I Am a Slut Wife & I Submit to Any Man
Christine Doyle
An Obelisk Library eBook
Smashwords Edition
2012
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Copyright © 2012 by The Obelisk Library
Cover art by (re)Process the Past, 2012. Used by permission.
My husband had a secure job and for five years we were fine, I stayed home and finished my M.A. in art history. The came the economic bust in 2008 followed by rising gas prices and Obama fucking things up in the White House. Things got really bad in 2011 with the stock market tumbling, which hurt us in our various investments, and the high rate of unemployment.
I got a job at an academic publisher where my art history degree was actually beneficial: I managed the various art criticism and literary journals (sending out manuscripts to peer reviewers and editors, then keeping track of the production for those articles accepted for publication) and acquiring text books in art, mathematics and social sciences. The firm got taken over and we all thought we were going to lose our jobs, but it wasn’t that bad. Some people had to go, but I have been there quite a long time and I was staying. The only change was that we got a new executive managing editor from the company that took us over. That really changed everything. He was a brute with a British accent. This new boss settled in for a few days. He introduced himself and told everybody he wanted a happy workforce, but he was frightening. He was forty-four and very tall, which I am not, and he had a loud voice. Twice during the first week he came to me and said I had done a lousy job copy-editing some manuscripts. The first time he threw two manuscripts down in front of me, on my desk, and said, “This isn’t good enough, Mrs. Doyle! Look at these. Three errors in grammar and one misspelled word. We are a professional company here. We publish important and verified articles and books. We cannot afford to look like amateurs.”
I couldn’t look up at him. I just mumbled sorry and left the office.
Next time it happened there were three manuscripts with one error in each. He threw the manuscripts down on my desk again and said, “You should know how to handle a copy-editing and production properly by now.”
I think he sensed
something about me that interested him because the next thing he said
was that if I valued my job I was going to have to get my head out of
the clouds and concentrate better; yet his voice was softer than
usual.
At the end of the week we were having a big meeting.
All the new top bosses were going to be telling us about their plans
for the company and what had to be done for us to survive in the new
situation.
When the shift was finishing and we were just
going to go to the meeting, the new foreman turned up again with a
packet of sausages in his hand. Oh No! I thought. He is going to sack
me. Instead of that he just threw the packet down and said.
“That’s
six. Six of the worst. We can’t have any more of these poor
standards. That deserves six of the best I think. Don’t you
Christine?”
Before I could say or do anything he stomped off
to the meeting. The management said a load of stuff that I didn’t
really understand except that things were going to be tough and we
all had to work harder and better for no more money. Drinks and
sandwiches were laid on afterwards and I had a couple more glasses of
vodka than I ought to when Karl, the foreman came over to me.
“You
and I need to talk. Come on out to my car.”
Before I
knew what I was doing I was following him out to the car park. We
were driving along in a direction that I didn’t know and my head
was spinning. I didn’t dare say a word and I was scared.
Karl
drove into really dark woodland and then he drove into a picnic
place. There was nobody around at all. He got out of the car, came
round to my side and opened the door.
“Get out.”
Still
without saying anything I did what he said. He took my arm and led me
round to the front of the car. It was a big, black Volvo with a long
front. He told me to bend over and put my hands on the bonnet. I
wasn’t sure whether to do what he said or not, but I did.
When
I was there he said: “You know your work isn’t up to standard,
don’t you?”