The Education of Markus
Note: This story contains language and themes not suitable for younger readers.
I.
His Father was what Markus had recently learned in political science class was called a "libertarian”. That was fine with Markus, but the ways his Father acted out his socio-political tendencies were a regular source of shame for Marcus. In other words, because of them Markus caught hell at his private school.
Exhibit A: By design his Father was by far the wealthiest man in their neighborhood, and their more than ample family home butted up against the community's small lake and the walking trail that encircled the water. The lake took the sunset beautifully in the early evening, and its trail was a favorite place for local families to stroll.
His Father's living room had wall to wall windows. He’d built the house that way in part so Markus' family could enjoy the view. Yet, according to his Father, the windows served another purpose even more essential than aesthetics.
The massive windows allowed the community to see Markus’ father as it strolled by. The windows also allowed the community to know that they were seen by him. Every time the native townspeople walked by they were forced to realize yet again that their Civic Manager was in complete control.
It was during these evening peak pedestrian hours that Markus' Father would often turn on his 110-inch high-definition television, slip on his head phones, and watch hard pornography.
More than a few times, Markus had wandered into the living-room and seen an actress taking three different men three different ways at once, the engorged body parts rendered clearer than life and four times actual size.
And just a dozen feet beyond, through the pristine panes of glass, Markus had seen a family with small children staring aghast, their stroller stalled, their religiously-mandated head-coverings colluding with the falling shadows to hide their eyes from his.
Word of his Father's habits got around to his friends at school, and Markus was embarrassed.
It wasn't the porn that shamed him. Like his classmates, Markus was a fourteen-year-old boy not beholden to the restrictive moral codes and demur fashion trends of the strange community over which Markus’ Father ruled. Like his schoolmates, Markus was from a distant, more enlightened place. His Father had been transferred two years ago to manage this small, dirty community. His Father’s family had no choice but to come along. So, Markus was here.
Markus, truth be told, didn’t mind porn in the least. He was ashamed because of how his school friends, horny bastards themselves, were awed by his father's antics. It was as if his Father's depravity was gauche, even to the sex-crazed eyes of Markus’ pimply comrades. Markus found this both astonishing and shameful.
Yet, deeper still, Markus was ashamed because his Father's choices reflected no concern at all for the families walking the trail. Those families were backwards, poor, weak, and clearly inferior. (It was, after all, Markus' Father managing them and not the other way around).
But deep within himself Markus couldn't shake the sense these people were still people and worthy of respect.
Markus had considered talking to his mother about his troubles, but he'd finally decided against it. He considered it pointless. His mother was a downbeat woman taken to pills, too much sleep, and strange interpretations of even stranger dreams. So, with nowhere else to go, Markus decided to take the most direct but most dangerous route available to him. He decided to talk to his Father about it.
Markus was afraid of his Father, but he wasn't terrified of him, as many people in the community were. For, as his Father's only son, Markus knew that in ways unseen by most, his Father was a diplomatic, wise, and even kind man.
So one evening, after walking in on his Father's movie, Markus did not turn around and slink away. Instead, Markus challenged him.
Markus gestured for his Father to speak with him, and his Father complied. He paused his pornography, took off his headphones, and invited Markus to sit beside him on the sofa.
Markus gestured to the immense vulva on the screen and to the windows, and then he just came out with it: "Father, how can you do this?"
His Father paused for a moment, nodded, and responded carefully. His Father responded not with anger but with a thoughtful seriousness Markus knew was his version of kindness. "Son, the people strolling by need to know I can do as I please when I please."
Then, in a snap, he switched emotional gears. Markus’ Father chuckled and said, "And, after all, Markus, I'm a libertarian. If the people of the community don't like what they see on my screen, they can avert their eyes, cover their children's faces, and pick up the pace of their stroll."
This did not fully satisfy Markus, and so he pushed on knowing full well that his insolence invited a beating with the rod.
"Father, I know from my classes that libertarians want other people, especially the government, to stay out of their personal business. But you manage these people. You are the government. You can have any of these people killed whenever and wherever you wish. How can you be both a libertarian and their master?"
His Father did not frown, and he did not reach for the rod. Instead he smiled and clapped Markus on the back. It was a warm gesture, and Markus basked in it even as he was shocked by its sudden appearance.
"Oh my! Son, you've grown perceptive. You are well on your way to following in my steps. Here’s your answer, Markus: I’m a wise man. Above all things, a wise man in my position knows when to be a libertarian and when to be a totalitarian.
"Markus, the wise manager knows when to order death and when to allow the people the liberty to choose it themselves. Now go to your room, and leave me to my work."
With that the headphones went back on, the frozen sexual escapades on the screen burst back into motion, and Markus retired to his bed to toss, turn, and lose himself in fitful dreams.
II.
In the five years that followed, Markus thought often of that conversation, but he'd assumed his Father had forgotten it. His Father had not forgotten.
Markus, now nineteen, and his Father, now graying from the relentless pressure of his vocation, stood together upon the entrance landing of the Manager's Building. The grand building preened at the center of Community Square, an ever-present sign to the locals of the gilded, distant power his Father represented in this sad, little place.
The landing stood at the top of a great wave of steps. At the foot of the steps a large crowd of locals was gathered. It seemed like almost everyone in the community had come out to see the bitter show about to begin.
As Markus gazed across the crowd, occasionally he thought he locked eyes with someone he’d noticed looking into his family's living room over the years. In those moments his stomach dropped, but he could never be sure. The local people all looked alike with their sand-colored headscarves and olive eyes.
It was the main festival day for the people his Father managed. Father had told Markus that morning over orange juice and bacon that it was on this day The Manager must display control and wield death. For it was on this day the community was tempted to underestimate his power and, in a fit of religious delusion, overestimate theirs.
As his heir and understudy, Markus stood on the landing to his Father's right. To his Father's left were two men, two prisoners, two locals. Both looked to be in their thirties, but it was hard to tell given the bruises, blood, and dirt overwhelming their flesh.
As a tool of domination and shame, his Father had his assistants strip both men. And so there they stood, naked before a multitude of their modest brethren, their cocks shriveled and subjected, perhaps for the first time, to the rays of the sun.
One of the men Markus did not know anything about specifically, but he knew his type very well. The man's eyes never left Markus' Father, and with each blink of those eyes, Markus was sure the hairy, rebellious man prayed for his god to split open his Father's head.
You could predict this man's crime more easily than you could predict the entrée for dinner that night. This man surely had killed one of his Father's assistants in some pointless fit of rage and political exasperation. Such men were common and such crimes happened with mechanical regularity.
With the past as his guide, Markus suspected this man would die today. And at dinner tonight his Father would weigh the pros and cons of having the executed prisoner's newly-minted widow sodomized as a further sign that rebellious acts would not be tolerated in civil society.
The other prisoner kept his eyes on his feet and his face blank. From time to time the second prisoner’s lips moved, animated by some silent prayer or thought. Markus knew more about this naked rebel than his Father knew, although Markus kept his knowledge a secret from almost everyone except himself.
Markus had first noticed the man through random stories overheard at school, mostly from the sons of well-placed soldiers. The soldiers, men accustomed to slitting throats and ordering people into bloody battles, seemed perturbed and unsettled by the bloodless way the prisoner controlled crowds. And, as soldiers who were by nature suspicious pessimists, they wondered how much longer before the strange man’s tactics changed and blood finally entered the equation.
As his Father's protégé, Marcus had his own network of bribery and information, and he had marshaled it to learn more about this prisoner, all the while not really knowing why he wanted to know more.
Markus bought many stories, but one in particular stuck in his mind as Markus stood on the dais ten feet from the prisoner. Markus replayed the story in his mind as he tried to keep his eyes from the prisoner's exposed penis. Markus looked away as a subtle sign of respect.
The prisoner had made friends with a powerful local leader who was from the most prudish party of the people his Father suffered to manage. The prisoner had gone to a dinner party hosted by the leader of the prudes. In the middle of the meal, the party was crashed.
A neighborhood whore strode into the room carrying a bottle of expensive lotion. As Markus’ source told him the tale, the spy made sure at this point to linger over the party crasher’s pendulous breasts, painted lips, flowing hair, and charcoaled eyes. The description had become so florid and overdone that Markus forced the source to get on with the story, even though Markus felt himself stir below.
The prostitute went to the prisoner, dropped on her knees before him, and uncorked the lotion. As he heard the tale, Markus could not believe what was about to happen in the midst of that collection of prudes. It was as if a plot line from his Father’s skin films was coming to life in the most absurd setting imaginable. Soon, slicked with cream, the whore’s hands would be around the man’s erect phallus in the plain sight of the dinner party.
As the spy told it, the woman uncorked the bottle and slicked her hands with its contents, but she didn’t then move to the man’s crotch. She moved to his feet. She massaged them. She wiped from them the caked dirt of the community’s filthy roads. And, in the middle of her service, in the midst of four dozen eyes fixed upon her in horror, the woman began to weep great sobs of release and grief. She began to moan – not in orgasm, but in regret.
And the prisoner allowed the woman to moan and weep and wipe his feet dry with her hair. He did not reduce the tension in the room. He did not minimize the shock and offense of the local leader and his sycophants. He just looked at the woman peaceably and let the wave of her sorrow crest, collapse into the shore, and retreat.
When her tears had spent themselves, the prisoner placed his hand under the woman’s chin and lifted it slowly until his eyes met hers. Then he brought her face so close to his that her snotty nose was almost touching him. Markus’ source said he was sure they were about to kiss.
Instead of a kiss the prisoner spoke to her in a voice much louder than a whisper but, like a whisper, filled with breath. The spy said it was as if the man were trying to force his words into her lungs.
The prisoner said to her: "I forgive your sins. You are a daughter of God."
That set the dinner guests talking wildly with disbelief. "Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!" The man ignored them and said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."
III.
Markus' Father gestured for the crowd to be quiet. As the murmur faded, he leaned his head toward Markus and spoke in a voice only Markus could hear. His Father’s intimate whisper shocked Markus back into the moment.
"Son, do you remember our first conversation about wisdom and management, about wielding liberty and power? You remember it, don’t you? It was that conversation in the living room when you interrupted my entertainment?"
"Yes, Father, I do. But I'd thought you’d forgotten it."
"Indeed not, Markus. Now watch this." Markus' Father nudged Markus playfully in the ribs with his elbow, one conspirator to another. Then he lifted his voice above the crowd.
"People, I am a wise man, a man who seeks to honor you, your customs, your sacred memories, and your hopes. I know this is a day of freedom for you, a memorial day of liberty. So I give a bit of my power to you for you to use freely as you wish. Whichever prisoner you choose will go free. Whichever prisoner you do not choose shall die. The choice is yours."
Markus saw the prisoner who doled out forgiveness to whores, the prisoner with the downcast eyes, raise his eyes for the first time and look upon his Father. There was a slight smile on the man’s bludgeoned lips. Markus sensed the smile said to his Father, “Well played.”
A few moments later, and much to his Father’s surprise, the crowd called a curse down upon the man known to Markus through the expensive stories of spies. When the verdict came, for some reason Markus felt it hard to breathe. He used all of his will to maintain himself before his Father and the crowd he would one day manage.
With the verdict given, the crowd started to drift away. The prisoners were led into the building through different doors, into different types of bureaucratic processing, into different futures.
In his mind, Markus held the prisoner destined for death beside his Father, as one might hold for comparison two pieces of fruit from a market stall. Holding them there, Markus thought for a moment and then made a decision.
For now, it was a decision just for him to know. Yet Markus knew, even in the first moments after his decision, that for the decision to sprout roots, grow a trunk, and bear fruit, it must eventually be known to all who knew Markus.
Markus decided that come what may, one of these two men was his true Father. It was not the one whose semen had created him. It was not the one who had picked Markus up, slick from his mother's womb, and said, "I elect to spare him exposure on the hillside beyond the gate. I will raise him."
It was the other man. It was the dirty man about to die. It was the fool for whom Markus wanted to become a fool.
There was a tap on Markus' shoulder and a deep voice heavy in his ear. "Son, our work is done for today. It’s time for dinner. Let’s go eat."
His Father was what Markus had recently learned in political science class was called a "libertarian”. That was fine with Markus, but the ways his Father acted out his socio-political tendencies were a regular source of shame for Marcus. In other words, because of them Markus caught hell at his private school.
Exhibit A: By design his Father was by far the wealthiest man in their neighborhood, and their more than ample family home butted up against the community's small lake and the walking trail that encircled the water. The lake took the sunset beautifully in the early evening, and its trail was a favorite place for local families to stroll.
His Father's living room had wall to wall windows. He’d built the house that way in part so Markus' family could enjoy the view. Yet, according to his Father, the windows served another purpose even more essential than aesthetics.
The massive windows allowed the community to see Markus’ father as it strolled by. The windows also allowed the community to know that they were seen by him. Every time the native townspeople walked by they were forced to realize yet again that their Civic Manager was in complete control.
It was during these evening peak pedestrian hours that Markus' Father would often turn on his 110-inch high-definition television, slip on his head phones, and watch hard pornography.
More than a few times, Markus had wandered into the living-room and seen an actress taking three different men three different ways at once, the engorged body parts rendered clearer than life and four times actual size.
And just a dozen feet beyond, through the pristine panes of glass, Markus had seen a family with small children staring aghast, their stroller stalled, their religiously-mandated head-coverings colluding with the falling shadows to hide their eyes from his.
Word of his Father's habits got around to his friends at school, and Markus was embarrassed.
It wasn't the porn that shamed him. Like his classmates, Markus was a fourteen-year-old boy not beholden to the restrictive moral codes and demur fashion trends of the strange community over which Markus’ Father ruled. Like his schoolmates, Markus was from a distant, more enlightened place. His Father had been transferred two years ago to manage this small, dirty community. His Father’s family had no choice but to come along. So, Markus was here.
Markus, truth be told, didn’t mind porn in the least. He was ashamed because of how his school friends, horny bastards themselves, were awed by his father's antics. It was as if his Father's depravity was gauche, even to the sex-crazed eyes of Markus’ pimply comrades. Markus found this both astonishing and shameful.
Yet, deeper still, Markus was ashamed because his Father's choices reflected no concern at all for the families walking the trail. Those families were backwards, poor, weak, and clearly inferior. (It was, after all, Markus' Father managing them and not the other way around).
But deep within himself Markus couldn't shake the sense these people were still people and worthy of respect.
Markus had considered talking to his mother about his troubles, but he'd finally decided against it. He considered it pointless. His mother was a downbeat woman taken to pills, too much sleep, and strange interpretations of even stranger dreams. So, with nowhere else to go, Markus decided to take the most direct but most dangerous route available to him. He decided to talk to his Father about it.
Markus was afraid of his Father, but he wasn't terrified of him, as many people in the community were. For, as his Father's only son, Markus knew that in ways unseen by most, his Father was a diplomatic, wise, and even kind man.
So one evening, after walking in on his Father's movie, Markus did not turn around and slink away. Instead, Markus challenged him.
Markus gestured for his Father to speak with him, and his Father complied. He paused his pornography, took off his headphones, and invited Markus to sit beside him on the sofa.
Markus gestured to the immense vulva on the screen and to the windows, and then he just came out with it: "Father, how can you do this?"
His Father paused for a moment, nodded, and responded carefully. His Father responded not with anger but with a thoughtful seriousness Markus knew was his version of kindness. "Son, the people strolling by need to know I can do as I please when I please."
Then, in a snap, he switched emotional gears. Markus’ Father chuckled and said, "And, after all, Markus, I'm a libertarian. If the people of the community don't like what they see on my screen, they can avert their eyes, cover their children's faces, and pick up the pace of their stroll."
This did not fully satisfy Markus, and so he pushed on knowing full well that his insolence invited a beating with the rod.
"Father, I know from my classes that libertarians want other people, especially the government, to stay out of their personal business. But you manage these people. You are the government. You can have any of these people killed whenever and wherever you wish. How can you be both a libertarian and their master?"
His Father did not frown, and he did not reach for the rod. Instead he smiled and clapped Markus on the back. It was a warm gesture, and Markus basked in it even as he was shocked by its sudden appearance.
"Oh my! Son, you've grown perceptive. You are well on your way to following in my steps. Here’s your answer, Markus: I’m a wise man. Above all things, a wise man in my position knows when to be a libertarian and when to be a totalitarian.
"Markus, the wise manager knows when to order death and when to allow the people the liberty to choose it themselves. Now go to your room, and leave me to my work."
With that the headphones went back on, the frozen sexual escapades on the screen burst back into motion, and Markus retired to his bed to toss, turn, and lose himself in fitful dreams.
II.
In the five years that followed, Markus thought often of that conversation, but he'd assumed his Father had forgotten it. His Father had not forgotten.
Markus, now nineteen, and his Father, now graying from the relentless pressure of his vocation, stood together upon the entrance landing of the Manager's Building. The grand building preened at the center of Community Square, an ever-present sign to the locals of the gilded, distant power his Father represented in this sad, little place.
The landing stood at the top of a great wave of steps. At the foot of the steps a large crowd of locals was gathered. It seemed like almost everyone in the community had come out to see the bitter show about to begin.
As Markus gazed across the crowd, occasionally he thought he locked eyes with someone he’d noticed looking into his family's living room over the years. In those moments his stomach dropped, but he could never be sure. The local people all looked alike with their sand-colored headscarves and olive eyes.
It was the main festival day for the people his Father managed. Father had told Markus that morning over orange juice and bacon that it was on this day The Manager must display control and wield death. For it was on this day the community was tempted to underestimate his power and, in a fit of religious delusion, overestimate theirs.
As his heir and understudy, Markus stood on the landing to his Father's right. To his Father's left were two men, two prisoners, two locals. Both looked to be in their thirties, but it was hard to tell given the bruises, blood, and dirt overwhelming their flesh.
As a tool of domination and shame, his Father had his assistants strip both men. And so there they stood, naked before a multitude of their modest brethren, their cocks shriveled and subjected, perhaps for the first time, to the rays of the sun.
One of the men Markus did not know anything about specifically, but he knew his type very well. The man's eyes never left Markus' Father, and with each blink of those eyes, Markus was sure the hairy, rebellious man prayed for his god to split open his Father's head.
You could predict this man's crime more easily than you could predict the entrée for dinner that night. This man surely had killed one of his Father's assistants in some pointless fit of rage and political exasperation. Such men were common and such crimes happened with mechanical regularity.
With the past as his guide, Markus suspected this man would die today. And at dinner tonight his Father would weigh the pros and cons of having the executed prisoner's newly-minted widow sodomized as a further sign that rebellious acts would not be tolerated in civil society.
The other prisoner kept his eyes on his feet and his face blank. From time to time the second prisoner’s lips moved, animated by some silent prayer or thought. Markus knew more about this naked rebel than his Father knew, although Markus kept his knowledge a secret from almost everyone except himself.
Markus had first noticed the man through random stories overheard at school, mostly from the sons of well-placed soldiers. The soldiers, men accustomed to slitting throats and ordering people into bloody battles, seemed perturbed and unsettled by the bloodless way the prisoner controlled crowds. And, as soldiers who were by nature suspicious pessimists, they wondered how much longer before the strange man’s tactics changed and blood finally entered the equation.
As his Father's protégé, Marcus had his own network of bribery and information, and he had marshaled it to learn more about this prisoner, all the while not really knowing why he wanted to know more.
Markus bought many stories, but one in particular stuck in his mind as Markus stood on the dais ten feet from the prisoner. Markus replayed the story in his mind as he tried to keep his eyes from the prisoner's exposed penis. Markus looked away as a subtle sign of respect.
The prisoner had made friends with a powerful local leader who was from the most prudish party of the people his Father suffered to manage. The prisoner had gone to a dinner party hosted by the leader of the prudes. In the middle of the meal, the party was crashed.
A neighborhood whore strode into the room carrying a bottle of expensive lotion. As Markus’ source told him the tale, the spy made sure at this point to linger over the party crasher’s pendulous breasts, painted lips, flowing hair, and charcoaled eyes. The description had become so florid and overdone that Markus forced the source to get on with the story, even though Markus felt himself stir below.
The prostitute went to the prisoner, dropped on her knees before him, and uncorked the lotion. As he heard the tale, Markus could not believe what was about to happen in the midst of that collection of prudes. It was as if a plot line from his Father’s skin films was coming to life in the most absurd setting imaginable. Soon, slicked with cream, the whore’s hands would be around the man’s erect phallus in the plain sight of the dinner party.
As the spy told it, the woman uncorked the bottle and slicked her hands with its contents, but she didn’t then move to the man’s crotch. She moved to his feet. She massaged them. She wiped from them the caked dirt of the community’s filthy roads. And, in the middle of her service, in the midst of four dozen eyes fixed upon her in horror, the woman began to weep great sobs of release and grief. She began to moan – not in orgasm, but in regret.
And the prisoner allowed the woman to moan and weep and wipe his feet dry with her hair. He did not reduce the tension in the room. He did not minimize the shock and offense of the local leader and his sycophants. He just looked at the woman peaceably and let the wave of her sorrow crest, collapse into the shore, and retreat.
When her tears had spent themselves, the prisoner placed his hand under the woman’s chin and lifted it slowly until his eyes met hers. Then he brought her face so close to his that her snotty nose was almost touching him. Markus’ source said he was sure they were about to kiss.
Instead of a kiss the prisoner spoke to her in a voice much louder than a whisper but, like a whisper, filled with breath. The spy said it was as if the man were trying to force his words into her lungs.
The prisoner said to her: "I forgive your sins. You are a daughter of God."
That set the dinner guests talking wildly with disbelief. "Who does he think he is, forgiving sins!" The man ignored them and said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."
III.
Markus' Father gestured for the crowd to be quiet. As the murmur faded, he leaned his head toward Markus and spoke in a voice only Markus could hear. His Father’s intimate whisper shocked Markus back into the moment.
"Son, do you remember our first conversation about wisdom and management, about wielding liberty and power? You remember it, don’t you? It was that conversation in the living room when you interrupted my entertainment?"
"Yes, Father, I do. But I'd thought you’d forgotten it."
"Indeed not, Markus. Now watch this." Markus' Father nudged Markus playfully in the ribs with his elbow, one conspirator to another. Then he lifted his voice above the crowd.
"People, I am a wise man, a man who seeks to honor you, your customs, your sacred memories, and your hopes. I know this is a day of freedom for you, a memorial day of liberty. So I give a bit of my power to you for you to use freely as you wish. Whichever prisoner you choose will go free. Whichever prisoner you do not choose shall die. The choice is yours."
Markus saw the prisoner who doled out forgiveness to whores, the prisoner with the downcast eyes, raise his eyes for the first time and look upon his Father. There was a slight smile on the man’s bludgeoned lips. Markus sensed the smile said to his Father, “Well played.”
A few moments later, and much to his Father’s surprise, the crowd called a curse down upon the man known to Markus through the expensive stories of spies. When the verdict came, for some reason Markus felt it hard to breathe. He used all of his will to maintain himself before his Father and the crowd he would one day manage.
With the verdict given, the crowd started to drift away. The prisoners were led into the building through different doors, into different types of bureaucratic processing, into different futures.
In his mind, Markus held the prisoner destined for death beside his Father, as one might hold for comparison two pieces of fruit from a market stall. Holding them there, Markus thought for a moment and then made a decision.
For now, it was a decision just for him to know. Yet Markus knew, even in the first moments after his decision, that for the decision to sprout roots, grow a trunk, and bear fruit, it must eventually be known to all who knew Markus.
Markus decided that come what may, one of these two men was his true Father. It was not the one whose semen had created him. It was not the one who had picked Markus up, slick from his mother's womb, and said, "I elect to spare him exposure on the hillside beyond the gate. I will raise him."
It was the other man. It was the dirty man about to die. It was the fool for whom Markus wanted to become a fool.
There was a tap on Markus' shoulder and a deep voice heavy in his ear. "Son, our work is done for today. It’s time for dinner. Let’s go eat."