Just in Case

A rather tall woman about my age was standing at the other end of the subway car talking to another woman. She had a stack of newspapers under her arm.

A minute later she was talking to a couple of guys in business suits. Soon she had moved on to someone else. She seemed to be trying to sell her newspapers.

As she got closer, I realized just how attractive she was. Her long blonde hair hung straight down, which meant she was probably what was then called a “hippie chic.” She was even wearing “granny glasses.”

When she got to me I smiled at her. She smiled back. I wanted to ask her to just forget about those newspapers she was selling and sit down next to me. But then she began her pitch. “Just in case you haven’t seen the latest issue of the Socialist Workers’ paper, it’s got a great article about capitalist exploitation of workers in the South Bronx.”

She wasn’t wearing a wedding band or an engagement ring. So maybe I had a chance. I just kept smiling and not saying anything; she kept right on about what a great article this was.

Meanwhile, the absurdity of her pitch began to make me start laughing to myself. She noticed my mood change and stopped smiling. “OK mister, what’s so funny?”

“Let me see if I can explain. First, the Social Workers’ paper may be really fantastic, but come on now, what are the chances that I am at all familiar with it – let alone that I had read that article?”

I could see that she was really getting angry. “Look, mister, if you don’t want to support the American worker, just say so. But there’s no need to make fun of our paper. Especially since you never read it.”

“No, that’s not it at all! This may be the greatest issue of the greatest newspaper in the world, but let’s face it: what are the chances that anyone you approach has even heard of it, let alone read this particular issue?”

“I’m sorry, but if you’ve not interested in our paper, please stop wasting my time.”

“Look, I apologize. Obviously you really believe it’s a great paper, and I wasn’t trying to make fun of you – or your paper. I just couldn’t get past the absurdity of your premise.”

“Well, why don’t you just have a nice day.” And with that, this lovely and very earnest woman walked out of my life.

Later that day, when I told my friend, Bob, what had happened, he called me an idiot. “Steve, you should have bought her entire stack of papers!”

“Now you tell me?”

A few years later, a group of writers I knew launched a literary magazine, Box 749 – named for the post office box they had been assigned. While the list of contributors in the first issue was almost identical to the list of editors, the level of writing was quite good. I especially liked an article written by Patricia, which was a rebuttal to a piece by Norman Mailer in Playboy. In it, he revealed his fantasy of having sex with a woman on a pool table, and then watching her slide down into a pocket.

Patricia’s friend, Gail, who wrote the small banks column for The American Banker – “The nation’s only daily newspaper” – was also infuriated with Mailer. But her editors would have been less than pleased if she had cited Patricia’s article in her column. So the two of them schemed about what they could do to let Mailer know just what a male chauvinist pig he was.

Something about the plan they concocted sounded vaguely familiar. Gail typed a letter to Mailer on American Banker stationery and enclosed Patricia’s article. He never replied.

Sometime later, it dawned on me why their strategy sounded so familiar. Gail’s letter had begun, “Just in case you haven’t already seen this article….”

Steve Slavin