WHO BEARS THE YOKE?

As he fled from [her] kitchen into [his] study, the door had banged shut behind him (like a rifle sounding a final, fatal warning shot). Escape then was the wiser choice (it was the only choice). Nearly two hours had passed since his return from Drax Doughan & Associates (DD&A) headquarters (which had deep roots in the commercial banking legacies of its two industrial age forebears, who had earned hundreds of thousands then in the San Francisco, California gold rush, but had formed in the latter half of 70s to largely sponsor penny stock and underwrite junk bonds). Although it had earned a hefty sum from the more clandestine negotiations, with forays into insider trading, dark pool investing, and high frequency trading, behind closed war/board rooms, DD&A had ascended to its present, notoriety, the envious upset that had disrupted the industry of investment banking, staking its claims to such heights on the often overlooked high yield, low investment grade bonds. He had curried the favor of a second-generation senior partner, with whom he had developed an easier, almost unprofessional, rapport. Even in either of their offices with a closed, locked door on an empty office floor in the evening hours, he would often lean into their discussions, as if he would then share some salacious gossip and/or more intimate exploit (always with a hint of sordid at least in the undertones) when discussing his growing book of business, which Sr. Partner had intended to transfer at his having achieved a few milestones.

When he had arrived (carrying the weight of so many clients hopes and dream in the negotiated contracts of a then bull market in full charge in his tawny leather brief case), his wife (the doe eyed, demur, and poised likeness of of [Grace Kelly] with the resonance, range, and depth of the voice of [Kathleen Turner]) had neither heard a single retort nor proven receptive to any of his other either tactical maneuvers or easy charms, which he might have effectively marshalled on any other occasion. His wheedling had worn thin (shifting, through attrition, from a few forced smiles through countless ‘PLEAs’ to either four or five hard ‘NOs’). He loathed the moments when his ‘world class, gold standard’ charm had proven ineffective for how much success had accompanied it, so, at each disregard of his pearly white advances, he had felt his scorn, from which they might not (as he had learned) recover for weeks, surging, in which he had felt himself now treading, threatening, more and more, to drown them both in a caustic deluge (so retreat had then felt the only viable option).

But why must an infant, bearing the duty of his legacy aside, be the desired end of ends, but especially now, as not only his growing, but vaunted book of business had also fast tracked him from his present his Regional Manager, Vice President for a Senior Vice president role. He had first begun serving a subset of nameless clientele who had automated institutional equities trading. His days had all but been the tick, tick ticking of the ticker tape as it ceased in the flash of a bulb on the magic black box, three (3) monitor as one (1) (uttering from the flick, flick of each colorful bulb to the whirring song of the new ticker tape, which comprised not only each letter coalescing into a whole ticker symbol, but also, with each stock ticker, the roar of a trading floor, proving (excepting certain new technologies) the advent of a new reified market arising out of the foam of its codified origin. He had also begun catering to an equally more private, ‘eccentric’ clientele, who had stuffed his coffers with millions in freshly printed greens of new bills as much for penny stock and junk bond sales as a few new innovative deal structures and financial products (for which he had attended late night brain storming, drafting, and deal signing/closing sessions), like for deals in asset backed securities (1985), collateralized mortgage rate swaps (1983), and interest rate swaps in (1982), which had proven lucrative and fuel for his fast track. He had then, with nausea, envisioned the unflattering yards of maternity waistbands that would soon follow, for which he would change from boxers to briefs in an act of rebellion, supplanting the pink, red, and black lace that had endeared him to her as much as the experiences that he had had almost every week day now, often detaining him at his investment banking firm late into the evenings.

They had elicited, still, far too many ‘fresh newlyweds’ at so many evening society mixers than she might have enjoyed, as evinced in her faintly rouged cheek (which she has always hidden except for a few occasions under midday sun at which she most often chose a nude palate under a wide brimmed hat) and/or undermining her self-assured bass vocal tones, by rendering them inaudible murmurs. Although they had hardly seen the tests of the more seasoned marriage (his own parents had married three decades ago now), time had nevertheless evaluated them on the merits of their sham union more than a few times. At what they both assessed that it would go the distance, even despite his present doubts, without which he had, up to then, never been. As their ‘fresh’ marriage had advanced, steadfastly, from the once raised flutes with his career (in which he had so often relished) to the more fecund, bountiful marriage (only shy of a decade by a few months), she had slowly (however ripened), yet with an increasing clarity in such a sad fact, felt herself receding at the rate of the increasingly disregarded pink to black laces, encroaching on his no fewer brightly hued bankers, Alpha lined bombers, and [imported, proudly pinstripes]) . His Achilles’ heel had always proven his vanity. After an hour or so absorbed on it as she brushed her hair (at first suspicious of the uneasy insecurity that she had had ‘bred’ out), she had now known, reinforced in the force of her diaphragm backed by only her two firmly planted feet, for how invasive its quiet, yet noxious odor had increasingly begun to fill the air around them in the familiar blather of her parents in youth (the awkwardness of which she had sensed as some vague recollection of a distant, as awkward, adolescence, who had nevertheless felt, from extortion to extortion, the prisoner of throes of matrimonial ‘bliss’ whereby, the keener eye and an extended stay, might easily discern the stormy, discreet series of the whole reel (however silent), frame by frame, so many, repeated incursions veiled in unpleasant, and even passive aggressive, restraint). His steady, almost constant, attentions had begun waning over the past year (which she not only felt, increasingly, even despite his noticeable efforts at concealing it (and her private pregnancy attempts for the combined pressure of their mothers), but also for what he had risked in his pursuit of her for the many, mostly more modest, suitors who had pursued her then).

Although she, like him, had sensed the trifles of feeling either, at best, an hors d’oeuvre, glossed over by the gracious hostess and/or overlooked by the prudent guest for the more substantive entree, or, at worst (and as was far more often the flavor of it), the entrée, a spectacle and main event (tacked, and writhing, wide eyed, on some plate under the sharp, cruel tines of gossip titter, laughter rippling out over a dinner party). After muffled shouts under presumably the crash of their sterling silver decanter in a now firelit study (the glint of flames flickering and embers crackling at a distance), and under partial cover from behind her door (the light now perversely licking the interior of its frame), now ajar (which had had no less of the present trigger’s immediacy), she had then recollected, with such warm ‘fondness’, her mother then explaining, in fewer words, very clumsily (as she nearly fell for a deluge of pearls fanning out in every direction over marble in the hallway). She had at that moment, past and present, ceased breathing (even hoping for however brief a moment), as each moment force fed her the whole scene in slow motion accident, first forward and then backward (each eye forced open, fully, from the base of each lid, the whole of her body had been held captive there, with her now watering eyes). She had briefly prayed that her parents would neither carry it with them into her room as they had done previously in which she had then been entertaining five, hopefully, sleeping guests, nor even in the hallway whereby they would, indeed, no less hear the whole of their verbal sparring, which had already occurred too frequently to recall then with a definitive count of occurrences (which she had counted among so many other uncomfortable moments).

An upcoming AP History exam had necessitated the extended stay of a few of her exactly keener, more discerning classmates, for an evening study session, at least one of whom had proven exceedingly wicked, often exhibiting her liberally wagging a no less cruel tongue. She had then further recollected their World War II study materials, which she then remembered had not only first ended with the suicide of Hitler, who had murdered approximately 6,000,000 people at his death, deep under Berlin in April of 1945 (the death of a coward), but also that Japan had executed the Instrument of Surrender in eighteen minutes after a first atomic bomb had murdered approximately 120,000 inhabitants of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. She had mused on the six years war, incalculable costs in lives, survivors whose lives had irrevocably changed, and how silly any of the differences fueling a war for six years must have felt after discerning the unequivocal, totalizing inhumanity and devastation, forcing their eyes open, at the annihilation caused by the atom bomb when considering the eighteen minutes that Japan executed its unconditional surrender in accordance with the US, China, Great Britain, USSR, Australia, Canada, France, Netherlands and New Zealand. She had often seen so much of the same senseless violence.

She had not then had enough of the dimly flickering firelight to know that the five of them had slept through the fray (the firelight now moving into her bedroom at an increasing pace, more and more, with the slowly opening door, whereby her mother had, like magic, had seemingly extended the pair of Vivien stiletto silhouettes, now dissembling, playfully, in a dance in the show of shadows on the wall above her head. She had, however then, shocked, angered, and shamed always admired her from safer distances as much for her timeless poise and glamour as for her social grace (she had always alighted any room occasioned in lively banter and boisterous laughter). They had, in her fourteen years of life, never danced in the same room at once.

Despite what would have meant discomfort for any teenage girl, her mother had nonetheless continued, each moment until the curtain call of the final cigarette (without any of the satisfaction) burn, signaling the reel change, which had, or so it had seemed, would never occur. As such, she had remained, frame by frame (calculating each discretely ticking second by every other complimenting tock). At the last frame, her mother had extended [her] index finger, encased in velvet, over each of her two pouty, vermillion lips (from their bottom border over tubercles), but only lingering then above the lips’ bow as if her index finger knew the cost of the sweet nothings of a once smitten girl, hardened, over time, by the matrimonial woes into her present thriftier terse, even boorish, composure, bankrupt of finer words and feelings (who exiting now, had begun shapeshifting into the expected equanimity of form defining their private interactions, as she faintly sang a fainter ‘talk not to me’ tune. After the following week with tufts of flying blond hair, the bruises as blue as she had been, the torrents of shameful tears, and screaming for her expulsion, she had felt the final stroke of any feelings (unless of course marshalled for a win) when she had kicked that old grandfather clocks last tock.

Anger had been her only emotion thereafter. Her present tirade, one of only an astonishing four since her fourteen years old self (two of which he had elicited, viscerally), which, in her not so quiet opinion, the current of which had hardly proven retribution for his reluctant contempt (his own surprise had always read something unintentionally like scorn) for ‘the infant’, but also her undisclosed insecurity at his increasingly feigned interest. He had no explanation for why he had scoffed in her face then. Although he had neither intended to shirk on any single item on a growing list of duties and expectations, defining his days, nor had he detested the idea, he, now in his own prime, had not even considered it for poor timing. Moreover, while smashing china teacup after china teacup, the registry gift of his distant aunty, as the debris of a half saucer or two had spun to a close, she had further relayed how ‘sickened she had felt for knowing that she would now incubate his semen for two more trimesters’ (for which she had already felt the moody fatigue, swelling breasts, and nausea at dawn). He had never seen her in the throes of such a vigorous tirade as she had shown, presently (which had equal only in proportion to the ever-mounting forces of her numerous and unseen negligees). Frankly, she had aroused him (his chinos had grown snug).

He had begun to feel it, again, that creeping, equivocal thirst (that had, once or twice, nearly cost him in public), the taste of which, for the shame of it, he had always at once altogether despised as much as he had welcomed, even relished, the pleasure of it. Their trysts had grown in frequency as the throbbing adrenaline had, throughout him, with the whole of each of them (in the pervasive presence of their anonymity). He had fallen into his present indulgently, self-loathing ether for the thrill of the secrecy in those escapes, alone (in his reckless moments of wild abandon) for the forget me not aroma of some strange breath at his nape, however sordid, under the whirring of florescent bulbs in what had felt like disgrace under the shared and leaking ceiling of some washroom in a commonly avoided area, beyond reach, in obvious want of maintenance, as no less evidenced by the dirt stained on tiled floor under stagnant pooling waters, dank and musty, the aromas of which had fused over the years as much for the year after year of stagnant water as the years of disregard, with so much of its marginalized and desperately polite need (indignities in which he soaked, even after a repeated vigorous, thorough scrub under waters warmer than the stagnant pooling filth). However, there was no doubt about it. Under those flickering florescent bulbs, he had felt most alive. At the whirring cadence of the flickering light (which would in defiance fade into dark for moments of defiance), he too had abandoned the whole of each restriction, untethering himself from the whole of social expectation, rope by rope. Conventions’ ropes had undoubtedly hamstrung him within the all too familiar lines of propriety one silent death after another, resignation after resignation (a rope which had, inch by inch, guided him, day by day, one foot closer to his grave, which would be etched in the epithet who had killed his own integrity in cold blood, repeatedly), for some trifling, yet no less expected, shapeless conformity to a standard for which his eyes had emptied with his skin, now alabaster and cold to the touch). Although he had always felt himself something of the charming coward (who had faced the disgrace of defeat in quiet desperation, daily), how could any one person who had known intimately cast the final stone for the depths of these pains only known to him?

Had he ever had even the faintest choice in the matter whatso ever? He had then recalled the day in his senior year in his [Denominational] Preparatory School the disgraced ridicule under which a classmate had suffered, who had through their privately shared moments proven his best friend (an intimacy unrivaled in closeness to date). He had remembered, with real fondness, moments shared in private, secret hideaways, spent sharing Keats into the evening tracing “shadows with the magic hand of chance.” Further recollecting with even more excruciating pain, how his friend, a classmate, had abruptly stood from his seat, after erupting into tears, leaving his satchel behind, and then bolting for the door to never return. He had desired, with the whole of his body, comforting his friend then. He had then recalled (his guilt growing vivid with the clarity of his recollection), with his own role in it, not only their gentler moments, but also that no sooner than the sideways glances had begun, he, the more socially adept of the two of them (differences for which they had once playfully teased each other), had quashed them completely (even turning the tide in his favor). After which, a few harsher rumors had begun a faint ripple into a tsunami, at first, poisoning their discussions (in which his friend had argued for disclosure believing in them then, whereas he had dismissed even the faintest whiff of the idea) into the so many more, harsher words of his still more other friends (as he reclined in cool detachment without a single intervention at his defense), before they found his classmate, then lifeless in alabaster and cold, blue lips (the empty cold distance in the open eyes of his friend had burrowed their likeness into the indifference of his own). He had felt then as though the earth had begun sinking under him while he was trying with outstretched arms to pull him from those heights. The English teacher had interceded. He stopped eating, crying in private for weeks. Even after he had cried it out as empty as he felt, he could not remove the odor of it from his mind. He must have suspended there for days (alone on cold nights). When he remembered it, he would feel his pulse quicken to a pace at which he felt his heart might stop beating altogether. If he had been there before it had happened, he would say with the strength of her conviction that he, his life had meant so much to him, that they would scream it from a rooftop anywhere. He had only to choose. He then paused gasping for air, with welled tears in his eyes, for air as he imagined his own face in lifeless blue and felt the likeness of those eyes in his minds’ own).

As surely as dusk soon faced the night sky for the sun who had deserted it for setting, he found his senses again, wiping each cheek, pushing the sense of it as far from him as how much time passed. Now returning to the pleasant retreat of their current domestic squabble, he knew that he had had no chance in it tonight. Such wars were rare scenes (the last more than six months before then), indeed. However, he had already seen that, as soon as she had found such words at those heights in tone, he should forfeit in an instant (faint aromas of a contest dying as soon as the intimation of its a rematch). She had stonewalled and starved him for a week at their last big row (reducing her to the scowl of the shrew and him to a weighty guilt each time he found her eyes). Moreover, as they left it, he saw how foolish, if not pathetic, he might seem for trying the comforts of their shared California King. He then sighed, feeling a face flushed with anger start to subside. As he dressed the study pullout, catching the headlines on the newspaper on his desk, he mused that he might need a useful diversion for a few days until the dust settled. He snickered, recursively, seeing her so angry had, at once, angered, but terrified, and excited, even aroused, him. His ambivalence had begun waning itself for the sense that his clothes, especially his trousers, had tightened again. Setting such indulgences aside for his now focused attentions, on dusk. As it dispersed, now dying, in the dark blues of night (opening for the eyes the stories of the stars), he quietly assured himself that he had ended their fight. He had rehidden under his calm, confident, and stoic exterior. He was always in control. With the cocksure smoothness of his mid-thirties, he first released the left strap of his spenders from his shoulder, by tugging at with his right index finger once or twice, which instantly released his right strap, without any guidance, from his right shoulder with ease. After vigorously loosening a herring bone tie, he then began to thumb the buttons on the designer linen shirt loose, one by one, starting from his throat at his Atom Apple. He fumbled on his first few tries for thumbs’ size, but then began to undo each button, thumbing each, one by one, soon revealing his defined chests, tufted by hair (hardly concealing his pinker, more attentive hues) that suspendered linens had concealed. The Wall Street style wing tips had had their laces loosened earlier, so he shot each shoe from each foot, firing first on the right, sounding its bang, and then firing second on the left, echoing its bang. He now loosened his belt buckle, removing it from its loops in a stroke, whereby he had also undone the button on the now snug wool trousers (which had echoed its new freedom as the weight of folding fabric had collapsed to the floor). Standing, erectly, in both gartered, grey socks and a fitted, black bikini, he beamed and then deflated.

Feeling guilty, he first sauntered from his position nearer the door to the desk, on which, among other objects, sat a lead crystal glass decanter filled with a single malt Scotch, which he then poured into a tumbler (neglecting its hints of smoke). He forced the whole of its contents between his lips, eliciting a now warmer core. Moving his hand and the now empty tumbler, then nearer his mouth, to the desk, he set the tumbler on its surface lightly, yet clumsily (nearly knocking it to the floor). As it steadied on its base, he ran his finger over the ink of the newspapers surface. A newspaper read might prove a pleasant diversion that put him to sleep. Moreover, it neither swore, yelled, talked, nor even questioned him (especially for items beyond his control). Releasing his legs from under him, he then plopped in one huff in the high-backed armchair in the furthest corner (which had, in the extra burst of air, removed the curly, dark, and errant hairs from his kind eyes). Musing as to why he had even argued at all for a moment (there would be no more excitement this evening), he began reading:

A US Medical Journal examined a cluster of forty patients with Kaposi Sarcoma and other opportunistic illnesses, tracing sex partners. A flight attendant, Patient O, has had sexual partners, numbering in the hundreds, annually. He had sex with eight of the men in our study. He has proven the first patient evincing HIV/AIDS symptoms. Patient Zero was promiscuous. He has knowingly started the AIDS pandemic in the US.