Amway Calling!

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

I’d left my house—happy day!—to hit Book Soup for my friend Nick Schou’s reading of his newest book, Orange Sunshine. It’s about the hippies in Laguna Canyon—the Brotherhood of Eternal Love—who became, in all their Afghan-hash-smuggling awesomeness (and unawesomeness) the impetus for the creation of the DEA. It’s wonderful, and you should buy it, and I was early (I am always 45 minutes early, unless it’s to work) and so I walked up the block to Red Rocks to have a $4 happy hour glass of rum.

There, some nice young people graciously allowed me to take the open seat at their table on the patio, and they were so friendly! So outgoing and conversatey! And what did I do for work? I have been unemployed for a year and a half. They high-fived me. Nice kids!

So they were all in marketing, and as a creative who used to work in newspapers, maybe I’d like to come to one of their loose weekly meetings! Oh my God, they had a super blast all the time! Marketing! Whoo!

A marketing meeting seemed like an excellent way to get out of the house, something I could plan a whole week ahead, guaranteeing at least one day in seven where I shaved my legs and washed my hair. I sort of imagined they were street leafleters, or ridiculous club promoters, but it was worth finding out. Not leaving the house is hell on your hygiene.

But then Nathan started calling—more than once—to confirm that I was going to show, and I began to get the overwhelming feeling young Nathan had a quota to meet, and that mama was going to have to strap on the handy psychological exoskeleton that kept her from being a squishy “grape.” I don’t mind a sales pitch, but I should at least get a trip to Catalina in return.

And so I showed to the restaurant in Santa Monica where the upstairs was given over to their presentation, and Nathan greeted me, and still didn’t want to tell me just what their little jig was. I would see it all so soon! Everyone was 28, tanned and blue-eyed and feral underneath their grown-up suits. A skinny-necked, big-eared boy took to the front of the long table, the screen behind him showing a waving American flag and the legend “Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc.”

Oh sweet Jesus.

Around the table, my fellow lucky inductees comprised an actor, an actress, an RN, one person in the coffee business (whether as owner or barista was left unspoke), and then, standing at the back, the better to interject loud bellowing “Yeah!”s and “Wow!”s and fist-pumps and slow-claps, were far too many “writers and entrepreneurs” to be statistically viable. You are not “writers and entrepreneurs”! You sell Pre-Paid Legal Services!

The whole thing was as terrible as I’d expected, except it was far more terrible than I’d expected, because even though I’d already resigned myself after Nathan’s multiple calls to the idea it was probably going to be multi-level marketing, I didn’t know I’d have to pay them $249 to sell their shit. (But today only—deal of the century!—reduced to just $72!)

I don’t know if any of my fellow lunch-meeters actually bought in. After all, Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc. had most recently been featured on the cover of Success From Home magazine! And it is traded on the New York Stock Exchange! And in the ’90s it had been featured in Forbes’s Top 50 Stocks of the ’90s! “We beat Microsoft!” said the young, goofy-eared success story leading our presentation, which had the unfortunate effect of making us (or me) call bullshit on the list in its entirety. Ha ha ha, Forbes.

How much would we pay per month for lawyers in case of motor vehicle contretemps, trial defense, IRS audits, and a 25 percent preferred member discount, should we want to use their services as a sword instead of a shield and sue the shit out of somebody? “THOUSAND, EASY!” yelled a writer-entrepreneur from the back. No! It is a mere $35 per month! Slow-clap! Writer-entrepreneurs, what do you think? “WHOA!”

In L.A., those who purchase Pre-Paid Legal Services protection are represented by Parker Stanbury. Our young man read from some letters they had sent out on his behalf over the years, once in a contract dispute with T-Mobile, and once for ... oh, something else. The kid seemed to need a lawyer a lot. “They have 80 lawyers on their letterhead!” he exclaimed. “Someone who looks at that letterhead is going to take them seriously!”

The really sad thing is some of what he said made sense, and the woman who had come to my door a few years ago to sell me Pre-Paid Legal Insurance had said the same things. I felt really bad for her, all this time later. I remember her. She does not know I remember her, because she does not remember me, because surely I was one of 100 people that very day who had told her no, they did not need Pre-Paid Legal Insurance, and there she had spent $72 or $249 to sell it to them, trudging, luckless, house to house, working so fucking hard. Maybe she wasn’t luckless. Maybe people ate it up. I hope so, maybe.

Here is what he said that made sense: The Better Business Bureau gave Pre-Paid Legal an A+. And that, in a one-hour presentation, was the only thing that wasn’t just sad.

Afterward, Nathan looked at me and didn’t try too very hard to make me join up, but he did trade on our friendship to get some numbers of friends who might be interested. I pulled out my phone. Which of my friends would I possibly wish this on? I did get a tasty Greek salad out of it. I bet my little brother would like a salad. And he could sign up, and hang out with these feral 28-year-olds, and sign up others from each of whose dollars earned he would get his pyramid-scheme cut. I gave him my little brother’s number. Sorry, kid. It had to be someone, and it was easiest, for me, for it to be you.

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