Somewhere, as I write and as you read, somewhere in Montreal somebody is knocking on doors and selling something. It's a mean job, a job for those who need money and can't find a better way to make it. I've done it myself. This is how it goes:

It starts in a back room of a shabby office somewhere central, somewhere downtown, say somewhere on Guy between Maisonneuve and Rene Levesque. It starts in this backroom with instructions, a sales workshop.

Instructor: They’ve let you in their house, you’re following them down the hallway, they’re letting you inside. Their house is their mind. You own the house and everything in it. You kneel before them, but you own them. You unzip the portfolio, you unzip, and you’re stripping, but you own them, it’s a game, you’re stripping them, and painting by painting you show them how to strip themselves. Of their money. You, Kid, show us what you can do.

Kid: Hello I am a bohemian exhibiting the work of my friends door to door offering this unique opportunity to view Art on delivery here for instance is the perennial favorite Mediterranean Fishing Boat executed in warm reds and as I speak I elide imperceptibly from the shabby interior of the Artmobile to the glamorous streets of Montreal where I stand on your step as you peer at me over your door chain and if you would only just let me in I am absolutely confident that I will be capable of pressuring you with my hard-sell soft-sell variation so that in a matter of minutes you’ll find yourself buying not one not two but quite possibly three of these pieces of shit plus the frames for a minor surcharge of twelve dollars all of which is roughly three hundred thousand times the amount the starving artists get for painting these by the dozen in our Panamanian sweatshops a sad fact upon which I choose not to dwell so if you would just let me inside the door behind which you skulk with good cause as if behind a shield because if you do let me in all this will come to pass and I can pay my rent and eat and I know because I’ve seen it happen many times before. Surrender.
5270 Rue Pasteur: No thanks. (closing the door) Good night.
Kid: How about a pretense of culture? I see evidence of it. The Van Gogh repro in your hallway? Come on. These paintings actually have paint on them.
5270 Rue Pasteur: Not at the moment. But thanks for dropping by. Good night.
(The door closes and locks)
Kid: (to the door) Why would I drop by? To chat? I knocked on fifty-three doors in two hours tonight with no strikes no sales no money no rent do you have any idea how demoralizing how demanding how demeaning I mean I’m not coming for the firstborn I’m just a simple grifter purveying low-quality knockoffs but every door tonight has the X marked in chalk while the cold swamp of your sidewalks crawls into my shoes into my toe knuckles into my plantar wart my shin-splints my pointless resentment but one thing’s for certain: I Did Not Drop By.

Every night the sellers march out into the dark to a car and drive for miles through the city lights. The bridges are illuminated by ships that pass beneath, cables floodlit. Stars are invisible. The Kid’s brow rolls and thumps against the window. There’s little talk. Metropolitan fire, lanes and lanes of traffic snakes. Insert car body, remove it, move on. Honks, bumps, headlights flash, language of metal and light. Bodies here inserted, here removed, onto lesser streets of lesser flames.
#65 The Boulevard: (sipping a highball) I can do better than that, take a look at my oeuvre. (gesturing at paintings on the walls) Hobby. Retired. Horses. Alone. On mountaintops. At the races. Groomed. Surprised myself I have to say. Rather talented. Don’t go in for that dauby stuff. A nice clean line that’s what I like. Now these you have here, quite third-rate. You should be ashamed.
Kid: Give me your work. There’s a market for static chevals and self-portraits of the bilious hunters who pose astride them.

And that's how it goes. Due to the psychic wounds this sort of thing inflicts, the Kid will become a driver for bank robbers and eventually retire to Labrador where he will pursue experiments in sound sculpture and try to forget his sordid past. His victims, those coerced into buying those horrible paintings will one day spontaneously gather on the Mountain and ceremonially burn the canvases. From the smoke of their pyre will rise the sickly sweet stench of raw capitalism, bad taste and desperation.