The Wise Old Bird drove up to Maine. He was impressed by the way the water touched the land. He was not used to seeing this happen, and was unaware that nature was capable of producing something in such a way. The Wise Old Bird smoked a cigarette and stuck his head out the window, while driving, to properly smell the sea air. He was not looking forward to selling his joke books and miscellaneous novelty gags on this trip, because he hated his job dearly and still did not have a feel for it. He would rather be in Maine’s gambling-night-bars and oyster restaurantettes than selling Slinkies in dirty hotel rooms to confused Vietnam war veterans. But a man needs to live, he recognized, and to live, a man needs to make money, and to make money, he must cut up his favorite body parts into pretty chunks and display them on the table unashamedly. As the Wise Old Bird drove along, he became aware that his life was pure horror and pain, but it was a horror and pain that was necessary, and he did not mind it. He had been a salesman for too long and nothing was going to stop him now. He loved wearing his little salesman uniform even though it didn’t fit him correctly and it reminded him of his dead zookeeper grandfather. “Never touch girls quickly,” his grandfather used to say. “Always slowly, always respectfully, always without overexuberent sexual curiosity.”