I had a slight problem with that because if there was one thing that I hated to do mostly in life after high school, it was reading. Even when I bought new video games like The Legend of Zelda and Castlevania when I was a little kid and didn’t know how to play them first, I didn’t read the instruction booklets. I just sat there and played straight for hours, and gradually figured out what the buttons were. Sure, it was tough, especially when I was playing more sophisticated RPG titles like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star, but hell, most people buy cars and don’t exactly read the manuals either. Only when people want to replace some car parts or something, something simple like a headlight bulb, then they break out the manuals. Same thing for me. But I was more spoiled. I relied on movies to come out instead of reading some 500+ page novel and I remember when I was a child, I didn’t even read comic books. I just looked at the pictures of Superman and Aquaman fighting and determined what the story was about by figuring out who the bad guys were. Of course, at the time, I didn’t understand English very well, so it was pretty hard, but you get my point.

Anyway, I was happy to be introduced to Everlife. For the first time in my life, I felt I was given a chance to control my financial future without a coveted college education.

 

 

And there are 64 more chapters for a total of 74 in this book found online everywhere. Thank you!