Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman (27 page)

“Jamie, I think
other reps
are taking the Viagra samples!” one outraged RN told me. I assured her it was no big deal, unfortunately a common practice among some “unprofessionals.”

“I’d keep an eye on that Flomax guy,” I suggested, mentioning a competitor whose help-men-stop-peeing-during-the-night drug was killing Cardura, my help-men-stop-peeing-during-the-night
drug. To address the problem of theft by rep, urology offices universally began treating Viagra as a controlled substance and placed samples of it under lock and key just as they did for Valium. I wondered which was more addicting.

With patients, evildoers, and competitors all clamoring for Viagra, my friends’ interest should not have surprised me, but it did. My buddies hadn’t been this giddy since somebody brought a whoopee cushion into class in third grade. These guys couldn’t wait to talk about the little blue pill; they had to know
everything.
Seemingly overnight, I was transformed from just a guy with a job that let him play hooky all the time to the V-Man; I, like all my Viagra colleagues, became a de facto celebrity.

In planning the Viagra launch, Pfizer had the foresight to realize we would face awkward workplace situations previously not encountered in industry history, and as the result, the company provided us with training to handle said situations. Pfizer did not, however, anticipate the rock star–esque rise our social standing would take among friends and family. A little media training would have been nice.

In hindsight, most of the barroom conversations I had during the six weeks postlaunch have blurred together, partially because of the multitude of refreshments purchased for me in honor of my sudden hipness, but mostly due to the fact that they were all so similar.
From my friends’ handling of introductions to the listeners’ reactions upon meeting me to their questions once the drinks had kicked in, each discussion mirrored the one before and the one after. They say you never forget your first time, though, and the Friday night following Viagra’s initial seven days on the market will remain seared into my brain long after the little blue pill’s patent has expired.

Walking into happy hour at Bayside Café, a sports bar on Union Street in San Francisco, my friend Mike and I sensed we stood on the cusp of something big. Having witnessed firsthand vitamin V’s first week of life, I looked forward to watching the craziness crescendo over the next few months. Mike looked forward to telling everybody he knew that he knew the guy who had witnessed firsthand vitamin V’s first week of life. His level of excitement would’ve led a casual observer to think that I, not Tommy Lee, had been in that sex tape with Pamela Anderson.

Mike and I had plans with friends of his from the consulting and technology industries, people he had specifically invited out to meet me. It was as if he was attending adult kindergarten, and I was his show-and-tell object. Months later, when twenty-somethings began pointing at other partygoers and nonchalantly announcing how many millions their stock options were worth, the Viagra guy was pushed into the background. In April 1998, however, the V-Man held court. Jeff Bezos had nothing on me.

During my first two months in California, Mike introduced me like so: “This is Jamie, an old friend of mine from Notre Dame. He just moved to Modesto, but don’t hold that against him.” If Mike was not present to introduce me to new people, his friends would say, “This is Mike’s friend Jamie. He’s an annoying Notre Dame fan, too. He lives in Fresno.” A.V. (After Viagra), normal introductions got tossed aside. Mike waved to two guys walking aimlessly through the crowd. They approached, shifting their beers to their left hand and extending their right, but Mike could not contain himself. Before they could even shake his hand, he put his arm around me and blurted, “This is Jamie”—dramatic pause—“He sells Viagra!” He could not get the latter phrase out of his mouth quickly enough.

Judging by their reactions, which were as simultaneous as they were similar, Mike had obviously not told them whom they were meeting. Picture Shaggy and Scooby saying, “Zoinks!” only without sound. That night Mike took great pleasure in watching the facial expressions of the people I met; apparently, it was great fun. I never saw them, since I had no idea how to react myself. My face flushed like the first time in fourth grade a girl asked me to skate at the roller rink; I felt cool, yet embarrassed, and ended up staring at my feet. At Bayside Café eighteen years later, I had matured enough to take a long pull on my beer while staring at my feet.

A brief lull followed, as four guys modeling the latest Gap pullovers stood dumbstruck. Finally, the silence
was interrupted by a loud, nervous laugh. His buddies exchanged sideways glances with themselves and then Mike.
Are you serious?
Beaming, Mike replied, “Oh, yeah! He’s the Viagra guy.” Rather than sparking discussion, his confirmation set us back a step. More drinks appeared, giving the guys some time to absorb the surprise.

Finally, one gushed, “Wow.” This broke the ice.

“What a
hard job!”
his buddy commented.

“You mean, a hard
sell!
”

Mike added, “His career must be on the
rise
, huh?” Viagra salespeople would hear those jokes more than once in 1998.

Just when I thought we were grooving, the conversation jumped awkwardly to another, non-sex-related topic. The sudden focus on Viagra proved too much for most people to handle with no warning. One minute John Consultant and Jim Dot-commer were talking about Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and the next thing they knew, they were meeting Mike’s friend and talking about blood flow to the penis. These guys demonstrated a need for some preparation time—or three drinks—before being ready to consider hard-ons and the lack thereof. As the hours and beers increased, hesitation about asking questions decreased.

My friend Ron joined us at the bar, and he also proved unable to resist the urge to say, “He sells Viagra!” His buddy Doug had left his wife at home to converse with the V-Man. No one bothered to introduce the other men
to one another. Doug gave me a sheepish grin followed by, “Soooo.” I smiled back and shrugged as if to say, Crazy, huh?, and we were off to the races.

“How does it work?” he asked, surprising me. I would’ve thought only science geeks would care about that, but I quickly learned that everybody was interested in Viagra’s mechanism of action. No one ever cared how an antihistamine worked. Fortunately, I had come up with a sports metaphor to ensure that the guys would get it.

“Okay, so think of getting an erection like it’s a football game. You’ve got your offense and your defense. You are trying to get your running back into the end zone, but the defense has a great linebacker who has tackled the running back on every play so far. Now, a man gets an erection when the brain sends signals that it is sexually excited. When this happens in a man with erectile function, nitric oxide—the running back—flows into the penis and stimulates the blood flow that causes an erection. In other words, it scores a touchdown. In a man with erectile dysfunction, however, the linebacker, phosphodiesterase 5 [PDE 5], tackles nitric oxide. This is where Viagra comes in. Viagra naturally blocks PDE 5 from interfering with nitric oxide. So, think of Viagra as the fullback who blocks PDE 5 from tackling nitric oxide, thus enabling us to score a touchdown.”

Doug, Mike, and Ron—and all their friends—smiled and nodded. Everybody loved an All-American, but one
satisfactory answer was not sufficient for the masses. They had more questions—a lot more questions.

That night each of my friends, not to mention
their
friends, asked to take Viagra for a test drive. To each request, I vigorously shook my head. The last thing I needed was to have someone keel over with a heart attack after taking one of my samples or somehow get busted by the cops with one of my samples in their pocket. Neither case would have been good for my career advancement. “No, no, no,” I told them. “Viagra isn’t for
you.
It’s only intended for older guys with erectile
dysfunction
, not twenty-eight-year-olds in good shape.”

The fellas who were only looking to take their game to the next level, so to speak, accepted this explanation and moved on to more important topics such as, “Who’s that chick in the black?” One guy, however, didn’t give up that easy.

With his head on a swivel like a neighborhood snitch about to give up a tip to the cops, he leaned in close to me, and whispered, “Sometimes not everything works the way it should. You know?”
Ever think it might be the thirteen shots of Jagermeister?

Unfortunately, not everyone omitted the more painful details. Another guy went so far as to reveal, with excruciating specificity, his periodic bouts with erectile dysfunction. I do not recall how we got into the conversation, but I am fairly certain that I did not say, “Hey, why don’t you tell me about your penis problems?” I do remember the
sincerely worried look on his face. I thought perhaps one of his parents was seriously ill. “Well, man, there was this one month where nothing, I mean … nothing.” I had no idea where he was going with this, but I deduced it did not involve his dad’s colon.

“I mean, we had been doing it twice a night for forever and wham! Nothing. We tried everything. My girlfriend was like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening!’”
That’s two of us
, I thought, resigning myself to a lifetime of impromptu counseling sessions. Apparently, the fact that I spoke to urologists every day gave people the impression I
was one.

The guys were the least of my worries. Whereas no women had made any comments or asked any questions earlier in the night, their shyness disappeared along with the happy-hour prices. While I may have been annoyed and slightly embarrassed by my discussions with the boys, their innumerable sample requests and personal revelations paled in comparison to the interrogations I faced with the girls, whose feline curiosities proved insatiable. Mike waved over two women, a blonde and a brunette with whom we had had dinner previously. These two roommates gradually steered me away from the group. As the bar’s noise level rose, they began to quiz me about the wonder pill.

Lobbing softballs at first (Has it been crazy? How does it work?), the ladies gradually grew more intense, more focused.

“Does it make it longer?” The brunette asked.
No.

“Does it make it
last longer?”
her roomie wondered, an impressive bridge on her friend’s query.
No, but it does decrease what urologists refer to as “the refractory period,” which is what we laypeople call recovery time.
Feeling like a suspect grilled by Sipowicz, I searched for relief in the form of Mike and the guys. After spotting them drinking and laughing near the bar, I suggested that we join them. The ladies barely acknowledged my request. These gals had acquired their target and were not about to let me slam on the brakes to watch them fly right by. Without realizing it at the time, this was my first encounter with the Look, the change in a woman’s eyes that occurred just before she was about to ask me a doozy.

“Does it burn in your throat?” None of the guys had asked that one.

“Does it burn inside you?”
Uh, we’re gonna need another round over here.
And, for the coup de grâce, “Have you tried it?” The brunette’s last question hung in the air for an eternity.

Ah, the Million-Dollar Question. Let me start by saying, “Hell yeah, I tried it!” I must shamefully admit, however, that it took me three months to find the nerve. Despite my pals’ pleas, the thought of breaking open a sample pack never occurred to me. After all, I was a healthy, twenty-eight-year-old guy, not a middle-aged man with any of the medical issues like hypertension that would cause ED. Hence, I didn’t try it. This baffled my friends no end. Even Mike’s dad, the late Jack Pearl, questioned my decision.

As Mike drove out to Modesto one night to help me drown the pain after the Woman of My Dreams IV had shattered my fragile heart, he called his parents from the road. His father, a Class of ’49 Notre Dame grad whom I had met on a dozen occasions, asked him where he was heading.

“Ah, Jamie’s got girl problems, so I’m driving out there to cheer him up.” Mr. Pearl had a voice like John Wayne’s and his tan, lined face hinted he had seen quite a bit during his seventy years. He replied, “How can a guy who sells Viagra have girl problems?”

Public opinion aside, my failure to take advantage of unsupervised access to the biggest sexual sensation of the twentieth century did not surprise me; missing the V-Train was not out of character. In high school I cut one day of class in four years. I pass out when the blood pressure thingy gets too tight on my arm. I’m afraid of needles, heights, and mice. I took naps on spring break. Living on the edge was not exactly a hallmark of my first three decades on Earth. But then I had a conversation with a comely blonde colleague who possessed some Viagra-like abilities of her own.

“I was talking with this guy I used to work with in my last division,” she began benignly enough. “He’s in his thirties, married, three kids and all that.” I nodded along, having no idea where she was headed but happy to be along for the ride. “Well, he told me it
totally
worked.”

Our topic still eluding me, I asked, “What totally worked?” Her sigh indicated a deep sense of disappointment in me, but my crushing depression proved fleeting as she bent toward me to whisper the answer.

“Duh!
Viagra.
” With her heavenly aroma wafting around me, feeling stupid never felt so good. I did not get any smarter, though.

“Is he diabetic or something?” I asked.

Her face scrunched as she shook her head.

“So, then why would he need Viagra?” No wrinkled brow this time. She actually smiled, as if she had solved the mystery of what had burdened me my whole life.

With a seductive smile, she said, “He didn’t
need
it. He wanted to try it out. He said it’s never been so rigid.” She breathed the last word in two husky syllables:
rih-gid.
That’s when it hit me: Why
wouldn’t
somebody try it? Why the hell hadn’t
I
tried it? How long will it take me to get to my car’s trunk and back?