The Sweet Power of Control

Have you ever been caught doing something you know that no one on Earth should be doing? Have you ever felt a sharp, shrill, shilling shock dig straight through your backbone? The feeling is sharp, painful, like a lightning bolt or laser beam is cutting through you. Then the feeling of pain moves to your stomach, and transforms: you feel sick because you know that being caught will cause many more problems in your life. You try to rewind your life, try to go back to undo that thing that you did which has just been discovered. But human life is a linear march forwards. You cannot go back and undo the sin. And you hope and pray, in those small moments after being discovered, that those who have made the discovery will take it as a sin-- as you missing the mark of living a good life-- instead of finding some way to punish you. All this flashed through my head when I heard him begin. He related a story I wrote about himself and Roman that I will not repeat here, and my heart felt like it dropped down through my stomach into my left leg and out through my shoes.

“It’s not that bad,” I tried to say, but Robert continued on his tirade.

“It’s an invasion of privacy. If you must do this sort of thing couldn’t you have at least changed the names?”

“It wouldn’t be real, then,” I heard myself saying.

“Oh, it needs to be real?” he shouted this question into the phone. It pierced my ears, the way the last word shrilly went up with his angry, questioning tone. “Well then, I’ll make it real when you come back!”

This was one of the many times in my life I thought about escaping. I had the money to do so. I could simply walk out of the factory, withdraw much of my money, and begin my life anew. I could go to Moscow or Barcelona or Peru. With my funds I might even have followed that very cliche path of removing myself to India or Tibet and setting myself up as some sort of guru. But I valued my friendships, at that point, and my marriage-- strained and arranged as it was.

“Give me a day!” I shouted. “I have to sort this out with labor!”

“Oh, a whole day? Fine! See you tomorrow. Things will have changed.” There was a very dark current to his statement and a different sort of chill ran through my body. The kind of chill that runs through the body when you wake up two minutes after midnight in an empty house and hear something calling your name. Do you dare go to it or roll back over to the safety of sleep?

I set to work ensuring that each overnight shift, which required the workers away from their family for longer than was fair, entitled the workers to certain compensation. For each overnight shift, for each overtime, a worker received not only double overtime, but also several rights. The first that a worker could not be required to work more than two overnight shifts in succession. On that third day, the worker would be given the day off. It was not what I wished to do: I wished that the workers would only need to work their regular shifts, but this was not possible at that time. I also ensured that for each extended shift all of my workers would receive a small gift certificate for one of the premium toys that the company offered, redeemable at any toy store. It was pointed out, however, that the nearest toy store was miles away, in the city.

The last act of which I am truly proud, of which I would point to if I believed in some life after this one-- and given the ghosts I have seen I suppose I should-- is that I took the worker’s side in this dispute. When the pointed out this problem, I instructed management to allow the workers to redeem the coupons directly at the factory, giving the workers first choice of the toys they made. I also ensured that major holidays were actual holidays for the workers. All of this resulted in my company being profiled on the news three weeks later, when the tactic of having the workers in my factory take the toys home to their children had apparently made e other children in their neighborhood want the same toys and driven up my profits. I was not asked for an interview and the report stated that I lived alone, rather like Willy Wonka was supposed to have, preferring to keep away from the fray of common life.

At that time, however, if they had asked me for an interview, I would very gladly have consented. I needed very much to escape the household that was digging its claws into me both figuratively and eventually literally. For I came home from solving my dispute, at about four in the afternoon the next day, opened the door, and found my wife and business managed in the doorway, in the act of oral copulation. It was something lifted almost directly out of my story.

“Do you like this?” Robert asked. “Are you going to do it?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Fuck my ass!” he shouted. I declined and he stared daggers at me. “I thought you wanted this. You needed your stories to be real.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, angrily, and began to stuff my coat jacket onto the rack. That’s when my wife spoke up, also angry.

“Am I your wife or just an object to you? We all read it, you know, your little fuck book. It’s gross, you treating us all like we’re stationary, not real people. Just here to amuse you, like characters on the page. Like fucking puppets--”

“It’s as bad as that dollhouse we gave you,” Robert added, removing himself from Jacinta and zipping his pants up. “You sit there staring into it, as if it is more important than life that’s going on around you. Don’t you even know your wife and mistress are having an affair?”

I stopped for a minute, and then began laughing. Robert grabbed me by the collar, and almost through me into the wall. The weight of my body knocked over the coat rack.

“What’s so funny?”

“I know. I know all about it,” I said, still laughing. “I made it happen.”

“I love her more than you!” Jacinta screamed. “What do you mean you made us?”

“I made it happen,” I said, my laughing crescendoing and then falling into silence. A grin of pure malice passed across my face and I pushed Robert back and off of me. “Come on, I will show you.”