Sales

Sales[1]

Series
WBAI And NPR Playhouse
Original Broadcast Date
04/01/1983
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Serious Monologue, 24 minutes
Preceded by:	Lies
Followed by:	The Queen Of Puerto Rico

I'm waiting for an epiphany, and I'm waiting for understanding...

Sales is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series WBAI And NPR Playhouse. It was originally broadcast in 1983.

Synopsis

"Show Me The Way To Go Home" (Al Hirt)

0:10: Joe lists what he's waiting for: an epiphany, understanding, purification, exaltation, the second coming, the revolution, the Spiegel catalogue, a refund from Sears, an unemployment check, a call from his mother.

1:10: Joe tells of George who works as a sheet music salesman for a firm in NYC. His colleagues are a depressing lot. George hates his job.

4:10: He falls for one of his customers, a woman manager of a music store in St Louis, Carol. He begins calling her at home. She tells him all about herself. He begins calling nightly; they grow closer. His calls are the only thing they enjoyed. They decide they have to meet, but have no opportunity.

7:20: George's company fails; its employees have mishaps, some fatal.

8:50: Carol travels to NYC for a long weekend in mid-October.

9:10: George chaperones his son's 6th-grade class on a trip to Restoration village, a replica of a colonial town.

10:10: Restoration village looks like motel cottages. The kids aren't interested. After a trip to the gift shop and lunch, they go to a nearby pond and skip rocks. After returning his son to his (the son's) mother George feels terribly lonely.

14:30: Carol flies to NYC, 1.5 years after they first began talking. She arrives at 3 AM. George is apprehensive. She's pretty and petite, seems overwhelmed. They try to make love, but fail. They spend the day awkwardly. The next day they decide their weekend is over; she spends the rest of the weekend with old college chums from Queens. She stays in town for another few days - a really long weekend. He sees her twice more, once for dinner, another day for window-shopping.

23:50: George calls Carol in St Louis; they talk for hours. She was sick with an undiagnosed endocrine condition the whole time. George doesn't know whether to believe her. His calls tailed off.

24:50: A year later she tells George about her boyfriend, a trumpet player in a Dixieland band, beating and raping her. She tells George she was excited by it. George is disgusted with her.

25:40: "Show Me The Way To Go Home" (Al Hirt)

26: Joe lists what he's waiting for again.

26:40: Children singing the song they sang on the way to Restoration village.

Legacy Synopsis

"I'm waiting" monologue. A lonely sheet-music salesman based in New York strikes up a connection to a long-distance customer. After a year and a half of phone calls, the customer visits the salesman, and the romance unravels.

Music

• "Show Me The Way To Go Home" - Al Hirt (from Al Hirt At The Mardi Gras, 1962) | YouTube [Intro]

• "Walking" - Steve Tibbetts (from Northern Song, 1982) | YouTube [4:18]

Commentary

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