Lords of the Lash

by Frank Kale

  Chapter Three

   

  Somerville, MA: Dunbar and Associates had virtually no overhead because they used a coffee shop as their office and needed no supplies to conduct business.  Their biggest ongoing expenses were the maintenance of a sleek website and modest Google advertising.  However, using a coffee shop as an office presented unique challenges, such as the temptation to eavesdrop, and Zachary tried to ignore a conversation from the next table and focus on his work -- designing corporate personality assessments -- or rather to focus on strategies for drumming up work, as he currently had none and badly needed the money. 

  Samantha and Omar had yet to arrive.  They were always late.  For one thing they still took too long deciding what to order.  How was this possible? Zachary had memorized the colorful chalk-drawn menu months ago.  Craning his neck past the side of the booth, Zachary checked to see if they were in line.  He did not see them.  He sighed.  Normally, he would have kept himself busy while waiting by grading papers, or planning a lesson, but that was obviously no longer a possibility. 

  A painting hanging to his right side and selling for five hundred dollars offered a brief diversion.  A man with a cheetah face and wearing underwear jumped over a skyscraper, while a cartoon bubble from his mouth exclaimed, “I am the evolution of man.”  Zachary wasn’t sure if it was intended to be deep or ridiculous, or if anyone would ever plop down five hundred dollars to claim the oddity.  In his current situation that would be akin to financial suicide.  As he began to consider the next painting, Samantha sat down in the booth across from him, apologized for being late, and informed him that Omar would not be making the meeting due to prior obligations. 

  How is that possible?  We are the prior obligation.

  Samantha looked stunning in a white blouse and pink skirt, and there was no reason to complain about being left alone with her.  Yet as he considered her peculiar brand of beauty for the millionth time, beauty highlighted by a long nose that when smiling transformed her into what Zachary considered a huntress, he could see from the heaviness of her features that something was not quite right.  Suspecting that she was unhappy about his interview with Jasmine and the way it had ended with an offer for a date, he rejected the thought of explaining himself to her; she was married after all.

  Samantha also said nothing about the interview, turning to business matters, “We have had no offers for a while…”  For few minutes they spoke of the continued implications of Zachary’s resignation on their business prospects.  However, they came to the same conclusion that they had previously reached: in the end their work spoke for itself and business would rebound.

  “Has the resignation sunk in or are you still in a state of shock?” Samantha asked politely, too politely Zachary thought.  

  She doesn’t really care; she wants to talk to me about something else…      

  Nevertheless he answered her question, noting that “of course people never know they are in a state of shock until the shock has subsided…”

  As Samantha agreed with him, and spoke of the theoretical implication of shock and grief, Zachary absent-mindedly glanced at the table booth behind Samantha.  They were a man and woman, both in their late to early twenties, Zachary guessed, one white and one black. 

  Were they dating or just friends? 

  As Zachary wondered about their relationship status he also wondered about his chances for happiness with Jasmine, they as a bi-racial couple, and she mixed-race herself.  He knew it shouldn’t matter.  That he should be colorblind, so to speak.  But he also knew he wasn’t.  Yet he was putting the cart way before the horse.  He hadn’t even yet called the number that she had scrawled on a scrap of paper, possibly savoring the mere-possibility of a contented relationship…

  “I think we should try our best to rush publication of the article.  I know it usually takes a while, but we both have editor friends.  Perhaps we could explain our current situation, and that we are hoping this article will cause various institutions to take interest in our company.”

  For months Samantha, Zachary, and Omar had been hard at work on a questionnaire research study concerning effective job interviewing practices.  The crux of the paper concerned the major disconnect between a successful interviewee and a successful employee.  All too often prospects who interviewed strongly and showed an interesting personality were the same people who transitioned into the company as lackluster employees.  The article suggested alternative interviewing strategies meant to tease out a more reliable screening of a prospect’s durable personality, not the disposable personality put on display for the sake of an interview. 

  The research idea had been Zachary’s and yet it was the type of idea that quite literally put him to sleep, as every time he thought of working on the article he became sleepy and considered a power nap.  Suffice to say, business psychology was not Zachary’s motivational sphere, but an outside consultant had suggested that Dunbar and Associates write a series of business psychology research articles in order to gain publicity, and Zachary had agreed to give it a shot.

  “That is something that I have been meaning to talk to you about Samantha,” said Zachary, looking down at his tea cup.  “I want to bow out of the article.  I think that publication will be easier if I am not involved.”

  “The whole article was your idea, it was your creative spark, and you have written most of it.  It would be completely unethical to publish without your name, and realistically your name should come first on the article,” said Samantha.

  “Thank you for supporting me and wishing to include me, but let’s be serious here.  It is one thing to say that our business will rebound.  Corporations may not care as much about some research that went haywire.  But at this point in time, fair or unfair, my label is something of a disgraced researcher –.”

  “No, Zachary--.”

  “Let me finish, and it does not bear the semblance of reality to imply that publishers will be bending over backwards to publish my work, at this point in time, and you said yourself that for the sake of our business, we need to try our utmost to rush publication, no small feat and more like a near impossibility in the peer-reviewed research world, you know that Samantha.  The only logical course is to move forward with publication without--.”

  “You don’t have to castigate me,” said Samantha, drawing a breath of air through her nose, her mouth closed in a frown.

  “I’m not.  I am merely pointing out that we need business and this is the best course of action.  What does Omar think?” asked Zachary, trying to shift the subject from her obvious discontent because he knew from experience that focusing on the discontent was like poking a bee’s nest with a stick.

  “Let me call him in my mental brain cell phone here,” said Samantha, pointing her index finger to her temple.  “Why would I have talked to him about it?  This is the first that I have heard of it.  Do you think this was an expected course of events?  That out of the blue you were just going to pull out and go your merry way?”

  “I don’t see the cause for your alarm,” said Zachary.

  Samantha said nothing and sipped her coffee.  Suddenly Zachary wished that Omar were at the table, believing his presence would diffuse the tension.

  “Why couldn’t Omar make it?” Zachary asked nonchalantly.

  “Fuck you.”

  “What?” asked Zachary, pressing his back against the booth, his pulse quick.

  “You know.  Jasmine Jackson and I don’t care.  But can we remove the elephant in the room?  You are free to see whoever you want, whenever you want, but can we remove the elephant?  You don’t even say anything to me about it? What you thought I didn’t know?” said Samantha.

  “We have been here for like two seconds, and besides, this is ridiculous.  You are married.  Is that why Omar isn’t here?” Zachary asked, lowering his voice, and glancing around to determine if any acquaintances were in the vicinity.  He had expected her to be annoyed wit
h the on-air date request, but he had not expected this level of belligerence. 

  What is it about Jasmine Jackson that has her so ruffled?

  “I’m about two seconds away from leaving,” said Samantha.

  “Calm down.  What is going on here?” asked Zachary.

  “You know I am an expert on the correlation between the human voice and perceptions of beauty – that I wrote a 60 page thesis paper on the subject as an undergraduate,” said Samantha.

  “I remember, very convincing work. Professor House said you were a prodigy in acoustic perception theory,” said Zachary, suddenly realizing where this was all heading.

  “So what does she look like?  Because from my calculations there is an 80% chance she is a perfect 10,” said Samantha.

  “Your work was very thorough, and I never did quite understand how you could predict beauty so accurately from a person’s voice,” said Zachary, resignedly.

  “So you are saying…”

  “Yes, she is quite beautiful.  I don’t understand the sudden jealousy.  You are married and this is nothing that we haven’t been through before,” said Zachary, again lowering his voice.

  “I’m not jealous of Jasmine.  That being said I want to fuck you.  Excuse me.  I used that term because it is visceral.  But that term more than anything right now describes my current reality so the use of it as a descriptor is quite accurate…Right now I want to--.”

  “Ok, Ok, Jesus this isn’t exactly private here,” said Zachary.

  They took separate cars to their usual hotel.  The sex was exceptional: sweaty, heavy, and purely selfish sex that worked out, in the end, for both of them.  It had been two months.  That she could proceed to sleep like an angel had always perplexed him.  Zachary’s mind churned with the implications of adultery each time they committed the act.  Although Zachary knew it was racist, he sometimes wondered if Omar would shoot him gangster style with his arm cocked sideways and a handkerchief around his head were he to discover the affair. 

  That’s what black people do: they have guns and they use them…

  It was a ridiculous thought he knew; Omar was a highly-cultured and educated black man and Zachary had no knowledge that he owned a gun, but still the fear remained, like a reflex.  Even more troubling, he considered Omar a friend, and Omar had been very supportive with Zachary’s difficulties with his Trait Theory research.  Never before had Zachary cheated on his own girlfriend, or with a friend’s girlfriend, never mind a friend’s wife: the whole affair was completely out of character. 

  It had been Samantha’s intellectual theorizing that had conned him into it, he sometimes told himself, though only half-believed.  The real reason, he knew, was that from the moment they had met he’d been in love, and he’d since decided to accept her love on whatever terms she offered.  That those terms included adultery and betrayal of a friend was an unfortunate reality that caused insomnia when he got around to thinking about it.  Although just as easily his mind would wander back to her virtues and how lucky he felt to be included in her life, even if his inclusion was arguably sleazy. 

  From the moment they’d met he believed that he had a good read on her, and he implemented a strategy aimed to obtain her fancy, a strategy based on his observation that she seemed to be taken with conflict rather than calm, and so when he learned in one undergraduate class that she was a huge Red Sox fan, he, even though a Sox fan himself, wore a Yankees cap to the next class and sat by her side.  Argument was immediate and the relationship began in that rather ridiculous fashion.  After he later admitted that he was a Sox fan too and that he’d worn the hat to gain her attention, it cemented her opinion of him as an interesting persona, and they became even more entrenched, the main difficulty now being that there were many interesting personas for Samantha at that point in time and he was but one. 

  That she slept around gave him headaches, but the pain she caused was mitigated by the thought that life would be that much more boring and less vibrant without her – so he lowered his standards for what a relationship should be, partly influenced by her incessant love theorizing, and tried his best to be happy.  But as an undergraduate and one of her close “friends” he never would have guessed at their future adultery, though when he thought about it now it didn’t seem surprising.                

  Displacement Theory, Samantha’s newest theory, had been the impetus for their latest round of love-making.  The theory hypothesized that in a monogamous relationship people never consciously choose as lovers the person they most want to love.  Instead they substitute the person who they most desire with another, a runner-up of sorts.  Two years ago she had a dinner with Zachary and explained the theory and presented him with her preliminary data. 

  After analyzing the data, Zachary exclaimed, “This is remarkable!  What is especially remarkable about your study is that some people consciously knew they picked a substitute while some did not.  But in all cases your research has indicated that substitutes, whether consciously or unconsciously chosen, were chosen.”

  “People rarely love who it is that we really want to love.  We are a tragic species.  I think it is biology tricking us into mating with who it believes will produce the most productive off-spring.  But the individual is lost in the biological shuffle,” said Samantha, her eyes glowing with the victory of accomplishment.

  “It would also seem to explain celebrity worship,” said Zachary.

  “Celebrities make great ideal mates.  When women say what I wouldn’t give for one night with Brad Pitt, they aren’t kidding – they really think their life would be perfect were that the case,” said Samantha.

  “But if they got with Brad Pitt --.”

  “They would dream of George Clooney,” said Samantha.

  “Unbelievable Samantha this is a major breakthrough,” said Zachary.

  “Zachary I have to be straight-forward.  This is also a breakthrough on a personal level,” said Samantha.

  “Oh, how is that?” Zachary asked. 

  At that point it had been three years since Zachary and Samantha had had an intimate relationship, the reason being that Samantha had been married for three years.  But as she proceeded to explain to Zachary that Omar was the substitute and he was the desired partner he felt his civilized morals toward infidelity eroding.  However from his understanding of her research he pointed out that “You really don’t want me either, because if you had me you would just want someone else.”

  “Exactly, don’t you see?  Yes, I am with Omar.  But I also know that I want you most of all.  But I also know that if I had you then I would want someone else.  So the only way to have you and to really keep you as the most special person in my life is to stay with Omar.  If I were ever to leave Omar for you, then I would either replace you with someone else, or I would want to.  In either case we would not be as happy as if I stay with Omar.  You are the one for me Zachary, and you have always been the one for me.  I love you.  I love you so much,” she said, intellectualized tears running down her cheeks. 

  It had been a beautiful moment for Zachary, as he instantly grasped her twisted logic, though almost as instantly he was suspicious that displacement theory had been some harebrained deception she had concocted to seduce him, and even to this day he wasn’t sure.  But it had worked and that night they had begun sleeping together again. 

   

  Displacement theory may have allayed Samantha’s guilt and allowed her to sleep peacefully after rowdy sex, but for Zachary the whole affair still seemed sleazy and wrong, and so while she snoozed like an angel, he paced and pondered.

  For one thing he felt that it was important to continue his professional studies with Trait Theory.  Although Trait Theory had gotten him into this whole mess, he also believed it could improve the world.  However, he had no funding to conduct research.  Then again he also had to focus on Dunbar and Associates now that he was no longer a professor.  He had bought a three thousand square
foot home in Arlington for approximately half-a-million in 2007, and he would not be able to make his mortgage payments unless business at Dunbar and Associates increased substantially.  He did have some savings, but without an increase in income, the bank account would quickly be emptied. 

  The hotel room felt cramped.  After booting up his laptop, he attempted to clear his mind by surfing around the internet and eventually landed on Jasmine’s blog.  Her latest blog was titled: Trait Theory – Modern Day Eugenics?  He swallowed hard.  The interview had been a breeze – but had she decided to filet him on her blog? 

   

                                                                                                                                                             

   

   

  Children of the blogosphere, for those of you who have had your head in the sand, or have better things to do than follow the news, Zachary Dunbar recently resigned from his professorship due to a botched research study in which one of the participants murdered his girlfriend. 

   

  For the record, the murder took place weeks after the study, and Zachary was exonerated of all wrong-doing.  

   

  But Zachary, being the good guy he is (or the University deciding to make it look like he is a good guy) accepted his resignation without a fuss. 

   

  So what was all this about? 

   

  Well, you can guess right away what it wasn’t about. 

   

  Yes, the murder did not happen to a black girl because if it had there would have been no outrage. 

   

  The outrage occurred because a white girl died. 

   

  So what happened? 

   

  To quote Zachary Dunbar, “We were studying a jealousy trait.  We don’t think anything we did caused Mr. Capobianco to become more jealous.” 

   

  Studying a jealousy trait?  What exactly is a jealousy trait? 

   

  Again to quote Mr. Dunbar, “A jealousy trait is a trait that causes a person to become excessively jealous.” 

   

  Okay, so that sounds simple enough. 

   

  But if there can be a trait for jealousy, what else can there be a trait for? 

   

  Zachary explains, “Pretty much everything…”

   

  His explanation goes into some heavy science and statistical analysis, but his basic premise is that human behavior can be explained by traits which are both (1) not inherited and (2) inherited.  His research has garnered national attention and important people (policy makers) are playing close attention to Trait Theory. 

   

  Here is my problem with it.  It smacks of eugenics packaged in a different form. 

   

  And can anyone remember what eugenics was used for? 

   

  Yes, you in the back of the room…yes, it was used as an excuse for policy makers to implement racist policies – it was embraced by the Nazis even! 

   

  Eugenics, the idea that heredity decides what our traits will be, has already been shown to be scientifically unsound.  Eugenics would say that a violent black child in the ghetto is not violent because he is a product of that ghetto environment, but rather because he has some defective genes inherited from his parents! 

   

  And as recently as the 90’s white researchers have looked for a violence gene in children and used mostly black children from poor neighborhoods as their research subjects. 

   

  Okay, sure, so Trait Theory throws in some nuances that eugenics didn’t have, for instance the trait has to be created in a time of high stress, but like I said Trait Theory is eugenics in different packaging. 

   

  Watch out, because if they start making policy based on Trait Theory it will be those poor and vulnerable folk who, like always, have the most to lose – regardless of What Bob Dylan said – because when you have nothing you do have something to lose… 

   

   

                                                                                                                                                             

   

   

  Was this because she sent me some text I didn’t reply to? 

  He checked his phone: nothing.  Sighing, Zachary scanned the comments after the blog.  There were 57 in total and a brief sampling convinced Zachary that they were not the friendly sort.  One response read, “Zachary Dunbar = Dr. Mengele.” 

  Although he felt his mental energy to be lagging, he knew had to respond.  Therefore, he created a profile and logged into the site, creating his user name as Zachary Dunbar, writing:

   

  “This is Zachary Dunbar.  Jasmine you should have asked me about the eugenics comparison during the interview.  I would have been glad to talk about it.  This question is something that I often discuss with my colleagues.  I will admit that at first glance that Trait Theory does bear a striking resemblance to eugenics.  And I agree with you that eugenics is based on unsound science and has been completely discredited.  What you are missing is that eugenics is all about heredity.  A mother or father passes a trait onto their child.  In this way if a parent makes a mistake a child could be stigmatized for life.  And yes, eugenics can be used to implement racist policies.  However, Trait Theory is not based on heredity.  Yes, a parent passes on the trait – but not all traits, only traits caused by high stress situations – and what causes the high stress?  The environment…so Trait Theory, to use your example, would say that if a child born in the ghetto had inherited traits from their parents they would have inherited those traits, not because of a defective heredity, but because of a defective environment…Trait Theory would place the blame primarily on the ghetto and not the child or parents.  I hope this clears things up – but if not, that just gives us one more reason to meet for coffee…”