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Lawrence Donegan |
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Lawrence Donegan was born in Scotland in 1961. He was educated at St Modan's High, Stirling.
After a short, unproductive spell studying politics at Glasgow University, he became the bass player with Scottish pop group The Bluebells who had a Number one single with the infuriatingly catchy 'Young at Heart'. Donegan later joined Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - once described by a gulible French journalist as 'the most well-read group in the history of rock'.
Lawrence dreams daily of becoming a professional golfer and once had a hole-in-one at Dunfanaghy golf club, County Donegal. Unfortunately, he was playing on his own and his friends won't believe him.
He is a journalist on the Guardian and lives in Glasgow.
Tired of the rock and roll lifestyle and fresh from his stint at the Tirconaill Tribune (as documented in No News at Throat Lake), Lawrence Donegan set off in search of his unique version of 'The American Dream' ... and found used-car reality. What follows is a hilarious account of life on a car lot in Stephen's Creek, San Jose.
Here, Lawrence tells us why nothing, and he means nothing, is better than the feeling of selling a car to someone who, 60 minutes before, believed in his heart of hearts that you were a sleazy, lying, lowlife scumbag.
Confession time. When I was growing up I dreamed of doing many great things, all of them involving playing guitar, touring America and meeting amoral women with an inexplicable attraction to skinny, spotty Scottish men. It hardly needs saying but I never, ever dreamed of one day becoming a used car salesman. Well, guess what? The rock and roll reality never quite matched the dreams (although there was Renee from Atlanta, Georgia ...but that's another story). Even more alarmingly, somewhere along the way, the rock and roll dreams ended in the used car reality. The result is a book called California Dreaming.
Let me explain. Way back in the dawn of time (somewhere around 1983) I was the bass player in a Scottish band called The Bluebells. Older readers may recall this group had a number one song called Young At Heart in the early '90s but I was long gone by then. Back in 1983 we were less than successful. However, we were lucky enough to sign a contract with an American record company. Part of the deal involved touring America, eight of us (including roadies) in the back of a van, on $5 a day. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly up there in the glamour stakes with The Rolling Stones' world tour, but here's the odd thing: I had the best time of my life. From the first glance, I fell in love with the US. It was as if someone had turned up the brightness and volume in my brain. Sure, there were things I didn't like about the place (Nancy Reagan, Big Macs) but since I didn¹t have to spend much time with either, it struck as being the most exciting spot in the world. I made up my mind, I wanted, no make that needed, to live there.
Fast-forward seventeen years. I met an old friend on a Glasgow street who offered me a job at his dot-com company in Silicon Valley. Fast-forward five seconds. My bags were packed. Fast-forward two days - I need a work permit? Why? Fast-forward ...
To cut a War and Peace-sized story into two paragraphs … I eventually got to California and turned up at my friend's dot-com office. I lasted ten minutes as a computer nerd, but I went to buy a car and met the used car salesman who changed my life.
"You want to live the American dream?" he said, after screwing me for a few thousand dollars more than the car was worth.
"Sure," I said.
"Well, this is what you should be doing. This is it - selling used cars. That's the American dream."
What happened next? You'll have to read California Dreaming to find out. (Now that's what you call being a good salesman.)
