Shine A Light On Me

Do you want to go on that overseas trip but never had the money? Have you wanted that new car but couldn’t save? Is your family desperately needing that new extension on the house but just don’t have enough for the deposit? Then you need a Pyramid Scheme! Ever heard of Amway? Well this is exactly like it, except re-branded to look to different so we can avoid the stigma of being attached to a company that encourages people to alienate their friends and take advantage of stupid poor people. We’re called New Wave and we use all the cheap tricks such as; boxes, arrows, graphs and diagrams, percentages and numbers that have absolutely no validity, DVDs and glossy pamphlets and asking you to a business meeting only to ambush you with a man in a suit with a briefcase. All you have to do is to sign up and give the $500 joining fee and we give you all the useless crap that we sell people. Plus, the more people you sign up, the more money I make because I get a percentage of everything you sell, plus a commission for signing you up, and the more people you sign up, the more commission I get so effectively I’m making more money than you and you can do all the work. How does that sound?

The year is 2003, I’ve just finished my first real theatre job out of school and recently gotten fired from a Christian Theatre in Education group. But Ben, you’re not Christian? Well back then I didn’t know what I was and I thought I’d give it a go, it turns out I like reason and sensibility. But I’m getting off the topic at hand; during the course of the production I got to know all involved, including the lighting guy. His name was Aaron; he was a lighting guy. In theatre; crew, much like in film, can be weird. I’m not entirely sure what it is, it may just be that as I am the type of person who prefers to be on stage or film rather than behind the scenes so I find it hard to relate. But normally there is always a slight gap in the relationship between actors and crew, there are exceptions of course. Aaron was a nice guy, an awkward theatre lighting nerd with a lazy eye but a nice and lovely guy who you could carry on a decent conversation with. One evening I got a call from Aaron, who informed me that he had a business idea and if we could catch up sometime and talk about it over coffee. Thinking that it was something to do with theatre, or lights, or magic theatre lightingness I agreed and was excited about it, after all I had no job. We were to meet at the Dome in Subiaco at about 7 o’clock.

I get to the Dome early and get myself a flat white and amuse myself by looking at the stupid hats that the staff has to wear. Aaron arrives, but he is not alone; a dowdy middle aged balding man in a grey suit and officious briefcase slides in and Aaron introduces him as his “Business Partner”. That is the last I hear of Aaron, except for the inevitable and awkward goodbye at the end, but we’ll get to that later. Business Partner launches into his spiel about New Wave and how I can make my money work for me and draws confusing and important looking diagrams and graphs, he adds, subtracts, multiplies, percentages are being thrown left and right; I can earn some money on the side and use that to buy a new car or go to the States, Business Partner Man is truly a word smith, and what my mother would refer to as “a Scheister”. Then I ask a question, it stops him in his tracks and makes him sweat “is this like Amway?” He pauses, no doubt trying to decide whether or not he can lie his way out “Actually New Wave is a part of Amway” Business Man can see the disappointment in my eyes, I thought this was going to be some kind of magical theatre lightingness business arrangement where I get to work in theatre and do stuff that’s cool, not sell shit nobody needs and alienate family and friends by trying to get them to sign up to a pyramid scheme. “Is this a pyramid scheme?” Business Partner Man clears his throat “No, it’s nothing like that, everything that we do is above board. This is a Dynamic Business opportunity for you to make some money, and we all like making money don’t we?” Now even as a stupid 20 year old I knew that this guy was trying to fuck me, I had seen the movies, I may have been stupid but if there is one thing the movie ‘Go’ taught me is that Scott Wolf is a douche and even he knows that Amway people will try to seduce you into their sweaty manfolds only to fuck the god fearing shit out of you. That may be an obscure movie reference but that’s what I was thinking at the time. “I have to be honest I don’t think I’m that interested” I tell the scheister. He pauses, no doubt sobbing inside from not having sealed the deal “Okay, well how about I give you a DVD telling you all about it?” “Sure” I reply apathetically, I have no intention of watching it.
“I only have one copy so I have to get this back from you. So how about we make an appointment so I can get it back off you?” Are you fucking serious? I just told you that I wasn’t interested and he comes back for more. I have to appreciate his enthusiasm and commitment, but you’d have to be a little down if a 20 year old saw through your bullshit. At this point I am so disappointed with mankind and annoyed I was made to sit through his bullshit I have no choice but to be rude “Keep it, because if you give it to me you’ll never see it again. Seeya’ later” I say and as I get the hell out of there, leaving Aaron and his Business Partner alone to no doubt discuss what went wrong, you’re an idiot, that’s what went wrong.

So that’s my story about how a mild mannered lighting guy tried to recruit me into his cult. I’d like to think that the process I went through is similar to being recruited into Scientology, all graphs, numbers and power of the word type shit. The moral is, is that if a 20 year old, unemployed loser could see through your bullshit, it’s time to throw in the towel and kill yourself. My only solace is that Business Partner Man probably went back home to his shitty fibro house in Clarkson and had all his will and sense of self sucked out of him by his five little spawns of unholy darkness and chain smoking, hard drinking, housewife. I hope that Aaron has either done very well for himself in the pyramid scheme business or realized that like Scott Wolf’s career it’s all a horrible lie.