Adventures in Network Marketing
The Tiny Commission
Brook Dougherty, March 14, 2014
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The four-part law of attraction CD played over and over in my car for months. Gradually, I was learning to articulate what I wanted in life. What I wanted was a romantic dinner with my husband and a clean car.
I went to the grocery store across from the car wash. It wasn’t my usual market. Get out of your comfort zone I reminded myself and began the hunt for something lean to fit in with my new green world. Something maybe like fish. And asparagus. I pictured a simple yet perfect meal that would show my husband I cared and that he wasn’t the only one who could cook.
At the butcher counter, I bought a pound and a half of previously-frozen tuna. In the vegetable department, I noticed asparagus were really cheap and bought three bunches.I pictured them glistening with olive oil and lemon. Note to self, when asparagus are marked “manager’s special,” they may be a bit off their game. I didn’t know that at the time.
The tuna marinated in a bath of miso and sesame oil while I began my monthly marketing newsletter. The gravitas of home journalism so filled me, I accidentally let day turn into night. I didn’t notice my office getting colder and colder. Then, I heard the door open upstairs and footsteps above my head. My husband called out, “Anybody home?” It was 9 PM. I had cooked nothing. Crap.
The husband is a good guy, though, and sat at the kitchen table chatting away while I clipped the rubber bands off of the asparagus. The oven pre-heated to 325. I threw a little Japanese smoked salt on the tuna corpses. We had a glass of wine.
See, I thought, it all works out, you just have to know what you want and let the universe take care of it. I stretched to hide the pita chips on top of the refrigerator. They were evil.
The microwave pinged signaling the asparagus had finished cooking. It’s honestly the best way of cooking asparagus. As I walked the smoking Pyrex pan to the sink, my face was engulfed by a funky steam. “Oh my God it smells like ass,” I said, not having yet mastered the art of ladylike language. I poked one dry, weed-like stalk into my mouth and had to spit it out.
“That’s okay,” my husband said, “I’ll have a salad.” I did a quick twenty-second meditation asking the universe to please make the tuna good. The oven timer went off. I took a bite. The fish tasted like something that had been left for dead in an abandoned part of the ocean. Maybe I should try praying to Jesus. But Jesus wouldn’t recognize me if he tripped over me.
Defeated, I slumped down in the happy, yellow chair across from my husband. “I ruined it,” I said. He told me not to beat myself up too much and made himself a salad. “Aren’t you having any?” he asked. “No,” I said, and got the bag of pita chips down from the frig.
Chomping through nine chips, or one serving, I remembered the night I opened them. It had been for a skin care gathering. That had been out of my comfort zone too, but it had been a success. I’d even made a few bucks. Maybe the universe was realigning itself and tossing me out of my comfort zone on purpose. Maybe there was a place where it was okay to lower the bar, maybe even let my hair frizz.
Later sitting in bed reading up on toxins in lipstick, I got hungry. The house was quiet and peaceful. My husband was asleep. I raided a box of protein bars and padded up the stairs to bed. Every tiny bite made me a tiny commission. Ahhh. That’s what I wanted, I realized as the chocolate satisfied a deep need within me. And the need wasn’t for romance. I had romance. It was romantic when my husband told me not to beat myself up. It was money that I wanted. Plain and simple. Cute tiny commissions. Big sexy commissions. All of it. Lots of it. I wanted money like a high school boyfriend. Finally, I wanted something I could actually get my hands on. Gary the steamy hockey player? Not so much.