Paying My Dues

When I finally asked her out on a one-on-one date, she eagerly agreed. Everywhere we went, other guys' eyes followed her every move, and even a few hit on her in front of me but she politely rebuffed their advances while leaving their egos still intact. Faye was the same height as me, five-feet-six inches, but never wore heels a single time. It was as if she instinctively considered my self-esteem as a man. There were many feminist ladies peppered throughout the campus that didn't share her view on traditional relationships. That never bothered Faye. She was always comfortable in her own skin, and what beautiful skin it was, too. At times, I wondered why she showed such interest in me but didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. My parents adored her. For some reason, the fact that she was not from money was not the issue it had been with Jenny. It was perplexing but I long since abandoned any hope of ever figuring my parents out. I aced all of my exams and was on the Dean's list the entire school year.

When summer came, grandpa, once again, requested my assistance. I realized that this may be the last year that I would be able to help him over the summer as once I graduated next year, I would be going to work full time and no longer have the freedom my youth afforded me. However, every weekend I took Faye out on a date. On top of that, we talked on the phone nearly every day. She spent a lot of time at my parents' place. It was as if they had already accepted her as a full-fledged member of the family. Luisa was happy for me to have found someone serious to potentially become an important part of my life. Faye may now be the love of my life but Luisa will always be my very best friend. The strangest aspect of my life now was the dramatic change in my brother's behavior. Upon his return for the summer, he made a huge gesture giving me a sincere and contrite apology for how he had treated me over the years. Something must have happened at College because he seemed to be a changed man. It was as if the seed of hope was breaking through the soil and into the light.

Faye and I double-dated with Brandon and his flavor of the week a few times. He was always congenial and respectful toward me. I looked for any signs that Faye developed eyes for him but she remained focused totally on me. Brandon never made any inappropriate comments toward her either. He seemed to be a new man and I was glad of it. Bryan and April tied the knot that summer, and he asked me to be his groomsman. Faye went as my plus one. Although I didn't ask, April offered that Jenny was going to an out-of-state university, so I didn't expect to run into her, nor did I care to. Let sleeping dogs lie.

At summer's end, Brandon returned to GWU and me to GCC. We'd buried the hatchet. I looked forward to absorbing as much as I could glean from the coursework. I remained on the Dean's list again throughout the year and was inducted into the National Honor Society. Faye was my constant companion on campus every chance she could work it out. Between Christmas and New Year's, I popped the question, and she enthusiastically agreed to be my wife. We discovered that we were as sexually compatible as a couple could be. It was as if we were born to ring each other's bells. We agreed upon a mid-July wedding.

When my graduation day rolled around, Brandon was still taking his exams, so he was unable to attend. But mom and dad, as well as grandpa and his whole contingent were there to cheer me on. I was tickled pink to have achieved that milestone. Grandpa insisted on holding my graduation celebration at his farm once again, and it was very well attended. It was a happy time in my life. I pulled dad aside and talked with him a bit about starting work at the paint plant. I was looking forward to making my mark on the world.

"Quinn, I'm still unsure if working there is the best thing for your long-term future. But I won't stand in your way. If you're certain that's what you want to do, I'll speak to the department heads this week and see where the greatest need is that you may be a good fit for."

"Well, since I have this degree in Mechanical Engineering now..."

"Associate Degree," my father corrected.

"Yes, since I have this Associate Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and I graduated with honors as everyone could see, I'm anxious to put my new skills to work, and help you with the business anyway I can."

"Okay, Quinn. I'm disappointed that you have set your sights on work that you may not be suited for, but if that's what you truly want, I'll let you know what your options are with Donner Paints so you can make an informed decision."

"I promise, you won't be sorry, dad. You'll see."

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

A week later, dad and mom came into my room with the information I'd asked for.

Mom began, "Sweetie, is there nothing we can say to get you to change your mind about working at the plant? Your dad tells me that it's awfully hard and monotonous work. You could get hurt easily, and your father and I would never forgive ourselves if something bad happened to you while trying to fit in where you don't belong."

"I'm sure, mom. If I ever change my mind, I'll let you know. But for now, there's nowhere else I'd rather be than working alongside my family."

Dad advised, "Quinn, I think you're crazy for even considering working for Donner Paints. I've got a bet with your mother that you won't even last a year there. You'll have to start at the bottom and work your way up. I can't allow anyone to think that you get special treatment or privileges just because you're related to me. If anything, it will be harder for you because of our relationship. There are ten positions you'll need to work through to even get a crack at any kind of management job. You'll work approximately sixteen to eighteen months in each one before moving on to the next. Your starting wage will be $15.00 per hour. At each move up the ladder, your pay will increase by a dollar per hour. You will start loading labels into the machine working on the conveyor line. The labels are automatically applied to the paint cans as they come off the line. Your job will be to make sure the line never shuts down because you can't keep up."

It saddened me that my two-year degree didn't afford me a better-starting opportunity but I asked for this, so I needed to buckle down and jump in with both feet without complaint.

"Fine!" I agreed as I shook dad's hand sealing the deal. "I'll be there bright and early Monday morning to get started."

"Instead of jumping in so soon, why don't you wait until after returning from your honeymoon after the wedding? It wouldn't look good for you to ask off so soon after starting work."

"That makes perfect sense. Thanks, dad, and mom."

The wedding went off without a hitch. Faye's parents couldn't afford the full expense of the wedding she wanted. My parents happily chipped in whatever funds were needed to make up the difference. I was shocked to see them being so helpful with our life journey together. Brandon proudly served as one of my groomsmen. My grandfather gifted us with a two-week Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon. It was a luxurious affair. I'd never been happier in all of my life.

After we returned, Faye started work at Peterson Orthodontia as an oral hygienist. It's more tedious cleaning teeth through and around braces but the pay is more than twice what I was bringing in. They started her at $28.50 per hour compared to my paltry $15.00 hourly. But our combined incomes put us at ninety grand per year. She said our disparate incomes did not bother her in the slightest, as long as we were together. We were able to purchase a decent starter home in a suburb between both of our jobs with an affordable $1800.00 monthly mortgage payment. Faye had taken out a student loan to get her degree, so we had to also begin paying that back.

I began cutting my teeth on the labeling process at the plant. I had to stay on my toes to keep up with the line. Dad was right. It was tedious and monotonous work. After three months there, everyone near me on the line was exceptionally friendly. They'd expected me to be arrogant or condescending. They discovered how open, honest, and funny I was to be around. I was one of the gang and was treated with their respect. I came home tired at the end of every day but Faye always managed to rev my motor up until we fell asleep exhausted after our frequent sex sessions. I was truly, a lucky man.

However, the more I worked on hand-loading the labels into the machine, my mind pictured a mechanical way to accomplish the process which would increase speed and reduce labor. I shared my ideas with Stan, my supervisor. I asked him if I could work long lunches in the maintenance area every day on my project to see if I could build my vision to save time and money. He liked me so well, he didn't even ask his boss. He gave me the go-ahead and shifted another worker to my position while I was tinkering. Within three months, the maintenance staff was so excited about my project that they scheduled their time to integrate it into the machine while the conveyor was down next for its next major cleaning.

To everyone's amazement, it operated flawlessly. The speed of automatically loading the labels into itself matched the speed of the conveyor. All I needed to do was place a pallet of labels next to the automated loader and off it went. Stan went on to explain in detail, how the other processes worked on the conveyor line. But after 17 months, I was transferred to the receiving department and received my dollar increase. At about this same time, Faye announced that she was pregnant. We had talked about starting a family but had not agreed upon the timing yet. Of course, we were living proof that the pill is not 100% effective. However, I was thrilled to become a dad. Our precious little daughter, Tamara Davenport, came into the world with a full set of lungs on her. Faye and I couldn't have been prouder parents. Her parents and mine were delighted with her arrival. Tamara was a dearly loved child.

Brandon was graduating with his Business Administration degree from GWU. We all attended his graduation ceremony. After we brought Tamara home, he often brought over many stuffed animals to adorn her baby room and assumed his role perfectly as her adoring uncle. Life was good.

But then came the shock. I should have anticipated it. I should have known from experience that leopards don't change their spots.

Brandon was given a job within the company as Chief Administrative Officer, reporting directly to dad. He was the head of all of the department managers. His job description was to help our company improve its performance by reviewing processes, developing new policies, and managing projects. In essence, he was my bosses, boss, with a starting salary of $134,000.00, four-and-a-half times my annual income.

When I confronted dad about the contrast between Brandon and me, he simply explained that Brandon's four-year BA degree made him eligible for the upper management position. He said also that I should be proud of my brother's accomplishments saying I was over-expecting my ambitions within the company given my limited capabilities. He urged me to look elsewhere if I was unhappy with my present situation. I was determined to prove my worth in my father's eyes. I don't know why but I was driven to attain parental approval. Surprisingly, Brandon never lorded his position of authority over me as I had expected him to do. On the contrary, he was always quite nice to me. I have no idea what induced his change for the better but I warmed to his newfound maturity. We grew even closer as a result.

During my time in the receiving department, storage space for pallets of powdered ingredients utilized for paint mixes was at a premium. We had plenty of large tanks in the basement to dump and hold the various latex and alkyd liquid ingredients, about twelve in all. Pallets of bags of chemicals used took up all of the floor space. After several months working in receiving, I convinced my boss to invest in a set of heavy-duty storage shelves, similar to those used in the big box stores but even heavier-duty. He had a budget surplus, so I eventually convinced him to purchase and install them along a back wall. He soon saw the wisdom of my ways and convinced Brandon to spring for more of the shelving units. Doing so quadrupled our storage capacity and sped up production. Limitations of powdered products were no longer the controlling factor in the size of batches we could run. Again, productivity increased as a result.

Next, I was moved to Conveyor can-loading and was now paid $17.00 per hour. Along with three others, I hand-loaded the empty paint cans into the conveyor system to receive the paint product. As before, the lightbulb came on in my head and I was permitted to explore the development of an automated loading system, similar in theory to my label-loading modification. This was much more complicated than the label loader. It involved seeing-eye robotics. I was allowed to build a prototype for the station I loaded. When it was installed, my boss had kittens over it and pleaded for the funds to build three more just like it. Product line efficiency was increased yet again. Faye told me how proud she was of my creative abilities. She made certain that I was well-rewarded intimately every night. I was a happy camper.

Eighteen months later I was moved to Line Flushing and Cleaning. After a batch of product was run, the lines had to be completely flushed and cleaned to ready them to deliver the next batch of a different paint product. It was a time-consuming process to prevent cross-contamination to ensure the highest purity and quality of the product. I asked my supervisor for permission to install a set of parallel distribution pipes. In this way, using three-way changeover valves, the next batch of different product could be run immediately, while the contaminated lines were flushed and cleaned with the product line still running. It was a huge success. With four lines running simultaneously, the previous can loaders who were no longer needed shifted to line flushing on an almost continual basis. Production again was greatly improved.

I loved my family life. Tamara was a handful as a toddler but when she put her arms around my neck and told me that she loved her daddy, I melted into a puddle every time.

My next position was in the Filling Station. I monitored and made adjustments to ensure that the correct quantities of paint were accurately delivered to each can. There wasn't a lot of improvement I could see in that department but our production runs were now limited by our fill times. I suggested we add four more filling nozzles which allowed the filling of eight cans simultaneously instead of the original four. Doing so on all four lines immensely sped up production yield for each day. Productivity rose yet again. As always, I loved working with each group and made fast friends at every station.

Similar results were achieved in my positions in the Mixing Department, Lab - sample testing of raw materials and paint product quality, the Maintenance Department, and as a forklift operator in the shipping department. I was now earning $23.00 per hour but over the same period, Faye's wages had also increased from $28.50 to $35.00 now. She was doing very well there and was still the primary breadwinner of our family. Tamara was now thirteen-years-old and had me wrapped around her little finger. The only tiffs Faye and I had about money was the exorbitant amount she spent on clothing. Even though she wore scrubs over her clothes in the orthodontia office, she always purchased very expensive dresses and clothing to wear to work. She bought costly sexy lingerie that I never saw her wear but she just had to have. Some women have shoe fetishes. Faye's fetish was women's clothing. I couldn't counter her argument that, since she earned more than me, she should be able to buy whatever she feels necessary to meet her perceived needs. That notwithstanding, she never left me with any unmet sexual needs. Some couples can get into a rut. We never seemed to do that. She was a tigress in bed.

A year later, I was transferred to Warehouse Product Distribution - trucking, basically. Our plant was located within an older industrial development, and there was no room for expansion. Years ago, three additional large warehouse spaces had been purchased in different parts of the county, beyond city limits to avoid city property taxes. I was paid to train for, and secure my commercial driver's license credentials. I would make daily runs back and forth between the plant shipping department and directed warehouse locations for the particular product I was ferrying. The paint products would then be redirected all over the country to our various vendors. We'd recently celebrated Tamara's fourteenth birthday, and she had a slumber party to celebrate it. Needless to say, with a houseful of teenage girls, we received very little sleep that night.

I had just completed a full-load run from the plant to the warehouse and dropped off the trailer to be unloaded as their time permitted. I was on my way back to the plant without a trailer when the truck engine bogged down and quit on me. It refused to restart. It was an older model, and I believed it to be a transmission failure. My boss called a towing service to haul the truck to the service center that we normally use. He sent a runner to drive me back to the plant. Since it was nearly lunchtime, and I had no truck to continue driving, he told me to take the remainder of the day off with pay. Not needing to be told twice, I jumped in my car and headed home, figuring I'd make myself a bite of lunch, relax, and wait for my girls to come home to me.

Our modest home has no garage but it does have a decent-sized carport. I was puzzled to see two vehicles in my driveway. One belonged to my wife and the other, to my brother, Brandon. I thought that perhaps he was dropping something else off at the house for Tamara because he was always dropping by to give her things. But in the middle of a weekday?

Chapter-3

I entered my home expecting to find them in my living room or kitchen which were near the entrance but found no one. Rather than call out to them, I instinctively performed a quiet search due to my befuddlement. As I approached the master bedroom, I could hear the obvious sounds of intense orgasmic release from an enthusiastic amorous couple. The bedroom door was not quite closed. I could see in but didn't think they could see me through the crack. My wife, Faye, and my brother were finishing up having sex in my bed. In hindsight, I wish I had thought to record the encounter on my cell phone but I was so distraught and upset upon discovering this, my mind nearly went numb. This was reminiscent of him and Jenny years earlier.

As many couples do after experiencing such a passionate release, they rested there on the bed and began small talk. Emotionally, I felt gutted, but my brain wanted to hear anything that was said for clues as to why this was going on behind my back. I knew that Brandon was a snake but Faye's betrayal cut me to the quick. The two naked bodies were still catching their breath as my brother spoke first.

"I know I agreed to this but I'm getting tired of sneaking around every time we get together to have sex. How many times have you told me you love me more than him? Don't you love me enough to leave him and marry me?"

"Yes, of course, I love you more, silly, and his dinky penis doesn't hold a candle to your big woman-pleasing wand. You have no idea how many orgasms I've faked for him. But a deal's a deal and we both made a deal and we need to stick to it," my loving wife cooed.