Cameron H. Chambers

Technologic Advances in the “Baby Boom” and “X” and “Y” Generations and Introducing "GenZyme"

It is somewhat widely accepted that the youngest of the Baby Boomers was born in 1966. This puts me among the youngest of the Boomers as I was born in the early 60s. The oldest Boomers are considered to have been born immediately following World War II, so a considerable block of them are now in their sixties. This in turn makes the youngest, not the oldest, of the subsequent generation, generation X, known also as Gen X, born in 1986 or thereabouts; however, some would say the youngest of Gen X was born as early as 1980. The oldest Gen Xers were born somewhere around 1966 after the Boomers. These individuals, Gen Xers born in the late 60s, at present would be in their early to mid-forties. Many of the oldest of Gen Y, also born some time just after 1986 or so, who are sometimes referred to as Gen Why or the MTV Generation, attend our institutions of higher learning now, and many of the younger members of this generation currently fall into the categories that comprise our tweens and teenagers.

This means ZGen or GenZyme has begun to make its way into the world in the last year or so. Of course, these dates are somewhat relative and are actually non-specific, as a generation is not an exact number of years. Many of my friends are Gen X and an expected addition to a friend’s family, the mother being a Gen Y, should eventually—her child—be one of the older members of GenZyme. It is not unusual to have four generations in the same family on the planet at the same time, and sometimes a fifth, which would represent a span of one hundred years or so, maybe more, maybe less, depending on years of birth.

Technology is a very interesting study and can as much define its generation as its wars, assassinations, music, haircuts, dress, movies, cars and television programs. I don’t remember the Golden Era of Hollywood firsthand; I believe it took place in the 1950s, so I was not yet alive, but I more or less remember the 60s and thereafter. I was present for much of the Cold War, which began in the 50s, and I was around when the Berlin Wall came down. And I have lived to witness the Cold War heat up all over again. Every generation has its moments, and these moments in time are often shared across the lines of various generations.

I have seen a number of advancements in automobiles, airplanes, and boats to name just a few handy items, before the onset of the Ys in the mid 1980s and the advent of very labor intensive computers and subsequently the popularity of the Internet, and I clearly remember a day when getting somewhere by means of one of these conveyances was not a huge pain in the derriere like it is today. Transport may, however, face another revolution during my lifetime. This uprising I would say is likely, but it may not be what you expect.

I have heard various bits of information, but as yet have not looked seriously into the matter, that some clever inventor has developed a working prototype of a teleportation device. I understand right now it can be used only for inanimate objects. I think there was a successful trial involving an orange. This innovation could, hopefully at least, transform shipping as we now know it. Imagine actually having your bags waiting for you at the hotel by the time you get there, and not carelessly winging their way to parts unknown, as happens about fifty percent of the time at present. Or imagine having no need to lug heavy, cumbersome belongings through airport after airport. But then this working prototype of a teleportation device may well be a hoax. But if it is, it is probable it won’t remain a hoax forever.

Given the premise that technology tends to advance at an exponential rate, not a linear one, then what I see ahead for the remainder of my life could be truly amazing or things could just turn into a much worse pile. But that is always the possibility. C’est la vie. Gen Yers are the truly mobile members of our heretofore brief crawl across the global landscape as a species. They have diverse communication devices and cell phones with every type of convenience: Internet, email, GPS, music and video downloads for a quick getaway. There are maps and driving routes and everything imaginable for the most highly mobile generation so far.

I find a touch of irony in their flight to mobility. I see this as a trend that will reverse itself. Gen Yers will likely become much less mobile and more sedentary because of the development of virtual reality, which, as a prototype, has stemmed from the minds of baby boomers. Perhaps the preceding generation or two play out little dramas or nasty tricks on the ones to follow and involve the next generation or several subsequent ones completely in their ill-advised activities, often without fair warning. This I would suggest is a similar model to generational selling on some level, or locking in product sales over the various generations to follow. The baby boomers did one thing fantastically: market products and services. The next generations become so inundated by notions of what they think they need or want, that there is little or no sales resistance left to muster.

The virtual world will most likely show significant improvements made by Generation Xers and Yers, and could have much greater impact than its somewhat limited one now, some sources predict by as early as 2011. For those investors out there, you might be advised to buy the stocks of virtual companies; not companies that are virtual, but rather companies that enhance the reality of virtual reality. These goods and services, which will likely become their own industry soon, could catch on huge. So in the near future, there may be much less of a need for most of us to go anywhere in physical space and time, owing to the new frontier of virtual reality products. For those without a proper working definition, Science.org states “virtual reality is an artificial environment created by computers, in which people can immerse themselves and feel that this artificial reality really does exist.”

And every day along come more and more members of GenZyme. Let the generational sales issue forth upon the unsuspecting. If global population trends, which also expand exponentially, and not in a linear fashion, continue, then it is likely that in the day of most GenZymes, it really will be almost impossible for anyone to go anywhere. So, we will all sit at home and virtualize. It could be a recluse’s nightmare or dream, depending on how one looks at it, and I guess what his or her experience is with the virtual product line. Owing to what the population is likely to be, we might have to wait in long lines for trams to convey us down the grocery aisles of huge warehouses where we are completely unable to find what we are looking for. You think Wal-Mart and Sam’s are big right now. Just wait.

In the case of teleportation being perfected, and assuming we can’t send along living creatures by this method for quite some time, if at all, perhaps due to incompatible and complex DNA structures, then shipping your luggage or a jar of pickles may be one of its more practical uses. And that could mean for the GenZyme populous and many of us lingering on the planet that our bags might have much greater frequency of arriving at the proper destination in a timely fashion, than we do. But then it is possible we will never leave home again. It might be time to think about securing credit for that swimming pool you have always wanted, or putting in a hot tub, or perhaps at least, putting up that privacy fence. We would no longer be able to effectively travel in real space, and it would be debatable if we would even feel the need, but our attaché could still chalk up all the frequent flyer miles it wanted. Hmm…objects transported willy-nilly through space to any destination. I wonder what this means for the war on terror.

Virtual reality has me a little confused and raises some puzzling questions. I’m not very familiar with it on a practical basis, only a little bit on a conceptual one. Feeling something is real and it actually being real is kind of a dicey proposition. It is probably best left to semanticists, doctors, scientists and video game makers to define reality nowadays. My first question is: how real is the feeling of something being real going to feel? And will we have an enhanced understanding of reality through virtual reality or will it just seem real but in actuality be more like a really lousy reality show? And how real is real anyway? And how real do we want real to be?

These newest technologies also beg the question: will it be possible for an individual to teleport a real item or real object into virtual reality? Let’s assume I am in a virtual world traversing The Great Wall of China or climbing Mount Everest and I remember that I need something that I didn’t bring along to my latest of programmed realities. It could be a backpack, a sandwich, an oxygen tent, a Sherpa, whatever. I am about to defeat Mount Everest. I don’t want to quit my computer-enhanced conquest. Is it possible that the absent item, whatever it is, could be teleported into my virtual reality, and since it would be a concrete article, (let’s not include Sherpas in this; since they are sentient beings, their DNA is probably incompatible at present) will this gadget or device work properly in a virtual setting? Perhaps I should just get up and get the item myself, say if it happens to be a sandwich or a compass or such.

Will there be such a thing as virtual hunger pains, and if so, could eating a virtual hamburger quench them? Could McDonalds at some point have served ten billion virtual customers? And is virtual reality addictive? Many individuals say video games are, and I have seen what Internet chat can do to a household. Might there be in the future virtual reality interventions? And I have another all imposing question. Will I be able to pause virtual reality, so I can get up and walk around if my foot falls asleep? This prospect of putting reality on hold, might give a virtual world a distinct advantage over “real” reality. But isn’t reality just really reality at any rate? I don’t know. Maybe not.

Notions like these are for much greater minds than mine to consider. I am relatively certain of one statement, however. Cogito ergo sum. It is Latin for “I think, therefore I am.” So by extrapolation, I exist, therefore I am real. By virtue of the fact that I am real, does that mean I exist in virtual reality? Things might not seem real at all in the not so distant future, or reality may be entirely too much with us. As Einstein once said, “reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.” At least, I think Einstein was real. And I think these were really his words and they were real too. Or maybe what we all see and hear is virtual already, a la “The Matrix,” and the timer hasn’t popped off on our programmed adventure. I wonder if there is anyone left that can teleport me out of here. Maybe not. I think I’ll just get up and fix a sandwich instead of worrying about it. Now where is that jar of pickles?

Posted: November 13, 2007 10:59 am EST

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

I did not realize for quite some time that my ex-wife was poisoning me. Nor did I understand that the poison contributed to my psychosis of a lengthy period. However, I only comment on such passing matters. These realities are very thin and elusive, almost transparent. Everything goes right through them. They filter nothing.

Everywhere I looked were angry, menacing faces. Certain individuals were pushing and shoving me, and I was sure I had done nothing wrong. I seemed to be hated, a leper, an outcast, a reject, a pariah. My ex-wife openly laughed in my face. The more she hurt me, the more she laughed. I could see the scorn and mockery on her brow. What had I done that was so terrible? What had become of me? I was lost in that moment of my life. I am honestly one of the strongest people I have ever known. It is not braggadocio. It is a harsh truth that I have had to endure. It unsettles me. I long to be weak. I long to play. I long to laugh hysterically in the car at something silly on the radio. Life is a prison cell, awaiting eventual and sure execution. And there is no escape. So, I say, if there is fun afoot, then have at it. Throw up a whoop. Cry a mirthful tear. Wring every bit of juice out of that peach. I dare to live. I am still alive.

My name is Cast Hughes. This part of my account will read somewhat like a profile on an Internet dating site, but, given the restraints of the form, I promise to keep it interesting. Unlike the thousands of profiles I poured over after I got divorced, mine will be unique. No comments about wanting to go out but also enjoying an evening at home watching a movie. Is Blockbuster still in business? I have not been inside one in years. There will be no statements that I like Harleys, NASCAR, and Pro Wrestling. Or, as so many women wrote, "I can go from jeans to that little black dress in under five minutes." I am forty-four and possess a tall, muscular build with large calves and a firm butt. There was a time when you could bounce a quarter off my butt. If the best athlete in the world, Lance Armstrong, taught me anything, he taught me that the buttocks do not lie. Sadly, I no longer race bicycles. I am too old to compete anymore. I was not really very good anyway. I was in that least prestigious of categories, "never was."

I have a strong jaw, pearly white teeth and still a good shock of brown curly hair, which I frequently mousse. It gives me an edge with the younger women. I guess it makes me look hip or something. I thought the wet look died out years ago, but the young girls today go for it. I am comfortable financially because of a series of lucrative real estate deals. My family owned some land, which I inherited and sold off piece by piece. I live in Jacksonville, Florida, home to rednecks, freaks, criminals, and wannabe gangsters of every description. It pretty much rots here, but it is home. No place like home.

My eyes are blue, the deepest blue, and many women have commented they have a seductive appeal. I am just over six feet, which in part explains why I never accomplished anything on the bicycle riding tour. And I am a trained martial artist, though I have not practiced in a long time—I choose now to smoke cigarettes instead. It is my hobby. I had my martial arts training when I lived in Japan from an authentic old world master. My master could break boards with a blow that looked like it would not have the force to open a pop bottle. I once saw him throw a man across a room, nearly twenty feet, and I swear to this day that he never touched him.

A series of events turned me into an Internet Don Juan. I left my wife, who was cheating on me with several different men I suspect, and I was all alone and deathly lonely. Divorce is difficult at best. Mine was in the middle of my latest psychosis. I cannot prove my ex-wife had her dalliances, but the suspicion is there. And it is strong.

"Dear, you are unusually late getting home on a Wednesday." I gave my wife a hug. The scent of a black man was all over her. "You cheated on me."

We had been together for ten years, and perhaps the grass growing everywhere else was greener. So, that is the plain, simple truth of the matter. Loneliness and boredom were the primary motivators of my becoming an Internet Don Juan.

I don't know how I knew the Internet would be a good way to hook up with women. I guess I had heard some success stories, but I had little genuine experience with the Internet, other than I owned a computer and I got online occasionally. I had also tried unsuccessfully several times to build a website for myself. I had a notion once to sell bicycles over the Internet, but that fell far short of expectations. So, I was then forty at the

time of my divorce, in deep depression, on disability because of my unusual mental proclivities, and I decided I was going to find another woman.

I began close to home. I joined a dating website, which allowed me to list an advertisement, called a profile, for about twenty bucks a month to seek available single women. I could have become anyone I wanted, and with reasonable assuredness pulled it off. The locals here are a slow lot most often. But I am a handsome man, charismatic, charming, a former professional athlete, and now a solid writer with a cautiously bright future I like to think. I am not exactly modest, more confident in nature, and this often makes the trashier people here very angry, but I do not feel I am a braggart. So I became myself online. As I am rather lazy in this the second half of my life, it seemed the simplest of chores to impersonate myself. I have to admit that I never told many lies to the women I met from online activities. Of course, I did not go in the chat rooms much ever. They are quite horrific. All these activities that follow were from dating and singles websites. I did become a sort of huge pain in the neck to several women online, but then Internet chat has a definite shelf life. If one remains on too long, he runs the risk of becoming a bigger ass than he already is. At least that is what I have found.

I have always liked foreign women. Maybe it is the accent. I am not sure really. I have traveled extensively and at an early age. It could be that they usually make easy prey. It is possibly more a function of my inability to get a really hot American woman. I love American women, but they, as a rule, do not need anyone. They need the likes of me even less. I am very schizophrenic and have bipolar disorder. I have also sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and malodorous feet. And so goes my list of qualifications.

Living with me is not easy. Loving me is not too bad apparently. In the space of just over two years I must have bedded down easily thirty women or more whom I met through the Internet. It averaged over one new conquest a month. I think the most I dated at one time was five. I only gave up this scandalous behavior because I got married again. Otherwise, I would still be doing it. It was a hell of a lot of fun. But maybe not. It takes its toll. And yes, I met my present wife over the Internet. I do not think she really approves of my previous activities, or my referring to her in certain circles as my "present wife." I continued chatting with girls for maybe longer than I should have, after I was married again. Chat is habit forming. I tried to explain to my wife that I am a writer now, my latest hat, and I need to do research every so often. I cannot discount any of my sources. My wife is intelligent, and she basically knows I am a sack full of rotten potatoes, but we love each other. Since I ceased my relentless questing, she is content that I received a good fill of women before I met her and have no need to stray ever. And she is right. I wanted a big party, a big blowout before I married her; I wanted a big celebration, and my, oh my, did I ever get that!

I do not even accurately remember who my first victim was. There were so many that summer. It might have been Jolene. She was a good-looking waitress from the Azores and about to get kicked out of her mother's house. She was not a young girl, at thirty-one, but had no real job prospects, no car, and was about to be homeless. And she drank like a sweaty fish. Every night that we would have a little party, she would down a fifth of vodka by herself. I met her on this first of many dating websites I used and had been chatting with her maybe a few days when she suggested we hook up and go to a movie. It was some awful fare about monstrous, warlike, fire-breathing dragons, and as I recall, she threw up in the bathroom during the movie. That sort of precluded the traditional good night kiss. But we hooked up online a couple of days later, and I just out and asked her, "Are we going to have sex?" The reply was favorable, so I picked her up that night at her friend's, and she spent the night. That almost concluded the dating portion of my wine and romance days on the Internet. From then on, I basically cut to the sack. I had one thing on my mind and I wanted to get it off my mind as quickly and as comfortably as possible.

At the same time I was seeing Jolene, another adequate beauty came into my life from the Internet. She looked a lot like Marilyn Monroe—extra padding and all. She had been in an abusive relationship with her fiancé. I'll call him Brad. The girl's name was Raquel. Brad had roughed her up a couple of times. He had a job as an orderly at a hospital, had no money, and lived in her house. She, on the other hand, sold real estate and was doing well. She had two boys from a previous marriage to a man in Alabama, who by coincidence, or maybe not, had also beaten her and then married a much younger woman. Raquel was a country girl, and a very sweet looking blonde. She was on the voluptuous side, and was quite adept in bed. I kept her around for a whole year off and on. She had bounced Brad out of her house for me, and he had moved down state, but something told me they would get back together. When she eventually realized that I was never going to marry her, she got back with Brad and they got married. She still emails me, but I never respond.

Raquel and I had one date as well. I took her to dinner at Wok and Roll, a fast food Chinese restaurant with tasty, but cheap food. She was just getting off work, so she did not mind that the fare was inexpensive, and the restaurant was close to her office. We wound up going back to her place. She was on the large size, definitely a plus-sized woman, maybe a 16. Most people do not realize that Marilyn Monroe wore a size 12 dress in her heyday. It is not quite the same as a size 12 today, but big can be beautiful. As it happened, the sun was not yet down, but the curtains were drawn at her place. So when Raquel and I entered her living room, she refused to turn any lights on. I was a little paranoid about who might come running in from the bedroom into the room. Her boys lived in Alabama, so I guessed we were alone.

We decided to play strip poker on her living room carpet. I am pretty sure it was her idea, as it seemed juvenile to me, and I doubt I would have suggested it. Since I am a fairly good poker player, I had her naked on the rug in about five hands. So she lay down next to the fireplace, and that was the only hint I needed.

I kept Raquel around for a while, as I said, as I did Jolene. Raquel would always feed me very excellent steaks from the grill and maybe a baked potato or salad every time I came over and slept with her. It was a slippery slope for me. I had become a food slut, and I needed to watch my figure. I had always dreamed of making a comeback on the bicycle tour. What I might be making a come back to, I had never clearly thought through.

She would buy my favorite beer, and she had a swimming pool, which we would get into naked just about every night I saw her. I was often busy with other women, and Raquel never seemed to mind this, just as long as I never mentioned them. I caught on to that one quickly and already knew that the cardinal rule of getting laid is to never throw out another woman's name. So, I always denied I had these other women, but Raquel knew and I knew, and neither of us seemed to care really. It was a gentleman's fabrication, though most would not consider me a gentleman.

I will move forward to other events. I will come back to this part of the saga I promise. I was in this later time frame a more seasoned dater and on another dating website. On this particular website there were ravishing beauties from all over the world. I particularly like exotic looking women. I was talking to this gorgeous red head from Washington. She asked my help. Since by then I had the idea of writing a book in mind—although the idea was nebulous at best, I was nothing but ears.

As the story she told me goes, she claimed an African man had professed his love for her, and she had gone there to visit. They had stayed one night in a hotel, and when she woke up the next morning all her money and jewelry were gone. And, she claimed, he had not paid the hotel bill. The hotel management, she continued, had seized her passport until such time as she could pay her hotel bill, and was forcing her to prostitute herself for the money. Since she had no passport, she could not gain entrance to the American Embassy, she explained. I listened very intently to this story, and when she asked for money I left the chat dangling. Now, it may appear I was being an unsympathetic jerk, and maybe I was for doing that, but she was so obviously trying to scam. I am certainly edgy and a great number of individuals locally think me an ass, but I have to say this in my defense. I never really did anything wrong. I am mischaracterized, and unjustly I would say. I never beat a woman, I never stole her money, I never abused a woman in any way—and believe me, there were plenty of women who had me in their crosshairs, just trying to figure an angle. In fact, I will go so far as to say I love women. I am aware of a certain lack of character, but I truly love women.

Later that same evening, I contacted another girl on the same website within the space of an hour after the first girl. I would very often sit at my computer, smoking and drinking a beer or two, in my well-appointed third floor condo with the lake view, safe from any distraction or harm, tightly sealed up in my lustful and complacent attitude. This second girl was in Mississippi according to her profile. She asked me for help too. I thought, What are the odds of that? So, I asked her what she needed. Well, apparently it had been a long day for whoever was writing these requests for monetary assistance over the website's chat box. What this person did this time was to cut and paste the entire story into the chat box. It was the same story. She, or very likely it was a he, was too lazy to even write out the plea for money again. It could have been a different person and the same scam, or it could have been the same person and the same scam, and he or she never realized that it was me who, again, was being addressed. I left this second chat dangling too.

I had become quite desensitized to requests for money by all the Romanian girls that asked total strangers to pay their rent or the girls would lose their apartments and be homeless. They could be quite rude when I refused. Possibly some of these requests were real. It did not matter either way. I was not going to help them. In truth, I was so discouraged by this behavior sometimes I would play them along and ask how much they needed, and tell them I would send them a check next week when I got paid. But more often, I deleted them off my chat list and never contacted them again. The first rule of the Internet is that if they ask for money in short order, it is all they want. I may be mentally ill and I may possibly be crazy, but that rarely implies naiveté or a lack of sophistication. It implies many negatives, but not these. I did not believe for one second these girls would ever pay me back, try to become my lover, or wanted anything to do with me. The Internet is mostly a huge global marketing tool, and when one realizes that, one realizes there is someone always trying to sell something. And these girls from Romania, the ones that were real, were peddling their good looks. I think a couple of them that I believed to be genuine actually liked me. It is, of course, hard to know whether they fancied my interest or living in America more. It would not have really mattered to me either way. If I had brought one of them here and she had left me, say after she got her green card, I would have just gone out and gotten another one. The Internet shop never closes. The first rule of life, I would say, is that there are never any guarantees. And when bringing a girl from overseas, if she divorces within three years, she now has to return to her country. So, most likely she will make a good wife until then. But I could never be certain of even that. The Internet is a lot like the stock market. In the final analysis, both are basically a crapshoot.

However, one Romanian girl truly loved me…I think. I chose contacting these girls from Romania because they are arguably the most beautiful women in the world. This is my opinion, judging from the posted photos on several websites. Or perhaps, the men behind the photos have a very judicious eye. And, of course, conditions being what they are in Romania, the girls all want to come to America. Everyone does. It is a huge calling card being an American and shopping for a wife. Living in Florida does not hurt either. But from all my dealings with overseas women, I have found Texas is our ambassador state, which I find rather scary. Even the typical village girl overseas has heard of Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.

I actively searched for a new wife. I guessed I would have a lot of fun in the meantime, and I did. But a lot of the Romanian girls were Internet entrepreneurs. Many of them had a cottage industry going of asking for money to finish their last semester at the university. I suppose they could have all been enrolled in their last semester at a university in their various hometowns, but here again, if one is not especially greedy or willing to help, it is difficult to get scammed.

I chatted with this particular Romanian girl every day for six months. Her name is Nena. She claimed she was an attorney, and I believed her. She was very intelligent, very beautiful, and a very strong-willed girl. And she claims she loves me still. She emails me occasionally and she wants to meet for coffee, if she is ever in Jacksonville. I fully expect one day she will make it to America, and we will have coffee, and she will profess openly the love she had for me. I will be saddened to know such a great girl got away, but then when I see my present wife, I know what was meant to be, what had to be, and I am forever grateful. I think and hope my new wife will be around for more than the obligatory three years.

Before I had visited my present wife the first time, I had sent Nena the money for a cell phone, which she purchased. She emailed me the number, and I called her. We only had a few conversations by cell phone, as it was exceedingly difficult to get through, the infrastructure in Romania such that it is. Nena was this slim, tall, twenty-seven-year-old girl with long, generously flowing brown hair and breathtaking eyes to match. She had a bit of a point to her nose and a sleek, feminine jaw. There was a particularly enticing photo of her on the website, as she sat on a glass coffee table that shined a light from underneath. The soft silhouette of light beamed up into her delicious spot, which was cleverly guarded by a modicum of clothing, and the reflection off the table made it seem so heavenly. I was transported.

Nena is about the only girl of all the other girls I met that could have turned my head. I had not yet met my present wife in person, and Nena took at least an hour out of each day of her busy days to chat with me. I was on disability at this point, so it was not as if I had much to do. Bicycling was a fond memory, not that it had ever amounted to anything, but a stack of bills, and I worked little, and did even less. Finding a wife had become my job. I needed to settle down. The threat of AIDS also worried me.

There is something a little different about me sexually from many men. I am perverse, and I am open about it. Perhaps only the form of perversion makes a clear distinction from most American men. I enjoy to be dominated. Speaking in terms of bondage and domination, I am known as a "switch." A switch is dominant with a submissive person, and submissive with a dominant person. He or she switches roles back and forth. We are sort of the bi-sexuals of the swinger, bondage, domination set. We receive a lot of dates. I say we, because there are more people out there like this than most people think, but still we, "switches," are fairly rare. A male switch is rarer. I only sleep with women—there was no switching sides. I include this in my list of qualifications because Nena was one hundred percent dominant, and I was enthralled. I was snared in a trap of my own long-distance lust.

Romanian women in general tend to be dominant. Very often the girls on the net from Romania said they would love to tie me up and spank me. They knew that sort of salacious chat from a young woman was exactly what I was after. Nena, however, was serious. She said she would spank me every day. There is nothing so humbling—not a cheating ex-wife, an intermittent struggle with insanity, or the realization that a life of no particular accomplishment has flown by—as for a man to receive a beating from a woman. Humility has great reward too.

I wondered constantly if I could actually live with my domme. It is a hard and fast life that tends to spit submissive individuals out. For Nena I might have tried to make a go of it. But I had already committed myself to meeting the woman that would become my second wife. She, too, is Eastern European, but from the Ukraine. They tend to be very strong women as well, but not nearly so domineering and with much more of a feminine side. And my present wife is a young girl, twenty years my junior, so she depends on me more than a mature woman would, which I do not mind usually. I need to be needed. I need that certain look in the eye that says "I believe in you."

I could see Nena coming over here and in a few short years having graduated from law school in the States, have a going practice, and really not needing me for much of anything but her pet. And that frightened me. I have never been a kept man.

The relationship between submissive and dominant is fascinating. It is a very exciting affair. And, if one or the other claims it is not about sex, that person is a liar. It is purely about sex and power, and the two go together so well. It is entirely too sexually exciting not to be about sex. It is the stuff fantasies are made of. I of course, would argue for moderation. All things in moderation. I do not suppose the individual that coined that phrase was including perversion, but I say, "If the collar fits, wear it."

I need to leap ahead again. This reference is also before my present wife, who by this time was my fiancée, had arrived in the States. The period is over two years after Nena and Raquel. Jolene came back into my life. I had kept the same chat username on one of the chat programs all this time, and Jolene had sent me several offline messages. I guessed she wanted money. She still owed me seven hundred dollars from when I had gotten her an apartment, not long after she had been thrown out of her mom's. But that had been some time ago, so I knew I was not likely to raise it as an issue.

It was the middle of a hurricane brushing past Jacksonville. The winds were easily fifty miles per hour, and that day it had already rained six inches. Six inches, especially when considering most of Florida—that diminishing part that has not been built upon—is a flat, low-lying, swampy area barely above sea level, is a considerable amount of water. Jacksonville is only about five feet above sea level, unlike New Orleans, parts of which are several feet below sea level. In either case, there are not many places for that water to go. It can make driving a rather precarious thing, especially when I am trapped in my car as it floats down the street of its own volition. It is like a flash flood without the flash. Two inches of rolling water is enough to lift and transport a car quite independently of the engine. Because of who I had become by then, I went out in the gloom of night to make my appointed rounds and to pick up Jolene, who yet again, had no place to live and was traveling back and forth between friends' homes.

I knew she was high, when she first called me on the phone and told me to come get her. My lovers all come back into my life. Years may go by, but they all come back. I think they realize some time after the fact how handsomely they were treated. I assumed Jolene had been drinking. I knew she now waited tables at a bar. I guessed she drank constantly. I did not really care, but the reality was worse than I expected. Not only did she still drink like a thirsty fish, she was addicted to crack. She had come back into my life and back to my house because she did not want to use anymore, and she knew I would not allow her to.

She was flying higher than any kite I ever saw, so we tapped a bottle of Champagne, and I put her to bed. I had to give her something to drink to take the edge off. I put her to bed alone. She passed out and was snoring strenuously within seconds. This event was merciful for me, her passing out, because I did not really want anything more to do with her. The electricity had gone off at my home, so as she lay in my bed sleeping, I plotted in the darkness how to get rid of her. I wanted to help her as before, but I also wanted her gone.

I said this short prayer: "Whatever your will is in this matter, please manifest it to me, and then please allow me to accomplish it." Believe it or not, I am Christian. I hate myself that I am what amounts to a stereotypical Southerner from the Bible belt, and I have succumb to the pull of Christianity and all the religious retarded, the hypocritical churches and ministers, and the idiots who use religion like opium. But faith in something, as misguided as it seems, has improved my life. I still hate myself.

After several hours, she came downstairs and was hungry. She actually fell down some of the stairs. All I had were hard boiled eggs and cheese, and though she was now essentially a hungry crack head, she did not find either to her liking.

She asked to use the phone, which still worked, since it was not electric. Jolene called about a dozen people until she found one that said she could come over. He had electricity. My side of town is an older more established side of town, and the electricity blinks out a lot and usually stays off longer than in other areas. So, once again, I went into that cruel dark night in the middle of a hurricane, but my sanctimonious prayer was answered. I took Jolene, after she finally remembered the directions, to a side of town not that far from my own, but where she could smoke up, sleep and have barbeque chicken. As she was getting out into knee-deep water, the rain and wind lashing all about, the unnatural howling of debris being blown around, and tin and galvanized roofs sounding like bombs were cascading on top of them, I told her never to call me again.

"Jolene, I can't live like this. Maybe it is okay for you. I don't know. You are younger. I am not a young man anymore. I have to do something with my life. Don't call me ever again, okay?"

I don't know if I helped her. Perhaps it came in some form of a wake up call. I do not know. She understood and said, "Okay." I blocked her from further chat with me by computer, as soon as the electricity came back on in my home.

Posted: October 29, 2007 10:16am EST

Twins

Cameron H. Chambers

      The wind made a ghastly howl; its presence felt unnatural. It sounded like an act of torture upon a small animal, or in my inebriated, paranoid state, a baby screaming for its inattentive mother. I hear similar cries in my dreams often. There are two distinct voices, one a boy’s, the other a girl’s, and the voices never age or mature. They have remained those of children over the years. They are stuck somewhere, chiefly in my mind, but are perhaps from some intangible dimension. I hear the cries on playgrounds frequently, at malls, often whimpering for their mothers. It drives a chill right through my spine. I want to shout at these children, these disembodied voices, the voices of the small boys in particular, “Do it yourself, man. Tie your own goddamn shoe. Can’t you see she’s busy?” But the reality is they are never the voices of my own children. Nor would I dare speak to any child in that manner. My frustration and pain get the best of me. Since my twins passed away a few years ago, I am haunted every moment. There has rarely been a minute of sleep. I can’t watch a program on television with children in it. The zoo, the park, the grocery store, so many places are unwelcome destinations to me now.
      I went insane. I had no choice. Otherwise, I should have certainly perished. To have your children, a twin boy and girl—your own flesh—die a miserable cold, soggy death at your own hand, because you were drunk on your day off and ran your small car off the road into a flooded ditch, is an ignominious fate. And well it should be. Should I expect some reward? The car immediately filled with water. It had rained volumes that week. The twins were in the backseat. They both cried for their mother who was not in the car. At so tender an age, they understood that their daddy was useless. I have been a voracious smoker for so long now, over thirty years, I knew I could not hold my breath long enough to disengage myself from my seatbelt in the rapidly filling car, force the window down, and get my twins out. They drowned in three feet of water. I am haunted by their faces. I can no longer speak their names. I can barely turn on the faucet or the garden hose now. The sight of running water strikes terror throughout my crippled, diseased mind. I took as deep of a breath as I could with my clogged, raspy lungs and went back under to get my charges, but it was too late. I know now the torment of the insane for my recompense. And tonight bespeaks another hideous lesson.
      My newly-found friends and I had gathered at my house. It is a sturdy structure, double-coursed brick with iron rebar up the length of the walls and dripped concrete throughout the inside frame. I can hardly drill a wall in my home; it is so solid. If any house was built to withstand a hurricane, it would be mine.
      Conflict, tragedy, the horrors of life not only find me, they seek me out. I was most uneasy about tonight’s circumstance. Julie and her clapboard house, with the insect-ridden T-111 extending down the sides of her home into the dirt, and the beams in her ceiling twenty-four inches apart (mine are twelve), would likely not have a home to return to after tonight. It was now the eye of the storm, but the worst winds were coming. Amazingly, we still had electricity from the generator, but it was almost out of gas. I could feel the tremendous gusts of the second half of the carnival show barreling down on us. The lightning danced through every room. It would fly through a window and out the one across from it, zigging and zagging precariously. Then the thunder clapped like a mighty titan. It would not be much longer before the lights would go out. We all remained in a sedate, but somewhat jovial mood, the influence of the alcohol perhaps, but underneath our thin veneer, everyone was terrified. My skin was crawling from the inside out, but as the older and wiser of my company, I had to remain the more stoic.
      “They said eighteen inches have fallen on the Westside,” Julie called in from my family room. She seemed fearless, watching in my family room the lone station on television brave enough to continue broadcasting. The rectangular room has eighteen windows from which to observe the cruelty of nature. Julie drew a certain energy from the storm. Her boyfriend James and I, and my friend, Sara, sat at my dining room table in the next room. There were no windows and the outside walls were at least a foot thick.
      “Well, we’re flooded out for sure,” James called into her. They were originally from mountain country in Colorado, not Florida, which is where we all found ourselves residing for one reason or another, and they understood flooding, but not this eerie, creeping, insidious wind and rainstorm. “Our street is under water by now,” James said turning to Sara and me. He hoisted his beer and swallowed in his reluctant, pensive awareness.
      My house came ready made with a moat. The sight of a ditch in the front yard of the house I thought to buy seemed the nastiest of ironies. I had first seen my home over the Internet, and I did not know there was a partly exposed culvert running most of the property. God can be so exacting. I thought I had done my penance, but I guess penance is never enough. I had to move here quickly to seize the job I wanted, so I bought the house. It was one in a series of hasty decisions. I had felt until now that the drainage ditch in the front yard was unsightly and a mosquito hatchery, but after the comparable rains on this side of town, we were still high above it all and relatively dry.
      Debris rumbled and collided around the neighborhood and was scattered all over the street, up and down it, from large branches of magnolias and pines, and pine cones of various assortments, to garbage can lids left atop their cans by unthinking or inexperienced neighbors, who had no sort of idea what these winds can do. The rain is life-threatening, the lightning intense and frightening, but the wind is the true danger. A pebble, if launched properly, can yield a devastating blow. I have seen a single pine needle, a flimsy, delicate object, piercing through the diameter of a telephone pole as if an arrow shot from a bow. The odd potted plant rustled around and tipped whimsically this way and that, or had been shattered earlier on; a few went rolling down the water-filled channels, cascading along as they spun in oblongs down the drenched street. I could witness all this from the many windows of my home. I was reminded of a newspaper photograph of a young man riding his bicycle through waist-high waters. The photo had made me laugh.
      It was four in the afternoon and the streetlamps had been on all day. The winds now were probably only thirty miles per hour in the eye of the storm. The local news station had registered sustained winds at ninety and gusting to one hundred and twenty just over an hour ago. We waited with the anxiety of knowing that to wait was all we could do.
      Sara, who had been sitting quietly, asked, “are we going to be all right? I’ve heard the second half of one of these storms is the worst.” Sara is a young gal, straight out of graduate school from Michigan State, and this was her first hurricane. She was outwardly nervous, and I wanted to comfort her.
      “This house is rugged. I swear by it.” I prayed mentally as I said that. I have tempted fate too many times and I have felt its angry lash against my back.
      “Should we go to a shelter?” Sara asked.
      “It’s too late. There are too many downed power lines and downed trees between here and there…we couldn’t make it, if we wanted to. It is best to ride this out here.” Just then there was huge crack louder than any shotgun or overloaded transformer as a tremendous gust caught an unsuspecting tree and ripped through its limbs. Julie scurried in from the family room.
      “Did you see it?” James asked.
      “No, and I don’t want to. It was in the backyard,” Julie said. Her tune of autonomy had changed. My neighbor has a huge oak that tips over his house, dripping soft, cool shade on the warm evenings. I wondered if there would be more of us arriving soon. The last hurricane I was in, I was a child not much older than my little ones I remembered, and an oak, rotted at its base, had fallen right through the center of my parents’ house. It effectively separated and cut off my brothers and sisters and me from our parents, who were just down the hall. We could talk to one another over the rumble of thunder and the rain slashing at our tiny faces, over the huge trunk that stood at its width taller than my height, but, we, the children had to ride out the storm on our own. I remember my father calling words of encouragement to us, his voice eerily lofting in as if from some distant plane, and his barking instructions at my older brother.
      The familiar deafening screams of the small children played over again in my head. I heard the twins crying out first for their mother and then their drunken father. I had to keep it together. I was the only one among us who had gone through a hurricane before. James and Julie had lived in Florida some time, but they too, as Sara, are younger and had never lived until now to witness a hurricane in all its unsheathed magic and glory and the complete destruction it leaves in its wake.
      Then the lights flickered and went out. Sara noisily cried out from somewhere deep in her throat, a guttural and startled warning of a snared animal.
      “It’s okay,” I said. Me, the stoic, I thought. I nearly laughed aloud at the thought. “We have flashlights and candles,” I said as I busied myself striking a match. My hands trembled, but no one could see in the darkness. I lit the candelabra I had placed on the table. Sara looked so angelic by the soft light. “There. That’s not so bad,” I said cooing. I reminded myself of patching up bruised elbows and knees when I had been a father and husband. Of course, my wife had left me. I had effectively ended her life as well.
      I heard a voice shoot through me. “Daddy,” it cried. I looked in a panic, but there was no one and nothing there.
      “What’s wrong?” Sara asked.
      “Nothing.” I decided I needed something stronger and poured a whiskey. Beer would no longer fit the bill.
      “How are we going to pee?” Sara asked.
      “The plumbing still works, right?” James inquired.
      “Yeah. Plumbing is not electric,” I informed Sara. “You can flush. When the tank runs empty, dump in a bucket of water. Gravity will flush the bowl. I filled up the bathtub. There’s a bucket next to it.”
      “I never knew that,” Sara said.
      “They didn’t teach you that in grad school?” Julie said. It was meant to be funny, but Sara took it as a snippy remark. Julie had not finished college. Her comments about school were suspect. The tension was showing on everyone’s face, even by the agreeable luster of the candles.
      “I have a battery-operated cd player. Something mellow, Sara?” I asked.
      “Hey There Delilah.” “I love that song.” She had seen the compact disk at my house previously. The song sadly lilted in and I breathed out a little tension. Seconds later, a very unnatural sound drowned out the melodic din in the room; it was one of breaking glass. It had the ferocity of a car bomb and again we were bathed in darkness. I froze. I thought I had imagined the noise at first, dreamily reaching inside my mind for something to hold onto, but this time it was valiant Julie crying out in her murky anguish, snapping me to attention. A branch had flown through a family room window, spraying glass as far as the tiled kitchen floor. The wind kicked around the blinds, holding them upright in a horizontal position as though some deceit of levitation and the noise of the air rushing in hissed menacingly at me.
      “Do something! Do something!” It was Sara screaming. Again, I didn’t realize at first it was a human voice. The wind cried and I could hear the wood floors of my home squeak in pain.
      “We’ll be okay,” I shouted. “Put your shoes back on. There’s glass,” I said more calmly. “And stay in here.” I followed my next instinct and brought the cooler with the ice and drinks from the kitchen into the dining room. I could feel the blast of wet air in my face as I entered the kitchen. “The eye has moved on,” I said. I expected my guests might not understand my cryptic remark, but I did not wish to frighten them more. I knew we were in for rough waters.
      Suddenly, there was a succession of breaking glass. “I can’t take this,” Sara cried. “Take me to a shelter before it’s too late. Get me out of here.”
      “It is too late,” I said. I heard glass ornaments and objects fly off of shelves and crash thunderously in other rooms. The more the wind kicked up, the more the deafening cries of my twins grew. “Shut up,” I yelled. I immediately and awkwardly explained to Sara that I did not mean for her to shut up. She then insisted we go to a shelter and got up from her chair in preparation to face the storm outside. She would not remain trapped in a house, rapidly deteriorating, with some sort of madman. Julie chimed in as well. “I agree. Let’s go now. James, get my keys.”
      “We’re blocked in,” he answered.
      “I’ll drive,” I said. Not a one of them knew where the nearest shelter even was, and though I felt this was folly, I knew I had to lead them to safety. Just then a mighty crack from the lightning produced an eerie ripping sound that soon followed; it was as discordant as tearing a stack of junk mail into pieces making the useless items ready for the garbage. The shingles started popping off the roof one by one. I knew what would happen next. The entire roof might lift off. We would, in fact, have to leave my home for the security of the city shelter, a public high school about three miles away. I prayed silently and more intently.
      Julie and James piled as quickly as possible into the backseat of my compact car. Sara sat up front with me. In the few seconds it took us to leave by the front door, struggling to open it against the negative pressure of the winds, and climb in the car, we were completely soaked. The tops of the trees in my yard were bending, almost kissing the street below them and the wind lashed everything around in anger. We were pulling out of my short driveway, and a masterful bolt of lightning lit up the sky for the flash of a half second, and I heard in my ear, right next to me, Sara scream, “look out.”
      A massive pine tree, a victim of the lightning, fell across the driveway and onto the car, so I steered abruptly to counter the potential deadly effects of the tree’s falling, which surely was going to crush us all, and I unintentionally ran off the driveway and into the ditch.

      It was two days later. I had lain mostly unconscious on the embankment of my front lawn until a city crew, which had started cleaning up my neighborhood, discovered me. I was wheeled on a gurney by EMTs to a local emergency room. Triage was setup in the parking lot of the overrun hospital. A nurse attended to the lacerations on my head and face, as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
      “What’s the story with this one?” I could hear the man’s voice who asked the question. He sounded like he was in charge and probably a doctor.
      “A clean-up crew found him almost underwater in a ditch. A tree had fallen on his car. There were two females and a male trapped in the car, crushed. I think he will be okay. Minor broken bones. A concussion. He remembers his name and address, so there doesn’t seem to be any memory loss. He was face down in the mud they told me. I wonder how he made it,” the nurse said.
      “I guess he’s lucky,” the doctor said.

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Posted: November 13, 2007 10:59 am EST

Posted: October 29, 2007 10:16am EST

Twins

by

Cameron H. Chambers