Behold The Wages Of Sin

"Hey Pete, is that you man?"

"Hey T"

"What you doin' down here?"

"Gettin' stoned" he says as he passes the paper bag my way. "You want a hit?"

"What's in the bag?"

"Fifth of Beam. Good stuff, man. Go on, take a swig."

"Naw, no thanks."

"Ok, suit yourself. You don't want to party with me it's no sweat off my ass."

"Why you down here drinking Beam like some wino anyways?"

"Shit. Nothing else to do."

"You break up with Rosalie chick or something?"

"Aw man" he laughed, "where you been? You mean Roberta? Man, I ain't seen her since I moved to Sacramento."

"You moved to Sacramento?"

"Yeah. Don't you remember?"

"Naw. I ain't seen you in a long time. I ain't seen you since you got your house broken into. Damn, that's like ten years ago or something."

"Yeah, I remember that. Son of a bitch, that was a nice stereo too and they fuckin' ripped me off. Mother fuckers!" He paused a second or two and then continued. "So now what? Now you're all straightlaced and shit and don't party no more?"

I didn't answer. "What were you doin' in Sacramento?"

"Working."

"Oh yeah, doin' what?"

"Aw, you know. This and that. Bullshit mostly."

"So you still working up there?"

"Naw, I got fired. They busted me for smoking."

"Busted you for smoking? Smoking what?"

"Cigarettes, man. They fired me for smoking cigarettes."

"Smoking cigarettes? You gotta be shittin' me. Were you smoking in the bathroom or something?"

"Naw, I wasn't even smoking at work. Not in the building or outside or anything."

"And they fired you? What for?"

"The boss was a real asshole, man. He said that their health insurance costs were going up and so he made this rule that you had to be a non-smoker in order to work there and then he made everyone take breathalyzer tests and shit so he could check and make sure no one was sneaking a cigarette in their off hours. You know, shit like that. One day he told me I was gonna have to blow into this machine and so I told him 'Why don't you come over here and blow on this'. That's when they fired me."

"That's bullshit. They can't fire you for smoking cigarettes on your own time."

"Oh yes they can. We even talked to some legal aid guy about it and he said they can fire you anytime they want and they don't even need a reason. "

"They can fire you for smoking cigarettes in your own living room?"

"Man, everyone's doing it nowdays. Don't you watch the news? It's like you agree to work for someone and they get to control your life."

"Shit."

"Shit."

"So that's why you left Sacramento?"

"Naw, that wasn't it. I got another job up there, and even quit smoking too. You know, I figured a man's gotta eat, don't he, so I threw away my cigarettes and got this job. And I was being real good, too. No smoking, no drinking, nothing. And then one day the boss comes in and tells us that due to rising health care costs the company was going to start monitoring everyone's diet. And then he tells us from now on everyone was going to have to buy all their food from the company grocery store and that anyone caught eating food that wasn't sold at the company store was gonna be fired. And then he told us that we were all gonna have to be weighed everyday when we came in to work and that they would be monitoring everyones waistlines and dress sizes and if they noticed any increases that they were gonna be fired. Then he told us we were all gonna have to start on a company exercise program and that anyone not showing up for their company exercises was gonna be fired. "

"You mean you could only eat food that they approved?"

"Yeah, we had to buy it at their store and they used to come to our houses after work and on the weekends to check the garbage just to make sure that we weren't eating anything we weren't supposed to."

"So what happened?"

"Aw man, I couldn't stomach that shit. Tofu burgers and raw onions and soy milk - you could eat 50 pounds of that crap and still be hungry, you know what I mean? So one day I drove into the parking lot and the security guard spots a half-eaten french fry on the passenger seat and boom - slick as shit I was out the door."

"You ate a french fry in the car? Holy shit, Pete, what were you thinking?"

"I couldn't hack it. It was bad enough I had to quit the cigarettes and booze, but the tofu burgers...that was just totally fucked."

"I didn't know they could do shit like that."

"Neither did I, but they can."

"So that's when you left Sacramento."

"I wanted to, but I needed money, man. What was I gonna do? I decided I better lay off the fries and go out and get another job and so I went out and got one. And I was so gonna make it this time. Man my lungs were clear, my mind was sharp, my belly was empty, and I was walking the treadmill everyday too. And then I met this girl. Guadalupe - Mexican girl, you know, and she was fine. Long black hair and big brown eyes and always smelling like rosewater or something, you know. And real down-to-earth, too. Not like those other chicks I used to hang around with."

"So what happened?"

"Aw, I tell you she was beautiful. And here I was cleaning up my act and eating healthy and all of that, and I'd be taking her out to all these fancy places, you know, expensive restaurants and shows and things like that. Shit, I bet you can't picture a slob like me eating breadsticks in some fancy restaurant, but there we were, and I was in love, man. I mean I was really in love with that girl. Even went down to Modesto to meet her parents."

"And..."

"So one day I popped the question. Right there in the middle of this restaurant I asked her to marry me and guess what? She says 'Yes', just like that. Didn't even want to think it over or nothing. And so she started making all these plans and shit and I told all the people at work and I felt like after all the fucking up I'd done in my life I finally managed to get something right. And then..."

"Yeah?"

"One day the boss calls me into his office and tells me that before the company can allow me to get married, Guadalupe and I have got to go down and get our DNA tested. He says that due to rising health costs the company needs to be sure that we are biologically compatible and won't be pressuring their bottom line by bringing any babies with chronic health problems into the world. I told him that I didn't think that was any of the company's business and he said either I could go get the test or I could start looking for another job, so I agreed that we'd take the test."

"What happened?"

"The test came back and it said that I had some kind of gene that wasn't a good match for one of Guadalupe's genes and that there was a 1 in 350,000 chance that our children could develop some kind of disease because of it. The boss told me he was sorry but if I chose to marry Guadalupe then he would have to terminate me right then or there. It was my choice, it was either marry her or keep my job, but I couldn't do both. So I told him to go fuck himself. There were other jobs, but there was only one Guadalupe, and I told him that and then I walked right out the door."

"Right on, Pete. What a fucking asshole."

"Only when I went back to my place to tell Guadalupe what happened, she was gone. She left me a note and told me she loved me and she was sorry to leave me like that, but she couldn't marry me. She told me the company had called and explained what had happened and she couldn't take the chance of having a freak baby. That's what my boss had told her - that we would have a freak baby, and now that the results of our DNA tests were known neither one of us would ever be able to get a job again. Not if we got married anyways."

"He told her that?"

"I never found out what happened to Guadalupe. It was like she just disappeared of the face of the earth. I'll admit I was bitter for a while, but then...well, you can't survive on bitterness. I had to go find another job."

"Damn, Pete. This is like some kind of nightmare or something."

"The next job was just the same old shit. You know, due to rising health costs blah, blah, blah. But you know, even with everything that happened I still did alright for a while. I was getting lonely though. Ever since Guadalupe left I didn't have no woman or nothing, and, well, you know how it gets. A man gets lonely for the company of a woman. You know what they say, a woman may give a man many pains, but celibacy gives him no pleasures."

"Hey, that's pretty good. Did you come up with that?"

"No, I read in a book somewhere. Anyway, so one night I picked up this girl downtown and took her back to my place. It wasn't nothing. I was only looking for a little companionship and I never thought that there might be any problem. But then, you guessed it, the next day I go into work and the boss calls me into his office and asks me if I'd had any sexual relations lately. I told him yeah, though I didn't see how it was any of his business one way or the other. Then he reminds me that due to rising health costs the company had a policy about employees engaging in sexual relations outside of sanctity of marriage, and then he tells me he'll need to know the names of all my sexual partners. I ask him why and he says that the company will need to run sexual histories on all my partners to be sure that I hadn't taken any undue health risks. Naturally, I told him what he could do with his company health policy and that was that."

"Shit, why didn't the company just tie a camera to your dick and keep you under 24 hour surveillance."

"Don't be giving 'em any ideas, partner. So that was that job. My last job was the real kicker though. This time I really played it straight. No smokes, no booze, no burgers, no broads, nothing. I came into work each day and I didn't do nothing I wasn't supposed to do except kiss their asses just like any good 'ol American company man would. I thought there wasn't nothing that was gonna get me fired from this job this time."

"Uh-oh, what happened?"

"I finally got a little money together and so one day I decided to go down to the record store and buy a new CD. I looked around a while and bought this new one by a group I heard on the radio and I took it home to play on my stereo."

"So?"

"So, before I played it I decided I'd put it into my computer first to make a backup, you know, so in case anything happened I'd still have another copy I could use."

"Yeah. So what?"

"So I made the backup and then I played the CD and didn't think anything of it until I went into work the next day. I get into work and the boss calls me into his office and tells me that he just got a call from Sony BMG saying that a rootkit that they had installed on my computer reported back to them that I had made an illegal copy of one of their CD's. I said 'What?' and he said that Sony had installed a program on my computer that lets them know what I'm doing with my computer, and that last night their logs showed that I had made an illegal copy of one of their CD's. I said you must be shittin' me and the boss says no. Then he tells me that the company cannot condone this kind of unethical behavior and..."

"They fired you?"

"Yeah, and I was being so good. Shit. I tell you, you just can't win with these people. That's when I left Sacramento and came back down here."

"You mean you got busted by your computer?"

"Man, they got all the bases covered. Face it, T, they own us. Those big corporations out there, they own you, me, the government...everything."

"They don't own me. Not as long as I've got my blog and ten fingers to type with."

"Sheeeet...your blog. Man, what do you think would happen if your company ever read your blog."

"No one reads my blog, and I aim to keep it that way."

"Yeah, but just supposin'"

"Fuck it. I don't care. It's a free country ain't it."

"Like hell it is" he said, and then grew dark and silent.

"So what are you doing now?" I asked.

"What does it look like I'm doing? You want a hit?"

"Naw, man. I don't drink."

"Oh, you don't drink, like that's gonna save you. Believe me man, there's something you're doing that someone don't like and if they catch you at it your ass is grass."

"We're all just pawns on someone else's chessboard. Is that what you think?" Pete didn't answer. "So what you gonna do now, now that you got this all figured out I mean."

"Finish this bottle, have a cigarette, and go get a little poke from one of them whores over at JJ's. I still got some money in my pocket."

"Fuckin' eh, Pete, they really ran you through the ringer, man."

"It's a new world, T. No more vices and no more sins. We're all gonna have pink lungs and healthy livers and we're gonna lead good clean lives and live to be a hundred and ten."

"Bullshit!"

"See ya' T. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"See ya' Pete. There but for the grace of God..."






"