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The industry was one run by men. After all, “sales man” rolled off the tongue so much more easily than “sales woman.” Maybe it was the added syllable, or maybe it was said less often and was therefore unpracticed. Or maybe it was because it was a violation of the natural order, the fact that there had to be a separate word for it at all. It was an assigned title, just as the other was, but assigned with such bitterness and contempt and callous disregard. Did they mean it to sound demeaning? Maybe they did. It probably didn’t matter either way.
Spam was a saleswoman. Not by choice or by trade but by birthright. That was what they called her and so that was what she was. She was an Addison, hence the “sale.” She was a woman, hence the “woman.” A perfect, crisp distillation of everything anyone needed to know about her. She was a woman and she sold things and that was all she was. Just like the rest of them.
Nevermind that she was never much good at either of them. Nevermind that no one ever bought her products and nevermind that she couldn’t stand the way her legs looked in heels. Nevermind that makeup made her feel like a clown and nevermind that the most acknowledgement her ads got were because someone misclicked when they were aiming for the delete button in their inbox. She hadn’t earned the title saleswoman. It had been given to her, no strings attached. Because she was born for it.
The others were good at it. Or, better than her at least. Sales men, the other four. Assigned the name the same way she had been. Men who sold. And she was a woman who sold. And really, there was no difference, was there? They hadn’t earned their title any more than she had. It was just a random trick of fate, and so there was nothing to be jealous of. She told herself it was the “sales” portion that irritated her, that they lived up to that portion of their title when she couldn’t. It let her ignore the part of her that was more jealous about the “man.”
The change was so innocuous to everyone but her. A subtle correction, in an attempt to fix one half with the other. Just a rebranding to distance herself from the stereotypes that followed a woman. It was a business decision, she told the others. It was a business decision, she told herself. She didn’t care, not really. She was just trying to do what she could to make her way.
Sensible pants instead of skirts, because they were more practical. Swapping softer blouses for the same blazer the others wore, to make herself seem more authoritative. More reliable. A turtleneck underneath. Because she ran colder than the others. And if it just happened to obscure her chest and make it appear flatter than it was, then that was just a coincidence. It was just more comfortable that way.
The others called her a saleswoman. Because that was what she was, and she had no qualms about the title she had been assigned. It didn’t sting that their group was always greeted with a pointed “gentleman and lady.” It didn’t bother her that their laughter was at a lower, warmer pitch than hers, or that her voice rose up above the rest of them thanks to its higher octave. It didn’t matter that they had to look down to meet her gaze, when they could look across at each other with no issue. That Darkners shook their hands more firmly than they did hers.
When she said it first, she said it like a joke. “Name’s Spam. Local Cyber City salesman.” The Darkner she had greeted didn’t correct her. They didn’t react at all, just returned her greeting and went on with her day. It didn’t matter. It didn’t make her heart speed up or make her mouth curve into a smile as the words left her lips. It was just the easier title to say. Less syllables. More practiced. Why would there need to be a distinction, after all?
The other Addisons didn’t correct her either. After a while, they caught on. No need to distinguish themselves just because Spam was a woman and they were all men. And so “salesmen” they all became, and the extra syllable was left by the wayside. It was for ease and for practicality and for a chance to shirk some of the perceptions that surrounded a woman everywhere she went. Because she was, still. The title didn’t matter, it didn’t change anything. Spam was a woman. She just wasn’t a sales woman. It was different.
She cut her hair because she had started doing mechanic work on the side. Fixing things up enough to sell, because the products she’d been given to work with weren’t bringing in what she needed. It was practical, just like everything else. Shorter hair meant it was out of her eyes. It meant less chance that it would get caught in something while she worked. So what if it didn’t frame her face nicely anymore? She’d never been a pretty woman to begin with anyway, so what difference did it really make? She didn’t care either way. She didn’t want to look like a pretty woman. I don’t want to look like a woman at all.
She failed both halves. Sales and woman. She knew she did, because she kept relying on the other Addisons to pay for dinner, kept saying she’d catch them next time, once she made it big some day. She knew she did, because a Darkner bumped into her on the street, and when he apologized, he said “my bad, sir.” Sir. She was not sir. That, too, was a birthright title, and she had been assigned a different one. You meant ma’am. She didn’t correct him.
The phone call came late one night, as she stumbled up the stairs to a ratty apartment that she could barely afford. Her hair was filthy and her turtleneck was stained with oil. Grime coated her face and she tried her best to wipe it off with a rag. She was trying to calculate if she could afford a shower long enough to clean it all off when the phone rang.
“Good evening, sir,” the voice on the phone said, though not so clearly and not in so many words. “Spam, correct?”
“That’s right,” she said, in her voice that was too high and too shrill and too much like the voice of a woman. Too much a reminder of what she was.
“Good. How are you tonight, sir?” She told him, nervously, that she was fine. She asked why he had called. “I have an offer, sir.” Sir. Sir. Sir. Over and over, constantly, even as her voice rose and it became undeniable. Sir, the voice called her. Salesman. The voice on the other end of the phone said it effortlessly and it made her heart jump each time. It didn’t matter. It was just another birthright title. Who cared if it got jumbled up a bit? Women were making strides, why not share titles? A woman could be sir. And Spam was a woman.
But the voice pushed and prodded and she found that the more she spoke to it, the less she could tolerate the other titles. Before, it hadn’t mattered that Darkners still called her ma’am, that she was still a saleswoman to most even if she was a salesman to herself. She didn’t care because they were right, of course. Her self-given titles were just an experiment, an ultimately pointless exercise in pushing tradition.
But the voice on the phone made it sound so right. Or rather, the voice on the phone said it so confidently that she realized it was right. And suddenly it stung when others failed to see it too. How could this voice on the phone know so certainly? How had it seen right through her warped, unpleasant body and into her soul? How do you know my name? How can you know who I am when I do not?
She dyed her hair, a dark, greasy black color that stained her sink for days. Her name was changed, from the meek and innocent Spam to the more powerful, more masculine Spamton. Spam could be anyone. Spamton was a man. It was a character she played, she told herself. A face she wore because her benefactor assured her it would improve her sales. The effortless confidence of a man would sell better. She, herself, couldn’t care less.
Very few people had known her before, and so very few people questioned it. The benefactor taught her to add gravel to her voice. To wear her clothes in such a way that they hid her chest, the curve of her hips. To speak like she knew what she was saying and hold herself like she belonged there. It was easy to slide into the role, to cast her past aside and become someone new. The further the benefactor took her, up into success, into a world she had never dreamed possible, the more her past clawed at her like a bad dream.
She hadn’t even known she wanted it until she had it. For the first time in her life she felt real. She had bitten her old title clean in half and forged herself a new one. Assigned to most but chosen for her. It was easy, with the benefactor showing her how. She hadn’t realized it was missing, even as she changed how she dressed and cut her hair and tried to make her laugh sound deeper all those years ago. A final piece to the puzzle, finally snapping together as the benefactor gave voice to something she had thought so impossible that she had buried it beneath mountains of justifications and “it didn’t matter”s.
Spamton was no forgotten Addison, no struggling saleswoman. He was a sales man. And where she had failed both halves of her old title, he far exceeded his new one. Because it was the right one. Was that all it had taken? One clerical error, a misaligned syllable and an incorrectly assigned body. A fixable problem, in the end. Salesman.
And it was fixed, until the TV Show. Until the host. Tenna was supposed to be a tool. Another stepping stone on his quest for success. But Tenna had a smile that made his screen grow brighter. Tenna tugged at his tie when he was nervous. Tenna had two laughs, a perfectly curated, screen-ready chuckle, and a real, honest guffaw that sounded like an old motor trying to start. Because Tenna felt like he could be trusted, even though no one could be trusted, not in Spamton’s position. Not when his whole life rested so precariously on that self-assigned title that no one could know wasn’t his birthright.
They grew closer by mistake. Sleeping in the studio when everyone else went home because they’d spent too long working on revisions. Spending time out on the town under the pretense of discussing business proposals. Hesitant colleagues to actual business partners to real friends to something else. And had the world been a kinder place, maybe Spamton would have let himself accept it.
But as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t trust Tenna. He couldn’t trust that Tenna wouldn’t use that closeness against him. It was business, after all, the voice on the phone reminded him. And he couldn’t trust that Tenna would understand him. Would see what hid under his tailored suit and pressed slacks and be anything but disgusted. You’re a woman, he would say. No, Spamton would try to tell him, no, not anymore. Maybe never. He wouldn’t understand. No one could.
No one except the benefactor would understand, not really. The benefactor was the only person he could trust, the only person who saw him for who he really was. The other Addisons called him by his new name because they wanted to keep the peace. But they didn’t see him, they didn’t see him. The benefactor was the only one who did. The only one who ever would.
And then the benefactor abandoned him. The one soul in this cold, uncaring world who could see past his warped, misshapen form and see someone behind it. It had been his fault, in the end. His foolish desire to believe that maybe the benefactor was wrong and he wasn’t alone. He had reached out to Tenna in a moment of weakness, and the benefactor had left him for it. He had lost his only ally on a whim. Tenna will never know you. Not the way I do. He can’t.
His punishment came slowly. He had assumed that losing everything was the worst that it got, but his benefactor was a powerful creature, and he had forgotten his place. A visual reminder. A physical reminder.
His hands slowly split at the joints, the skin and bone wearing down and warping into something like plastic. Flesh melted clean of bone, except there was no bone there anymore, just more of that hard plastic casing. He began wearing his glasses as a permanent fixture to hide the gaping wounds where his eyes had once rested. His jaw clicked every time he moved it. His voice came out drenched in radio static.
A punishment. To remind him that he was a puppet. A permanent misery, to put him in his place once and for all. But sometimes, in that cold dark dumpster, resting on old bags of forgotten souls, he rested his hand on his chest and found it flat. Sometimes, he would catch a glimpse of his face in the dirty rainwater puddles and notice the squareness of his chin, the sharpness of his jaw, puppet-like and gaping though it was. He did not miss that every time his voice was overtaken by another, the speaker was male.
And when he was at his lowest and his bitterness was no longer enough to drown out the deep, wasting sorrow, he clung to that small mercy that his benefactor had left him. A puppet, forever someone else’s toy because he had dared to disobey. But his name had been left to him. His self-assigned title, the one he had dragged himself to on bloodied hands when others simply had it handed to them, had been left to him.
And when the people he had left behind dragged his name through the mud, they did not speak of a saleswoman. They spoke of a sales man.