There's This Guy I Don't Know

What with all the encouragement your family heaped upon you in youth and the promise they assured you they saw deep inside, you wouldn't have been surprised at this stage of the game to be juggling whether to keep all four mansions intact, as a set so to speak, or sell one and use the proceeds to buy a yacht instead. Not a bit surprised.

Instead, while figuratively speaking you don't look exactly like that fellow in the cartoons with his pants pockets hanging inside-out, you don't exactly not look like him either.

It is not what you would have predicted at this stage of life, this pants pockets inside-out business, a point in time that your generation would call Late Youth and your parents' generation would call Early Elderliness.

All I can offer by way of explanation is that I never knew a guy.

This is the type of thing that can hold a fellow back.

Other people of my acquaintance seem to have the knack of knowing exactly the type of person who comes along at exactly the right time with exactly the right....well, let us move to specifics and for the purposes of this discussion, establish a scenario where we are talking about taxes with one of these acquaintances of mine.

In the course of the exchange, this person might mention, “Oh, I know a guy in the tax business who has mastered the art of depreciating the very wear of the pavement upon the soles of my shoes as I make a sales call. All perfectly legal of course, but not everyone in the tax business can do it, you have to know this guy.”

He may know this guy. I do not. 

I couldn't possibly not know him any more than I don't know him now.

Or a neighbor says in passing, “oh, I never pay full price for my tires. I know a guy who can get them for me at cost.”

I really don’t know this guy, this tire guy. The people I buy tires from seem to be charging more than tires have ever cost in history. They are perhaps cast in solid gold molds at the factory and embedded with diamond chips for better traction. Or perhaps they have to make up for this other guy who is practically giving tires away to his friends.

A woman at work mentions that her garden never lacks for topsoil. She knows a guy who hauls it out to her garden for free. It is a dark rich color – she's brought in samples and I’ve seen it – and looks to be the kind of soil that a passing seed might land upon by chance and start a world-class vineyard, or a pumpkin farm that families with small children visit in autumn, all before the week is out. It is like something out of a fairy tale, this soil.

Regardless, I don’t know this guy.

Nor do I know this guy that puts in new furnaces and air conditioners and hot water heaters at cut-rate prices, nor the one that installs new siding as a kind of hobby while asking nothing more than to have the cost of the materials covered, nor the one – reaching way back – who coaches ignorant high schoolers through the intricacies of the SAT just to keep himself sharp.

I do not know the guy who has access to concert tickets at a third the price I pay at the door, nor the guy who knows someone in Phoenix who is anxious to pay someone to house-sit his villa at just about the time I am to be out there on business.

I do not know a guy who fixes the electrical systems in cars for free as a service to humanity, nor the guy who is anxious to give away gourmet cuts of meat because he is running out of freezer space, nor the guy who is taking landscaping courses at the local junior college and wishes to practice upon a local yard.

I do not know a guy who fixes computers on the side or one who likes to come out to see if you have set up your home wi-fi system correctly.

I do not know a guy who teaches piano, flute, violin, or cello for free, just for the love of music. If I did I would surely take up one of those instruments.

I likewise do not know a man who teaches painting, sculpture, or bronze molding techniques simply to spread his love of the arts. Any of these would do me fine and I would be happy to throw myself into them.

But I don’t know this guy.

Not only – and this is a key point – do I not know these guys.

They don’t know me.

And they seem to have little interest in correcting that situation.

Lord knows I have left myself open to all comers in half the conversations I have with people.

Let us say I am at a poetry reading and the topic of new guttering weighs heavily on my mind.

One entire corner of the guttering system has pulled away from the house as if there has been a family estrangement and the guttering is shunning the house, giving the entire structure the look of a home in the comics meant to signify complete decay.

I stand with my drink, chatting to this other fellow whom I have picked out, using algorithms and subtle criteria known only to me, as looking gutter-savvy. He may be, my instincts tell me, just the guy I am looking for.

Me: Some poetry reading.

This Other Fellow: I think things are really starting to pick up for the arts.

Me: Yes, sir, there must be 35 people here.

The Other Fellow: At least.

Me: That iambic pentameter always gets me going.

This Other Fellow: Shakespeare’s favorite meter, and for good reason.

Me: It’s like my guttering has some grudge against the house and is giving it the cold shoulder.

This Other Fellow: What now?

Me: My guttering. This one corner has pulled away from my house and as things stand now, it serves no purpose in the world. None at all. I mean the rain is just spilling off the roof to the ground.

This Other Fellow: Are you reciting poetry?

Me: No, I’m talking about my guttering. (Here I put on the type of look I imagine a gutter-smart pro would recognize as fitting someone who is open to a gutter-centric exchange of views. Beseeching is too strong a word to describe this look or, on second thought, it is not.)

This Other Fellow: Are you feeling alright?

Me: Yes, why do you ask?

This Other Fellow: Oh, this look just came over you that seemed to signify that you were feeling something like a Boy Scout campfire-lighting competition was taking place in your stomach and some of the lads had gotten a little too enthused and had squirted kerosene on their entry.

Me: No, I was just thinking about my guttering and wishing I knew someone, you know, a guy, who does gutter repair on the side. Some guy. A guy. (Here I fix him with a direct gaze, like a DA who is about to ask the witness if he sees this or that man in the courtroom.) A guy.

This Other Fellow: Good luck with that.

Me: (Switching gears.) You know, your question on the state of my stomach showed a lot of insight. You’re not a stomach doctor by chance, are you? You see, I’ve always wanted to know a guy who was a stomach doctor…

This Other Fellow: My, my, my. Will you look at the time? My, my, my.

Well, and then he is gone.

I have certainly put myself out there emotionally, as you see, but to no avail.

Well, these and many other missed opportunities to save money by knowing a guy add up. Over the years a conservative estimate of the money I would have saved hovers right around a billion dollars.

Simply investing the billion in a prudent manner in the stock market with its occasional ups and its many downs, downs, downs, downs, downs, downs, downs, and downs, would still leave me with three or four million intact, enough, barely, for those four mansions or, if I were to go that way in this alternate life that didn't happen, the three mansions and the one yacht.

It is a forlorn thought, but it is not beyond conjecture that on my tombstone there will be the traditional dates noting my tenure, and just below it, where ordinarily you would see some uplifting or warming sentiment inscribed, those I leave behind will feel compelled to write:

Paid Full Price for This Headstone

He Didn’t Know a Guy. Never Did.

Well, it’s nothing but the truth and perhaps no more than I deserve.