Ad Nomad

by Eric Jay Sonnenschein

  “We begged them to use a woman and a dog!” Nadine lamented.

  “We were firm on that point!” Sheldon added, jabbing the conference table nonviolently with his forefinger.

  “They said a woman and a dog had no relevance!” Nadine cried between swigs of microbrewery diet non-alcoholic ale.

  “Irrelevance is irrelevant!” Ray Bob replied. “When your news is greasy stools, relevance is the enemy, Jack!”

  “Greasy stools! I hate my life!” Nadine bewailed.

  The fate of Prunastadil was another indictment against Sheldon and Nadine, and one more indication that Integrimedicom must change, with Dane in the vanguard. Who would fail to note that he succeeded while they failed?

  However, Dane’s success did not bring him reward but more suffering. When a large account like Prunastadil died, its team migrated to a living one to survive. Since the DONARAL business was booming, everyone in the creative department flocked to it to feed on its billable hours. In accordance with Integrimedicom principles, Sheldon and Nadine allocated the DONARAL hours among all staffers, capping them for each person. Since Dane had already exceeded the cap, he had to find his hours elsewhere.

  24. A TIME FOR HEROES

  On the verge of becoming an industry icon, Dane was an agency afterthought. A wave of insecurity, dejection and defeat rolled over him as he foraged for work. Every compromise and accomplishment of the past eighteen months was expunged.

  Ronny meanwhile handled scarcity with finesse. In dry spells, he walked the hallways of Integrimedicom, begging for open job numbers from his colleagues so he could bill time. He never even learned the names of these accounts.

  Dane could have copied Ronny, who was not proprietary about his groveling. He could have hustled for job numbers but it bothered him to take credit for work he did not do. He waited for a legitimate assignment and endured the slow, gnawing pangs of idleness, while playing Javanoid, a game his nine-year daughter, Iris, taught him.

  One afternoon, two men with crew cuts and square jaws came to Integrimedicom. Ronny walked out between them with his arms pinioned to his sides. He was under investigation for improperly receiving a student prescription to the Wall Street Journal, in a federal sting to purge white collar corruption.

  After Ronny’s arrest, Dane no longer considered billing time to jobs he was not working on. Just when Dane was sure he could no longer delay submitting his empty timesheets, he was given a chance to be a hero. Integrimedicom’s holding company threw the agency a life-line and its most critical opportunity to date—the SLOJAC account.

  The creative department was mustered. Ray Bob stood at the head of the table. There was no stack of hot pizza boxes, only a few greasy bags of garlic knots. Dane remembered his lunch with Lance Brubaker at the South Street Seaport, in particular, the dead seagull. Was this a sign, four years later, that Dane had come full circle to his dismal origin?

  “Guys, the bad news is we’re not making our numbers. The good news is we still have two weeks. It’s truth or dare time. The truth is we need more business and I dare you to do the best work of your lives—to reach higher and work smarter. The alternative is—damn!—there is no alternative!

  “Life is an ultimatum,” Ray Bob continued after a long pause in which his eyes closed and he appeared to sleep. “If we don’t live we die. Winning is an ultimatum, too; losing is not an option. Everybody in this room is a winner. Now we get to prove it! We’ve been given an opportunity to pick up some new business. Our sister agency, BLT, just blew it with SLOJAC, the premature ejaculation drug. They’re consumer guys. Sure, they know a ton about shooting their loads but what do they know about drugs? They tried edgy: Some guys don’t know when to get off! and Making love or making a mess? Then they tried—what was it? Oh yeah: Is sex something you want to remember or wish you could forget?” Ray Bob chuckled, coughed in his fist, and regained his sober mien.

  “Personally, I like that one but the client hated it and fired the agency. So now it’s up to us to save the business for our parent company. Who says advertising is no place for heroes? I drag my butt here every morning from Hershey, PA. Now I want each of you to click on your inner heroes. Dudes, I’m not asking for everything you’ve got because we all know that won’t cut it. We need more than you’ve got. Save your agency. Save your holding company. Save our jobs!”

  Ray Bob’s Adam’s apple bounced as hard as the basketball he once dribbled off his foot in the state Class DD high school consolation game. The CEO of Integrimedicom tugged on his collar, causing his clip-on tie to fall to the floor. He stared at the entertainment console at the far end of the room with visionary conviction—blue eyes wide, blood-shot, dilated by panic—then glanced at his watch, jammed his clip-on tie into his collar, muttered he was late and bolted.

  The CEO’s premature exit before discussing the background slides for SLOJAC was an apt introduction to the new drug Integrimedicom would launch.

  Babette delivered the details of the brief.

  “This is a very exciting opportunity and an exciting drug. Anything that prolongs sexual intercourse has to be exciting, right?” There was a deep groan from the back of the room, resonating more pain than pleasure. “I guess someone’s already excited,” Babette resumed. “Can you please hold your questions—and comments—until the end? This is a launch of firsts and mosts. SLOJAC is the world’s first drug indicated for premature ejaculation. And PE is the most common sexual problem to affect men. Did you know PE affects one out of every three men? You guys know who you are,” she said, winking.

  The men looked around. Their eyes communicated either, “Who, me?” or “Not me!” depending on their degree of confidence. It was like Dane’s health class in middle school when the teacher asked all the boys who masturbated to raise their hands.

  “But here’s the problem,” Babette continued. “Premature ejaculation has no global definition. Is it less than five minutes? Is it less than two minutes? Or is it just bad sex nobody’s happy with? The drug is terrific. It’s a super-refined, ninth-generation SSRI that goes to work in an hour, gets in and out of the body fast and has few side effects. But selling SLOJAC alone won’t make it. We have to advocate for the disease…to make it a health concern of epidemic proportions, not just one more drug company conspiracy to sell drugs nobody needs.

  “It’s important for us to show sensitivity. PE is not lifethreatening but it hurts—a lot. It ruins lives, destroys relationships, makes grown men cry and makes women bite their lips till they bleed,” Babette’s fist pressed her gut as if she were having a cramp and she emitted an involuntary, muffled cry before re-boarding her train of thought. “People have been laughing about premature ejaculation for years. We need to make them stop.”

  “I know the perfect writer for this job,” Nadine declared. “Dane Bacchus!”

  A nervous titter filled the room; people did not know whether to be envious or contemptuous, whether to jeer or cheer.

  Dane also teetered on the high wire of ambivalence. Should he blush or beam? Within seconds, he stood up to set his personal record straight.

  “I just want to say that my ejaculations are always timely,” he said.

  This self-defense released the raucous laughter in everyone’s hearts and filled the room like helium in a birthday balloon. But Dane could not appreciate his moment of comic triumph. It occurred to him that he might have been pegged all along as a premature ejaculator, which explained his lack of status and respect, and that no one would believe anything to the contrary.

  “Everything about this drug is fast. It’s fast-acting, fast-clearing and the launch is happening fast,” Babette warned. “We usually test messages, do mood boards, focus groups and rounds of creative, but we’ll have to deliver creative to the client in two weeks. Here is a DVD of the research. Watch it over the weekend and have something by Monday.”

  25. ALL IN THE TIMING

  SLOJAC was Dane’s most dangerous assignment to date although he did not know it. On t
he surface, this project started like the rest.

  With slide decks and DVDs under one arm, Dane left the meeting burdened by the symptoms of a new creative challenge—disorientation and a headache. His brain swirled with ideas hacked into sentence fragments. He had to invent a fresh and intelligent concept but would have settled for something merely intelligible at that moment. His pencil wandered over the paper. “Ejaculation. Premature. Shame. Worry.”

  “You know this stuff!” Dane pleaded with himself. “This is your domain.”

  As words formed in Dane’s mind, fate smacked him in the brain. How uncanny that of all diseases, he should create for this one! SLOJAC could be life-changing and career-defining. Dane was excited—not over-excited—but premature ejaculation was an area of expertise, like vaginal dryness, which he never asked for.

  “Forget what you know!” he berated himself. “It’s just another condition.”

  Dane gripped his head and pulled his hair. This was an imprudent emotional act. He had just started using Rogaine and was uprooting new growth.

  He knew that every subject should be viewed with dispassion—like a rare cancer of which he had no experience. Was this possible now? Premature ejaculation was not intermittent claudication, overactive bladder, hot flashes or other conditions Dane wrote about—miseries particular to women and the aged. As Babette said, nearly all men had experienced premature ejaculation. PE had touched Dane, as well. Was detachment plausible with such memories? He could neither forget, nor renounce his bond with PE sufferers. His empathy was a danger to him.

  Every conqueror in history had a special weapon. The Greeks had the Trojan horse, the Romans, the blunt sword and the English, the long bow. Nadine had SLOJAC and she wielded it on Dane. Rather, she let Dane wield SLOJAC on himself; using his strength against him. He was born to lead the SLOJAC account. It promised challenge and greatness. It was his destiny and doom.

  Goldfarb recognized Dane’s peril. He had seen this story play out before. It was the oldest Integrimedicom tactic in the Book of Sheldon: the heroic delusion, the Save Integrimedicom bit. Every veteran knew there was no saving Integrimedicom; the agency was going nowhere but it was never lost. It was a circle always spinning on its axis of problems and solutions, fabrications and truths.

  Dane was in torment. At first, Goldfarb supposed it was the writing process—the universal agony of starting to think. But it grew worse. Wracked by the internal forces of intuition, knowledge and creativity applied to a painful and too-familiar subject, Dane was ripping at his innards, cursing himself as elements in his mind pushed to the articulate surface.

  “Hey, take it easy. It’s just another pitch,” Goldfarb warned Dane.

  “No, this could be the one.”

  “You say that about everything. You beat your brains in and Sheldon and Nadine will end up with a woman and a dog.”

  “Not this time. A woman and a dog can’t ejaculate prematurely.”

  “That’s true,” Goldfarb conceded. “But if they could it would be a great act.”

  Dane was oblivious to Goldfarb. He was in a cage in his head where problem was bloodied by solution and insight was tortured until it talked.

  “I got it,” Dane cried out. “Business and sex are about timing. In business, it’s better to be early. In sex, early is a disaster. The early worm doesn’t get the bird!”

  “Not bad!” Goldfarb said. “But no man sees his penis as a worm.”

  “Red-butt bonobos, you’re right! I need something more.”

  Dane read out loud from The Premature Ejaculation Handbook by Jack Comerford, PhD.

  “Premature ejaculation (Ejaculo Praecox for the smart set) is a paradox, a common problem but an unsolved mystery.”

  “So is that our headline? The paradox of premature ejaculation?” Goldfarb asked. “It’s a little deep, don’t you think? What do I know? I’m not deep.”

  “But a paradox is an enigma,” Dane mused.

  “So we show a guy jerking off at the foot of the Sphinx?”

  “Listen!” Dane said. “Where is it? Hmmm. Dum da da da dum da da…Here it is…‘There are many misconceptions about premature ejaculation. The following are NOT typically causes: overexcitement; a history of fast, public or dangerous sex, as in cars, elevators or on roller-coasters; performance anxiety; guilt about sex or pleasure; worry about holding an erection; unresolved relationship issues; life stress…’

  “Yes! I knew it was more complicated than doing multiplication in my head!” Dane shouted, pumping his fist. He once despaired when he made it only to 3x3.

  “Look, Dane. You sure you want to do this? You’re too close to it. You know too much.”

  “That’s my power! In advertising, it’s all about knowing the product and the consumer.”

  “Yeah, yeah! That’s a myth. It’s better to know nothing.”

  “Oh, man, this is great stuff,” Dane ejaculated. “Listen: ‘Research indicates that pelvic muscles are in a hyperactive state in men with premature ejaculation.’ Does that sound familiar?”

  “I got to take a leak,” Goldfarb said.

  “Exactly! It’s overactive bladder all over again!” Dane yelled. “Spastic muscles twitch out of control. The premature ejaculator isn’t excited. He’s a tire pump gone wild!!!”

  Goldfarb squirmed in the doorway and bolted for the men’s room. When he returned, Dane had the premature ejaculation DVD on pause.

  For fifteen minutes they watched ordinary men and women reveal how premature ejaculation wrecked their lives. One scholarathlete made out with his girlfriend after practice. He ejaculated during foreplay and ran up a dry cleaning bill, which he paid for by fixing games with local gamblers. When his teammates found out about his PE they humiliated him by squirting Elmer’s Glue all over his locker. He quit the team, lost his chance for a scholarship and became an alcoholic and woman abuser out of shame and frustration. Another man, who participated in a clinical trial, related how he timed himself with a stop-watch for a month and had a breakdown when he could never break the 30-second mark. Meanwhile, the wife of a premature ejaculator spoke through tears about how her husband’s sexual obsession migrated from the size of his penis to the length of his intercourse. Rather than whisper sweet nothings in her ear, he ticked off the seconds of his love-making. “I was like a launching pad!” she cried.

  When the video was done, Goldfarb stretched. “That movie could have used popcorn,” he said.

  Dane was impervious to Goldfarb’s extraneous remarks. He was stunned and stirred by the testimonial DVD. He had read about and experienced the red face of premature ejaculation but hearing its many voices transported it from the realm of embarrassment to an ego-smashing, relationship-crushing hell. This was when Dane had a penetrating insight.

  “None of those people had faces!” he said.

  “It’s a legal thing,” Goldfarb said.

  “The subjects’ faces are pixilated to protect their identities,” Dane muttered. “Out of shame. But what if we could end that? How great would that be?”

  “You mean, a world with no hunger or premature ejaculation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where all sex is perfection?” Goldfarb asked.

  “Yes!”

  Goldfarb whistled and burst into song, “Imagine there’s no premature ejaculation, no coitus interruptus, too!”

  “That could be our commercial!” Dane said. “That’s SLOJAC!”

  It was Dane’s first creative breakthrough.

  The campaign was titled “Faces of Premature Ejaculation.” Goldfarb sketched a layout for a three page concept—a teaser cover and a two-page spread. On the cover the faces were blurred to show that PE was a serious and humiliating condition. Turn the page and the faces were in focus, happy and relaxed. In this problem/solution story, premature ejaculation was the villain and SLOJAC, the hero.

  When they were done, Goldfarb shook his head and smiled at Dane. “Kiddo, I really thought you were lost. But this is your best wo
rk yet.”

  Dane smiled sheepishly. He felt drained and empty. However, this time the creative solution did not bring him its usual peace and satisfaction. After his creative release, old demons returned.

  26. A LOAD ON HIS MIND

  That night Dane slept fitfully, plagued by dreams of overexcitement. He woke up crying out.

  “Are you okay?” Becky asked.

  “Can we make love?” Dane asked.

  “But I’m sleeping,” Becky replied groggily.

  “Please, it’s important.”

  Becky rolled over and Dane proceeded to time himself. He made it to just over a minute before he lost count falling asleep. Timing intercourse worked like counting sheep for him. Instead of feeling reassured about premature ejaculation, he added narcolepsy to his list of problems.

  When Dane and Goldfarb showed their concepts, Sheldon and Babette were impressed by The Faces of Premature Ejaculation. Nadine chortled that she knew Dane was the right man for the job.

  The clients disagreed. They said The Faces of PE was depressing. The drug company wanted to promote SLOJAC as a relationship drug to help couples more fully enjoy themselves.

  Dane and Goldfarb had prepared for this setback with an alternative campaign that featured men on stilts, pogo sticks, a bronco, a mechanical bull, and hanging from rings—activities where longevity mattered. The tagline, “Keep on Keeping On,” conveyed hope and persistence.

  When “Keep on Keeping On” was presented, Sheldon, Babette and the entire launch team stood and applauded.

  The SLOJAC product team also enjoyed the concept. They had a good laugh but when their hilarity subsided to coughs, they said the tone was too playful and that the concept implied an over-promise.

  They did not want people to think SLOJAC would help them ride bulls or walk on stilts. They were also concerned that people sought medical help only for a “serious disease” and would take a drug to enhance sex only if it improved relationships, not merely performance.