Being a Man for Himself Ch. 02

"That's unreasonable."

"It just went up to 11. Shall I go higher?"

"Fine. Are you in the bet?"

"Hmm. Now I'm thinking 12 is a nice round number."

"Ok. 12 it is. But if I win you have to go to the judge right away and admit to her that you don't want children."

"Oh, we'll never have to worry about me fulfilling my obligations. Everyone knows that I always do. I'm just wondering how you're going to be able to pay me. I'll probably have to take you to court for it."

"You do what you have to do. But I'll ask again; are you in the bet?"

"Yes. I'm in. And you've already lost."

"So certain, are you?"

Without telling his wife where he was going Henry left the house on his way to his anger management class. She had tried to stop him from leaving, saying that the bet did not give him permission to leave the house. Henry just laughed at her and would have loved to hear the conversation she'd have with the judge's office when the staff told her Henry actually had to leave the house.

The anger management class was a joke. The woman running the thing just kept saying over and over again that men were bad and predisposed to violence. She showed videos of situations where an obvious straw man of a terrible husband was violent for no reason and his poor wife was just a helpless victim. Oh, sorry. They weren't supposed to be called wives, but 'partners' for some stupid fucking reason. Then the woman would have each man take turns saying what went wrong in the video and how the situation should have played out. Finally, it was Henry's turn.

"End the relationship."

The woman in charge gasped. "Uh ... What do you mean?"

"If he's violent then she should just leave."

"You see everyone. That's what so many abusers think. But women can't leave. They're afraid for their lives. They ..."

Henry rolled his eyes. What a retard. Henry could not imaging any of the women he used to work with in his office not being able to leave. Henry felt that any educated, competent woman who had a sense of her own agency would immediately walk out the door if their spouse became violent. It was the only reasonable thing to do. You can't negotiate with violent people. The moment violence comes into the picture all meaningful communication breaks down.

Henry began to feel like this was less of an anger management class and more of a male hatred class. The woman running the thing never offered any solution to the problems she presented other than that men should just let their wives do whatever they wanted and men should just shut up and take it. The list of things the program called 'violent abuse' included cutting off utilities, being silent, demanding sex, and even locking the door to the bathroom when you take a shower. Of course it was ok if women did these things but just not the men. It was sort of comical. Henry couldn't see how not saying anything could cause a woman to get a black eye.

During the break Henry got a chance to introduce himself to the other guys and the stories they told painted a much different picture of what was going on. One man had been sent to prison for burglary. He served his time and got released early for good behavior. When he went home his wife was in the middle of cheating on him. Instead of being violent he sat on his front step crying. His wife called the police and said she feared for her life because she didn't know what he would do. And after sitting in jail for three weeks waiting for a hearing, the judge released him under the condition he take the anger management class.

Another man had a wife with some sort of mental illness, which sounded to Henry a lot like bipolar disorder. One day she attacked him with a knife and the only reason she didn't kill him was because he got a door between them. Not to be deterred, she started stabbing at the door in hopes the knife would break through and get to him on the other side. Fortunately for him the knife didn't go all the way through. Then he saw his wife put the knife to her own wrist. He rushed over to her to stop her from killing herself and ended up getting stabbed in the forearm for his trouble. Even as he was bleeding all over the place he found the strength to hold his wife down until her manic phase passed. The police and an ambulance were called. The man thought he'd be going to the hospital and his wife would be going to jail. In fact, the opposite happened. Then, after months in prison and losing his job, his reputation, and most of his savings; he found himself in anger management class as a condition of his probation and wasn't even allowed to see his children.

A third man found himself in the class because he left his wife in the middle of nowhere. They had gotten into a fight while she was driving a rental car late at night after he had done some work on a friend's home. Rather than continue the fight he asked her to pull the car over and he got out. His original intention was to just take a walk, cool off, and then go back. While he was walking he heard loud banging sounds but decided not to panic. He took his time and smoked a cigarette. When he returned he saw what all the noise had been. His wife had gotten his toolbox out of the trunk and had broken every window in the car, including the windshield. She'd broken the mirrors and left all kinds of damage all over the car. She even flattened the tires. In the aftermath the court had put him in anger management and held him responsible for all the damage even though it was his wife who rented the car, drove the car, and damaged the car. He didn't even have a driver's license. The court didn't care. The judge ruled that as her husband he was responsible for her behavior.

The last man that Henry talked to told him the story of how he actually was a wife beater. He had hit his first wife but afterwards she had done the allegedly impossible and left him. They soon divorced and years later he got married again. One night, while arguing with his second wife he felt those old feelings come up again so he wanted to get some distance. He then realized that he had guns in the house and anger plus firearms were a bad combination. So he called his friend who was a sheriff's deputy to come and take the guns and all the ammo away. He thought he was doing the right thing by trying to deescalate the situation. But everything changed when his wife saw him unlocking the gun cabinet. She called emergency services and said she was afraid for her life. When the man's friend arrived, instead of taking the guns, he actually had to take the man into custody.

The class resumed and for another hour and a half he had to sit through all the woman's talking points about how men had all the power in any relationship so it was on the man to capitulate to his wife in order to solve the problem. This left Henry with a new found disrespect for women where he had previously respected them greatly. Henry thought about what the woman was suggesting and took her arguments to their logical conclusion. Women were children. She was actually suggesting that women be treated legally like children.

No wonder marriage in this country had broken down. The icing on the social justice warrior cake was when the white lady insisted that American men only dated Asian women because they were helpless and submissive. Henry thought of Keiko. That just proved that this idiot running the class had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

When Henry got home he found Amy and Keiko waiting for him. Amy was watching tv on the sofa with one of her boots on the coffee table. That made Henry smile. All the times Keiko had fussed at him about the damn coffee table but she was too scared to tell Amy to take her foot down. Or maybe she had told Amy and his sister had just told her to fuck off.

"Where have you been?" Keiko asked.

"I was out getting some other woman pregnant."

"Don't joke with me."

"No, it's true."

"Who?"

Henry gave her the name of the woman that ran the anger management class and then he went to give his sister a kiss on the cheek.

"A. M.?" she asked.

Henry nodded.

Henry went to the study and looked over the document he'd gotten from the broker. It was all coming back to him. He set up his computer to record from the desktop and he tested the audio. It sounded good. He started to record the video but a couple of minutes into his script that fucking bitch had to come and interrupt him.

"Who are you talking to?"

Henry looked over at the child in an adult body. He stood up from the chair and with a look of absolute hatred on his face he forced his way into her personal space and had her backed into a corner.

"Henry, move." she said as she tried to shove him. Henry grabbed a nearby decoration that he knew was fragile and he threw it to the floor.

"Henry. Have you gone psycho?"

"Shut up, bitch."

"What? You can't ..."

"I SAID SHUT UP. NOW!"

She looked scared and then Henry leaned down over her.

"One more word from you and I'll knock your fucking teeth in." Henry said in emulation of the video he'd seen at anger management class. "If you don't want to have sex, then you don't touch me. If you do, I'll break your arm. Understand?"

"Uh ... What ..."

"I ASKED YOU A QUESTION. DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes." she muttered.

"Good. Now clean that shit up and unless you're ready to suck my dick I don't want to see you for the rest of the night."

It was all really a joke. Henry had no intention of actually harming Keiko. Violence wasn't his thing. But he was sick and tired of her shit and if screaming at her was the only way to get her to finally just shut the fuck up, then he'd scream at her. And amazingly, it worked. No wonder men did that.

Henry watched over Keiko as she cleaned up and then he banished her from the room. He got back on his computer and started again at the project he was working on. He started making a video where he explained in detail where he'd gotten all his information from, what he thought it meant, and what actions he took in order to earn some money. And he did feel he had earned it. He hadn't lied and he hadn't tricked anyone. He bought things from willing sellers and sold them to willing buyers. It was his emotions on the line. His livelihood. His risk. So it should have been his money. No one was going to steal it and call it anything other than theft.

The video took about an hour to make and he put it on the internet. After that he walked around the house. Keiko was locked in her room and Amy was cooking chicken in the kitchen. While Henry and Amy ate he wondered what part of his deal had caused the mayor to get all pissed off with him. Each step played over again in his mind and he tried to think of how the mayor could in any way be connected to it.

And just like that, it hit him. That huge fish market had been chafing in its current location for years. Sure, it was iconic and sort of a tourist attraction but they were going to have to get a new location. Henry put his laptop on the kitchen table and pulled up some information. The construction of the new Olympic stadium was also causing a problem for them. The owners of the market had been considering two locations outside of the city limits but then changed their minds and were going to move to a spot that had previously been zoned for industry. Henry could see why the mayor would want that deal to happen since it would be good for the city tax wise, and good for the mayor personally. They wouldn't want to lose the place with the famous early morning tuna sale.

That was a three and a half billion dollar deal that looked like it was finished already. Ah but Henry's transactions would have caused delays for them. Henry had unwittingly made it potentially more profitable to relocate outside the city limits. However, instead of coming and talking to Henry about it or waiting for the market to even out like normal people, they resorted to violence. Henry was a fly and they were trying to swat him away. And on top of that, they wanted to silence Henry so they put him in solitary. That was probably why they hadn't let Merissa come to see him or let her letters go through. They thought she might know something since she used to work at the same company as Henry.

Something was fishy, and it wasn't the fish market. Why would their first reaction be violence? They were amoral sociopaths? No. They were flexing their muscles in hopes of scaring Henry off? No. There was more than just money at stake. Yes. But what?

That entire old industrial area had been rezoned. That would have been a hassle and the EPA probably had to come out. The EPA? Henry looked up the EPA report on the area and the agency said their test showed no pollution. Really? Henry pulled up some numbers, put them into a spreadsheet and did the calculation.

Yeah, someone was lying. It wasn't even that hard to figure out. Even if you factor in dissipation and evaporation, there should still be about two tons of benzene in that soil. Probably more. Probably a lot more. And the EPA didn't find that? Henry looked over some other data and tried to see if there was any evidence of a big clean up or anything. No. And there was no time for it either. Every week was accounted for with no down time.

Ok, so Henry figured the soil was probably polluted but he didn't know that for sure. He could be wrong. And besides that, even if the soil was polluted, once you build a huge structure like they were talking about there, it wasn't like that contamination would harm the produce or fish that went through the market. The food would still be safe. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

The deal looked done. With Henry's assets frozen there was nothing in the way either. Contracts had probably already been signed and if not then they would be soon.

Henry tried to pull up everything he could. He looked over several pdf documents and then he noticed something. The EPA had relied on the local city government and its lab to conduct the testing. Oh, that had to be it. They'd cooked the test. Had to be. And everything would stay smooth sailing even with future inspections so long as the EPA trusted the city to do the testing for them. The fish market could move, the Olympics could be held, and no one would be any the wiser.

Yeah, so now it made sense. People jump to violence when they're already doing something illegal. Police beating up an unarmed citizen, illegal. Holding someone without trial or a hearing, illegal. Freezing assets with zero probable cause of wrongdoing, illegal. And why would they do all of that? Because the local city government was already chin deep in illegal activity. Falsifying the test was the tip of the iceberg.

It was sort of like him with his sister. He was already in so deep with her that it no longer mattered if he had sex with her. It had lost its shock value and was just a normal part of their relationship now. The line had been moved.

Right there at the dining table Henry pulled out his dick and invited his sister to come over and play with him.

"Let me close the curtains." she said. "We don't want that cop outside to see, do we?"

"He's still out there?"

Amy took her pants off and then she sat on his cock with her back to him. She went up and down on him and if Keiko would have come down from the stairs she would have gotten a great view.

...

Thursday morning Henry was out of the house before anyone else. He flew down to the court house and started pulling up records. He needed some things that they didn't put into the computer databases.

"$24?" Henry asked, a bit shocked at the price.

The clerk nodded and Henry paid up, making sure to ask for a receipt. Highway robbery just to get some photocopies. While he was looking over the various signatures in the stack of documents his phone gave him a notification that one of the numbers he'd asked his computer to monitor had passed a line. Henry looked at the name of a certain chemical. He didn't know how to even pronounce it. But it was going to be important so he'd take a look at it after lunch. Henry looked at the time. Wow, the morning was gone. It was lunch.

Merissa flopped down into the chair at the Chinese restaurant across from Henry as he looked at numbers on his laptop. The numbers were nice. He was going to make so much money from this. Well, actually, Merissa and Amy were going to make a lot of money from this. Henry was going to rot in jail but at least he could take care of them.

The numbers told a story and the story Henry was seeing was that Taiwanese leaders were finding that actually governing mainland China was much more difficult than it was to defeat the communist pretenders in battle. It might not seem like it but those events played right into the upcoming correction in the market.

"I heard that one of the guys that I was in orientation with already got a raise." Merissa said to get his attention.

Henry looked up at her. "Good for him."

"Yeah but it just feels ... ugh."

"Frustrating?"

"Yeah, frustrating."

"You can't go comparing yourself to other people. There'll always be someone who has a bigger house or makes more money. When you see that try to feel good for the person instead of wishing you had what they do."

She let out a laugh. "I guess I sound like a little kid."

"And a lot of adults. But we have to accept that good things will happen to other people and that's also good for us too. If you want a better job than him there's a pretty easy way to get it."

"What are you suggesting?"

"If you join an MBA program then you open yourself up to a lot of career opportunities."

"Oh ... An MBA. Well, I was a poli sci major so I doubt that's in my future."

"You like politics?"

"Not really. But when I had to pick a major it was the easiest one and would let me graduate the quickest. I just wish someone would have told me that it was a completely worthless degree."

"You can go to law school with it."

"I took the LSAT. I uh... didn't do very well."

"You could take it again. There's nothing stopping you from improving your skills and doing it later."

"I don't get you. You're so positive."

"Wouldn't it be nice if we all were?"

"Sure would."

"If I may ask, what sort of job were you planning to get after college? Job skills is what college is really supposed to be for after all."

"I wish someone would have told me that when I was a freshman."

"We live and we learn. But you could also go and do undergrad again if you made a plan this time."

"My plan. It was so stupid."

"No it wasn't. Regardless of how things turned out, you still got educated and I bet you learned a lot."

"You know, I had this crazy idea that ... well ... oh it sounds so stupid now that I actually put words to it, you know."

"No really. What was your plan?"

"Well, I know women today aren't supposed to think this way but I actually had this half baked notion that like I would meet some nice guy and we'd get married and then ... oh ... See is sounds so dumb."

"Well, I do disagree with using college like a dating service."

"See. I'm sure most women would just laugh at me if they knew."

"Look, you're being too hard on yourself. You got an education and you graduated. And just because some guy got a raise doesn't mean anything. Pay your dues and work your way up and you could even be ..."

"What I'll be is a single mom, and I'll be paying off my student loans for the next 18 years. No one's going to want to marry a woman with so much debt and a kid."

"You really wanted to get married huh?"

"Yeah. I fantasize about it sometimes. You know the perfect wedding and all that. There was this one guy who did sort of propose to me. He was a nice guy and all but I couldn't marry him."

"Why not?"