(authors's note: I wrote this story in january of 1997, but this is the first time I have submitted it to MMSA. Enjoy!) Dennis turned and smiled when he heard me open our front door and close it behind me. He tossed aside the Times, got up off the couch and walked towards me in his usual welcome.
"Babe, how did your day .....," he began to ask, but stopped when he had approached near enough to see for himself.
"Carlos, why are you walking like that?" he gasped. "And what's wrong with your eyes? Have you been crying?"
I stood there for a few seconds, stammering an attempted reply before the tears sprang out anew and I collapsed into his strong, supportive arms.
Later, after I had managed to sputter out to Dennis a capsulized version of my brutal day, he'd carefully laid me out on our bed face down and begun tending in his gentle way to both my wounded person and spirit.
"Can your sales figures for this quarter really be THAT poor, Carlos?" he inquired carefully after some time of silent nursing.
"That's clearly the view of our celebrated CEO," I half-moaned into a pillow. "But in real terms, I only showed a ten percent drop."
Dennis paused in his ministrations to react in horror. "Carlito! That's ridiculous! Didn't you tell me you showed the largest increase LAST quarter of all the salesmen?"
"Sixteen percent." I sighed flatly.
He became livid. "Which means you're still up six percent over ALL of last year! What does EELSKINS expect out of you, for God's sake? I thought you were supposed to be selling swimwear, not picking cotton!"
I lay there quietly for a few minutes trying to figure out how to tell him the rest in a way that wouldn't cause him to leap to the wrong conclusion.
"There was a little more to it," I finally said.
"Yes?" he waited, his fingers freshly coated with more salve from the jar on the night stand.
"Spitzanis called me fat. In the boardroom, in front of all the other salesmen."
"FAT!!!!!" Dennis nearly shrieked. "YOU???? Is he crazy? Or did he really injure his brain after all cracking his head in the Olympic high dive?"
I didn't respond to this. He knew full well what the EELSKINS men's swimwear sales department was like. I'd been entertaining him with stories about it for most of the four months we've been together. Whenever sales were down, the consequences were going to be the same, no matter how brilliant the salesman's previous performance. But I still needed to broach the subject to Dennis of what had made this sales meeting different from other bad ones.
"He said I have a gut," I continued softly. "He indicated my ass and my thighs to everybody with his pointer and announced that they've gotten bigger and softer." I turned my head then to look up at Dennis, not as an acusation, but to see what his reaction would be. "He's right, you know." I said, finally. "I could tell the instant the first blow hit me. It never hurt quite like this before."
Dennis went pale and looked back at me guiltily. "Me chiquito guapisimo!" he almost whimpered. "It's all my fault! No more cajun cooking! No more desserts. Carlito, I've ruined your diet since we moved in together I'm so sorry!" He cupped the still burning globes of my naked ass in his salve-soaked palms and lovingly, remorsefully, did his best to soothe the sting of the dozen red welts my boss had raised across my butt this afternoon.
"No, Dennis, " I said firmly. "It is NOT your fault. It's mine. I love your cooking, and there wouldn't be a problem if I didn't overeat and If I wasn't being too lazy to get my lap swimming routine back on track. There's nobody to blame for this but myself."
Dennis ran his fingers up and down the backs of my thighs, causing the short, wiry black hairs to lay flat and bristle up alternatively. I had a pretty good Idea what he was thinking: "How could any man find fault with my beautiful Carlito's golden brown body?" Like me, he had now been forced to break through his denial that my physique had changed, however slightly, but unlike me (in spite of Dennis' penchant for feeling guilty) he could never have been shamed into thinking that such an insignificant, surface change in his lover was a REAL problem. In fact I could tell he loved my body all the more this way, for subtley reflecting on the outside the much deeper softening effect being in love has had on my soul.
"But I've been making it harder for you, Carlos, just the same," Dennis shook his head. "I'm always reaching for you in the morning when you're trying to get ready for the pool, and half the time you never get there."
I heard myself laugh then for the first time since before the meeting. I grinned at him over my shoulder and said, "You're right about that, Denny, you do make it harder--harder than any man I've ever been with before. But I can't blame you or anyone else for my lack of self-discipline or my choice of a career."
My hero, Mike Spitzanis had taught me that. The bastard.
At today's sales meeting Spitzanis had merely been reviewing this lesson by making a particularly memorable example out of me. Much of the impact he'd hoped the scene would have on the rest of the staff would come from precisely the fact that I was the best salesman he had, and therefore, no one could afford to feel complacently safe and rest on their laurels.
I knew I was in for something nasty even before any of us had sat down at the great long oak table in the boardroom. The big boss had entered while the other guys and I were small talking over by the big windows overlooking 5th Avenue, and I'd caught his momentary gaze and felt the unmistakable, cold aloofness that on the rare occasions it showed, spelled trouble. When a man like Spitzanis, for whom a likeable public persona has been crucial to his career, displays so blatantly his displeasure with a colleague, you can bet that he's got a reason.
"Gentlemen, let's be seated," he called to us in a voice that was amicable enough that no one, as we all sat down together, seemed alert to any forthcoming unpleasantness. After all, the boardroom was positively crowded with colorful charts on easels documenting what a successful sales quarter we'd just acheived for EELSKINS.
Indeed, Spitzanis began on a very positive note. His big brown eyes twinkled as he declared the current MicroSkin bikini campaign a success and singled out one by one the individual men who deserved congratulations for significant rises in sales performance (anything over 5%), and announced the customary bonus pay raises that would be awarded to each of them.
"Boys, you've done a terrific job of wedging MicroSkin suits deeper into both the Sports and Leisure markets than I could have ever dreamed, and in a much briefer time than I'd anticipated. I say bra-vo, guys.
"I'm especially impressed with the Leisure figures for MicroSkin amidst this country's Puritanical political climate. By next summer there'll be so many men running up and down the beaches on both coasts wearing the MicroSkin suits that you studs have coaxed them into, that this country's gonna look like _f_u_c_k_in' Brazil."
All the guys roared at that one. I relaxed a little too, because I assumed it was going to turn into a cue for one of his Olympic stories and take up the rest of the time for the meeting.
"Ah, beautiful Brazil," he began promisingly enough. "I'll never forget my pre-trials there before my first Olympics. I still can't decide which was more stimulating, the competition or the nightlife."
Huh, I thought. As if.
His casual revisons of his own history always amazed me especially when he did it in the presence of his staff, who he HAD to realize knew better. Anyone who'd merely skimmed his bestselling autobiography would know that during his early international travels, Spitzanis had actually spent most of his off hours chained to the headboards of hotels beds he shared with his sadistic first manager lover rather than getting boffed by the local boys.
"Of course there was Mexico, too. That was always fun. That's where I first swam the 500 meter against your dad, Rodriguez. Remember?" "Y-yes," I croaked, my throat having gone instantly dry. Not from the memory, which was quite pleasant, but from the bad omen of Spitzanis having brought it up in this venue. Personal references from the boss in a sales meeting invariable signalled the approach of disaster.
"Alejandro was a handsome man. And quite a competitor, wasn't he, Carlos?" Spitanzis proceeded, warmly, disarmingly. "Yes. He won two silver medals for Mexico. And they still print his picture on half the boxes of Wheaties distributed to Central America," I struggled pathetically, trying to sound carefree.
"You inherited both those qualities from him, you know." "Did I?" I almost giggled, girlishly and stupidly. "Oh yes," Spitzanis assurred me, and the rest of the men in the room, by shooting a leer at me as sharply as an arrow. "Which is why I'm so disappointed by your sales figures for this month." I looked up at this drop of the other shoe and saw, sure enough, that his leer had turned into a frown. I swallowed the lump in my throat, and noticed the other salesmen, with their freshly stroked egos intact, swiveling in their chairs to freely look upon me and gloat. Rising from his chair and grabbing a lecturing pointer, Spitzanis continued, directing our attention to a nearby easel that I hadn't noticed before, which turned out to be holding a graphic representation of my sales record.
"This chart," he said, "shows the fairly steady drop in your sales of 9.7 percent over the course of the second quarter. Your drop in sales is the only significant drop among our salesmen that EELSKIN has recorded for this quarter. And while I want you to know, Carlos, that I am aware that preliminary figures for the current quarter indicate that your sales performance has already recovered to your record-breaking high levels of the first quarter, we still need to address the problem of the losses of potential revenue you caused this last quarter. Do you understand what I'm saying, Rodriguez?"
"Yes, sir," I answered, my face turning scarlet, although in truth I had never seriously considered the standard consequences at EELSKIN for significant sales drops (other than looking on with some amusement at the rare times that I'd seen the penalties administered publically) because it had never occurred to me that I would ever find myself in such a position. "Will you remind us then, Rodriquez, especially for the newer men on staff, just what happens after an EELSKIN sales representative drops his sales?" Spitzanis asked, as he gleefully riveted me with his eyes from where he stood at the far end of the table.
I slowly pushed out my chair and stood up before answering. For some reason, the action seemed to afford me a small measure of momentary dignity, though I knew it would soon be snatched away like a fig leaf.
"He drops his pants, sir," I finally said, half in disbelief.
I'd read the words when signing the contract on the day I was hired, as we all had, but like dozens of successful salesmen before me, I didn't take it seriously. Of course 'drops his pants' was shorthand for submitting to a bare-assed spanking to be administered by the CEO, as the fine print had gone on to carefully stipulate.
Now I suddenly understood for the first time in my life what _s_e_x_ual harrassment must be like, and wondered for a brief second if the women's swimwear division employees were compelled to sign contracts with similar clauses. But it occurred to me that no self-respecting career WOMAN, well versed in the realities of _s_e_x_ism and harrasment, would have ever stooped to sign such a contract, and that not even a company as big as EELSKIN would have had the balls to try and make them. But for men like me, who have been living and breathing competition all their lives alongside equally competitive men, the small print just seems like so much ink...until a moment like this, when it's too late.
"Please approach the head of the table, Rodriguez," Spitzanis ordered, gesturing to me. I walked past my smirking fellow salesmen in their expensive suits, shirts and ties and shoes. All Armanis and Versaces and the like, just like myself, dressed impeccably, with one difference, which, I realized with dread, was about to become apparent.
I stood before Spitzanis, uncertain what I was supposed to do next, but he was happy to provide me with step by step instructions.
"Face the opposite end of the table," he commanded, and I turned to confront the receding 'V' of male faces that were focused exclusively upon me. "Now climb up and kneel at the center of this end of the tabletop."
I did as I was told, marveling at the odd perspective I had of the room from that height, and trying the whole time not to look directly into the eyes of any of my colleagues and therefore reveal my increasing humiliation.
"Now remove your jacket," Spitzanis said, his voice coming from directly behind me, where he stood ready to take it from me.
And so there I was in crisp linen shirtsleeves waiting as my boss paused to let the effects of anticipation sink in. I began to tremble slightly for a minute or two until Spitzanis finally spoke again.
"Carlos Rodriguez, as a penalty for your drop in sales, I order you to now drop your pants."
(end part 1 of 3)