Love in the Downline: A Nice Guy’s Amway Affair

A man— I’ll call him “Nice Guy,” because that’s what he likes to call himself— which is a red flag in itself – told me that a certain Amway distributor, (let us call him Mr. J.) whose descent into mental illness forced me to stop approving his comments which were littered over Frank Report like diarroia on brown and white polka dot sheets had somehow obtained his demented condition accidentally.

Nice Guy

Nice Guy neglected to mention he helped the madness along.

A smile, a dinner, flattery, whispered promises of being in her downline, which meant he was in her husband’s downline, since Mrs. J was in Mr. J’s downline, which meant a lot of upline for Mr J. So he encouraged it in the beginning.

But that wasn’t the end. In the end, the Amway man was left with nothing but silence, soap samples, and a memory of love.

Cause. Effect. Heartbreak.

According to Nice Guy, Mr. J. just woke up one day with a scrambled brain. But Nice Guy didn’t tell us that he fell in love with the Amway distributor’s wife — or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just got bored.

And the Amway man found himself alone with an empty house and a garage full of biscuits and lots of time on his hands to make comments on Frank Report.

He had already qualified for the Amway Spring Leadership Seminar in Paramus, New Jersey, but he did not go, which gave him even more time on his hands. And more increasingly unhinged comments.

But it wasn’t sudden madness. It was cause and effect. It was the thermodynamics of the heart.

A Woman, a Marshmallow, a Mission

Nice Guy lives on a lake, and a lot of ducks came around his house and crap all over his lawn.

He would go out in his small boat, before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt water that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon. Nice Guy was at a loss as to why he felt blue.

So he signed up with Amway.

There at the Amway meeting, he met Mrs. J.

He paid the $76.99 Independent Business Owner (IBO) registration fee, watched the “Your Life, Your Legacy” onboarding video, and downloaded the MyShop™ app to start selling XS Energy Drinks and Nutrilite™ Daily Vitamins.

When the video was over, Nice Guy told Mrs. J. about the ducks, and she recommended Amway’s Premium Duck Biscuits.

She explained that if he added five cases of Amway Premium Duck Biscuits to his autoship bundle along with a starter kit of Glister toothpaste and Artistry moisturizer, he’d qualify for 300 PV that month and unlock Bronze Producer status.

He could make his money back on the duck biscuits by selling them to his neighbors on the lake who would buy them and that meant he would get his own duck biscuits for free, which, after all, is what Amway is all about and on top of that he would please the ducks and attract them to his neighbors’ homes.

I Have Tools Too,” He Whispered

As she explained all this, Nice Guy began to get distracted. Mrs. J was a plus-size woman. He was thinking about something other than biscuits. He was thinking of getting laid almost from the moment he first laid eyes on her.

She was in a petite ensemble, giving the appearance of a soft white marshmallow tightly wrapped in dental floss.  She was indeed most becoming.

Nice Guy had a vivid imagination and saw Mrs. J as what he hoped she would be and then some.

 Nice Guy did not see the marshmallow analogy, which is odd because he always associated women with food or putting something in his mouth. But to him, Mrs. J looked more like pizza, the kind that relies more on the quality of the sauce than the amount of cheese. She was powdering her nose, which was a bit large for her face, and it struck him. She reminded him of a slice of pizza whose point curled up after a night in the refrigerator. 

But he was bold. He said he wanted to go down on her – on her downline. He said he would buy all the Amway tools and 5 cases of duck biscuits. He also mentioned that he had a tool or two himself, one which he knew to work quite well.

Too well as it turned out.

Premium Biscuits, Premium Love

They went back alone into the garage to check out the cases of Amway Premium Duck Biscuits—stacked neatly beside the XS™ Electrolyte Sparklewater Tub, Satinique® Shine Enhancer Leave-In Hair Milk, Nutrilite® Men’s FlexiJoint Support Max, Artistry™ Skin Firming Overnight Crème, and a Family Pack of Glister® Multi-Action Mint Toothpaste for Whiter Smiles and Bigger Downlines.

All of which Nice Guy bought.

Toilet Tissue and Tenderness

It was there that Mrs. J pointed to a pallet of SatinSoft® Quad-Ply Botanical Toilet Tissue.

She explained the product, “It is infused with Nutrilite® aloe vera extract, double-MLM embossed for maximum upline grip, and woven with the same integrity as the Amway Founders’ Fundamentals™. You can buy it in bulk 96-roll Opportunity Totes™.”

While gazing at the SatinSoft Quad-Ply Botanical Toilet Tissue and sampling one or two Amway Premium Duck Biscuits (they are fit for human consumption, although they taste like the “unsalted dog treats” Nice Guy used to chomp down on, Mrs. J said Amway sells them too, if he wanted to sample them. To which Nice Guy said he wanted to sample something else, but did not say what.)

Then he did it. He caressed her hair, cheek, forehead, chin, collarbone, shoulder, upper arm, and stomach. Then meandered to her elbow, kneecap, and earlobe.

Kisses Sweeter Than Wine

Nice Guy’s first kiss sent a warm shiver down Mrs. J’s tender spine and made the coarse hair on her knuckles erect. 

But like Lays potato chips, no one could have just one. They kissed again. This time with the fury and suction that remined me of a dart that was once shot onto the back of the bus driver’s fat bald head by a sugar-high Snorlax who was too big for his age (the rumor was he was “held back”) and everyone knew was going to end up in prison, or perhaps a prop comic if he straightened out in time.

But after that kiss, Mrs. J knew then and there that her decision to take Nice Guy as her adulterous lover was the correct one. 

It was not long before Mr. J found out.

From Autoship to Heartbreak

He tried everything he could think of to stop Nice Guy from arriving at his wife’s various Amway rendezvous, which turned out to be the Ramada Inn: A jealous Mr. J tried emailing Nice Guy on his wife’s computer at the wrong time and place, but she had a cell phone and gave him the correct room.

Once he sent him to Patriot God’s room and another time to Colonel Ludlow, but that is another story for another day – both men occasionally renting rooms there each for their own purposes, which I am not at liberty to entirely explain, in part because I can’t explain, in part because I don’t know, but it was seedy.

Mr. J also sent Nice Guy sleeping pills disguised as Amway muffins, marketed under the “Perfect Start Breakfast Bundle (Gluten-Free Option). And once he tried some light arson of Nice Guy’s boat, but Nice Guy was insured, so he went to the Ramada without a care in the world.

But after three weeks of almost nightly romance, Nice Guy’s jock rash (if that what it was) was burning brighter than the West Texas sun—at least, as far as he could tell with his chaps and britches down and the little mirror his mom had given him.

He never called the lady again.

Whispers from the Ramada

Which brings us back to Colonel Ludlow. On the same night Nice Guy and Mrs. J. consummated their relationship with a very large Amway order and a night of champagne cocktails at the Ramada, Colonel Ludlow had taken a room in the same hotel.

It was debatable what the Colonel enjoyed most about that night— the delicious dinner, the marvelous movie, or the satisfying sex—but one thing was clear, and that was that he hoped he wouldn’t be doing it alone again next time.

Patriot God: Horny, Young, and Mistaken

After Nice Guy ditched Mrs. J, she deliberately took a young, very narcissistic Patriot God, young, eager, and horny, to the same room she had despoiled the green and white polka dot bedsheets at the Ramada with Nice Guy.

Patriot God went to the restroom, and Mrs J waited for him. When he came out after about an hour Mrs. J struck a deliberate pose on the sailor-striped chaise lounge, her bustier revealing the tops of her white breasts like eggs—eggs of the slightly undercooked, hard-boiled variety, (which would have been perfect for Nice Guy for he liked to associate women with food) and showing a nascent jiggle with her apprehensive breath, eggs that were then peeled ever-so-carefully so as not to pierce the jellied, opaque albumen and unleash the longing, viscous yolk within—yes, she lay there, oblong and waiting to be deviled.

But because Patriot God was gay, he didn’t even notice. He said cryptically, “I thought it was your husband who was coming.”

Flashback to Nutjob and Nancy: Chopsticks of Destiny

It reminded me years ago of another evening – the night Nutjob and Nancy met. It was a special night, not merely because of the truly magical first encounter of the would-be lovers —they reached for the same pair of chopsticks at The Lucky Dragon’s all-you-can-eat Chinese food buffet—but also because it was the same day Keith Raniere identified the reincarnated nazis who came to earth to make all humankind more civilized with their 12 point mission statement, sex slavery, branding and brainwashing techniques.

Nutjob was perfectly willing for the first two, was undecided on the last, and was unlcear about who would brand whom, but unhappily he was not a reincarnated nazi which ended the relationship between him and Nancy rather abruptly and to this date I think they, if they ever stopped to think about it which probably they may not have, they would both regret either that Nutjob was not a reincarnated nazi or that Nancy was.

Edward Bulwer Lytton

This true story was submitted to the Bulwer-Lytton Purple Prose and Plagiarism Contest. Now it is poised to become a new Harlequinn Romance Discreet Commerce Novel