Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

Gene smiled. “I wish I could throw up on an art book right now,” he said. He conceded he ought to discuss his salary with Stick. In fact, I wasn’t especially concerned about his work relationships. Stick had trusted Gene to be Black Dragon’s project director and Gene seemed to have little trouble with the men under him. Perhaps his experiences as an unfairly treated employee taught him to manage subordinates well. More likely, the comfort of having authority allowed him to assert himself, and his gentle nature inspired others to be independent and creative. Gene often praised the kid hackers under him, commenting that they had all the ideas, he merely got out of their way and occasionally checked their homework. “I’m like a kindergarten teacher with a classful of geniuses. I just make sure they don’t eat the crayons.” His desire to wait until Stick admitted the importance of Black Dragon — as he had at the barbecue — before asking for a raise seemed to me to make good sense. That he didn’t seize his first opportunity was no crime.

The regular visits to “Tawny” were another matter. They worried me. Not out of prudery. Gene’s marriage needed more intimacy, especially romantic intimacy, not less. And his fear of acting manly was hardly improved by choosing what is, in effect, an infantile sexual relationship. Gene’s description of the visits to “Tawny” could be seen as regression: the male is stripped, excited, soothed, and sometimes bathed by an au pair, supplying attention in place of the preoccupied mother. Gene obviously thought he had solved his problem with Cathy. She didn’t want sex so he would get it for a fee elsewhere. He continued to see passion as one-sided (that Cathy might want sex was never considered) and satisfaction as unemotional — it didn’t matter that “Tawny” couldn’t care less about Gene, just getting her one hundred and twenty-five dollars.

[I could have corrupted Gene’s enjoyment of “Tawny” by informing him that clinical studies of prostitutes reveal the overwhelming majority were molested as children, usually by a male relative, and that their true sexual orientation is lesbian or at least their sensual side is so blocked by rage and self-hatred they don’t enjoy physical passion. He probably wouldn’t have believed me — I’m sure “Tawny’s” performance of liking Gene was excellent. And such a revelation would have been a sneaky attack on Gene. I was more interested in revealing his behavior than destroying the illusion of hers.]

Gene did ask Copley for his raise that very afternoon. I heard the story three days later. To Gene’s surprise, Stick agreed without an argument that he deserved a salary of one hundred thousand. There was no anger, no mockery, no emotional rejection at all. “You’re the best man I’ve got,” Stick said. Days later, Gene still flushed with pleasure as he repeated the compliments. “I just don’t have it in the budget,” Stick went on. “I’d have to tell them about our secret plans to explain why you deserve it. They think you’ve got a year to bring Dragon in. But in six months, after it’s done, I’m going to propose you become project coordinator for the entire company and then we’re talking a lot more than 100K. Maybe even a quarter million plus stock options.” Stick went on to elaborate his vision of their future: once Dragon was a hit, he would become CEO, Gene the VP of R&D, and together they would expand the company’s product line.

“That’s gonna mean getting more people, more bright people,” Gene said.

“That’s why I need you, Gene. Nobody is better at picking talent and getting it to work than you. Those kids out there would throw themselves on a burning circuit for you.” Repeating Copley’s praise, Gene was thrilled all over again. He let the flattering words reverberate and then caught my eye. “He actually said that,” he added.

“I’m sure,” I said. “And I’m sure it’s true.” I waited.

Gene took a long satisfied breath, smiled at me, and seemed to have nothing further to say.

“So you didn’t get the raise?” I finally had to ask.

“He can’t now. You see that, don’t you? I mean, you understand?”

“I understand what he said.”

“Oh!” Gene sat up, reminded. “And he also promised a big bonus, a real bonus, if Dragon makes it. He said something about my getting a piece of its net profit.” Gene shook his head at the thought, awed by the size of this promise. “I mean,” he mumbled, “that would be millions.”

“What did Cathy say?”

“I didn’t tell Cathy. I told Tawny,” Gene laughed at himself. “Probably shouldn’t have. She might raise her rates. Got me a bonus, though. She did—” he stopped himself, glancing at me self-consciously, and continued in a louder tone as if to drown out the previous phrase. “Anyway, when I got home, I told Cathy we had to have sex more often. And she said I was right! I couldn’t believe it. She actually apologized—”

“Wait a minute. Slow down.” Gene adopted his typical pose of the attentive schoolboy: hands in lap, eyes downcast, waiting patiently for the lecture. I almost laughed. His reaction, I must admit, made sense. I had sounded like a scold. I hesitated before continuing. What should I do? The slow way would help him only after the events were long past. Hadn’t I decided to experiment, to abandon established method? Wasn’t this direct approach my Prozac, my magic pill of self-confidence and clarity? “First, even though it’s just a detail and you didn’t mean to tell me — what did Tawny do after you told her you might become a millionaire?”

Gene nodded, a mute concession that he had tried to cover up. “Okay,” he sighed, his lips pursing before he elaborated further. When he did, he gave the words as much dignity and solemnity as possible. “This time she didn’t use a condom when she gave me …” he gestured to his groin and then shrugged.

I was amused. Copley intoxicated Gene with fables of the future and escaped without spending a nickel. Gene repeated them to a prostitute and got better, if possibly more dangerous, service. Gene, emboldened by his new phallic stature (although at least one was a phantom), demanded that his wife pay more attention to his needs and she agreed. It was as if I were viewing some sort of ego-feeding chain. I had to hand it to Stick — he was a great salesman.

“What did Cathy say when you — well, what did you say to her exactly?”

“After Pete was in bed I brought her a cup of coffee in the living room and said I had to talk to her. No whining. I just said, very calmly, that I was unhappy she didn’t ever want to make love to me, that she only did it when I asked her to, and then only after I asked a lot. I told her I wanted that to change or I would have to assume she doesn’t want to be married to me.”

“Did you tell her about asking for the raise?”

“No, I didn’t want to confuse things.”

“How about the next day or the day after that? This was three days ago, right?”

“Well, after I made my speech, I left the room. We didn’t talk in the morning and when I came home Pete was there. After I put him in bed, I went right to my desk and worked. Cathy came in eventually, and she was crying. Or she had been. She apologized, said she knew she was being mean to me. She said when she heard Stick talking at the barbecue to the others about how hard I had worked on Flash II, how I had saved their ass on the debugging with the whole future of the company on the line if I didn’t get it done right, she realized how much pressure I had been under and she felt bad. She said that she knew there was something wrong with her, that she was too tired all the time and she was going to change. So then we made love …”