Welcome to Dystopia

My heart was broken long before we met, so when love came sneaking up, it was completely unexpected.

I’d grown up in the shadow of The Wall, but never given it much thought. It had always been there. It would always be there. I was grateful to be living on this side, where the Rio Grande provided water for the agricultural station my father ran, and kayaking provided some small relief from the late April humidity. I loved seeing the huisache bloom, their feathery yellow flowers mirrored in the river’s edge. My favorite time of day was early morning, before the worst of the heat. I would sit in my secret place and watch the sunlight glisten on the river, pretending the sparkles were stars that had fallen to earth the night before.

When I was young, I’d sometimes “borrow” my mother’s binoculars and focus on the migrant families working the fields to the north. They fascinated me, the way their children seemed to run everywhere without any sign of supervision. The way the women carried naked infants in slings across their breasts. The way they’d stop occasionally to nurse, or hold the infant aloft as it did its business in the grass. I’d never seen an adult woman’s breasts before, and as mine began to bud, the thought of what they’d become fascinated me.

And I must admit, I loved to look at the men as they worked bare-chested in the sun. Loved the way a drop of sweat would make its way from the nape of a neck to the top of the shoulder blades, then along the alley between, down and down and down, until it finally disappeared into parts unknown. Loved their wiry muscles, bunching and flexing as they grabbed at the plants, making my own still-forming parts throb and pulse. I had no name for it, this feeling of desire, but I gloried in it nonetheless.

I fell in love with Roger when he asked me to the 10^th grade dance. I’d been hopeful, but still, it came as a surprise. I was nothing to look at, although my lineage was good. Father a supervisor, mother a tracker—both respectable jobs, requiring intelligence, stamina, and leadership qualities. And, as Roger pointed out one starry night, a certain ruthlessness. Laughing, he said I’d managed to inherit them all, and some lucky fellow’s children would benefit from it one day.

That actually made me blush.

We dated all through high school, progressing from dry, fumbling kisses to “cupping,” as we called it. Roger would cup my breasts in his hands and tenderly kiss them through the fabric of my brassiere. In turn, I’d cup his balls through the fabric of his Bermuda shorts, lifting and assessing them until I could see his penis straining at the front, begging to be freed.

To this day, even seeing Bermuda shorts on a department store manikin gets me all hot and bothered.

But we never went “all the way.” We were saving that. I wasn’t sure for what, but it seemed like the right thing to do. My parents liked his parents, his parents liked my parents, and the backgrounds all checked out. Still, something in us hesitated. I used to think it was because we knew it would never work out in the end, but perhaps it was just cowardice.

I cheered for him at the football games, when his tight end went on the offense to break the line. I helped with his Spanish, since his tin ear made it nearly impossible to understand his labored sentences. He wanted to be a tracker, like my mother, and I encouraged him to get the best education possible. I knew a tracker needed grounding in geology, and topography, and half a dozen other subjects unavailable at our local community college. When he dreamed about attending Texas A&M, I even wrote the application for him.

He broke my heart on graduation day, taking me out to a beautiful dinner at the best our little town had to offer. Making sure it was public, so I couldn’t make a scene. Telling me without a shred of shame that we’d been great for high school, but now it was time to move on. Saying that as much as he’d enjoyed the fooling around, withholding himself had seemed the best way “to not get tied down.”

He thanked me for being a good sport.

He paid the bill.

He pulled out my chair.

He walked me home, and left me alone at the door.

I didn’t cry that night. I was too ashamed. When my parents asked how the evening had gone, I simply said I was tired, and made my way upstairs. I fell asleep almost immediately, and my dreams were filled with bronze-skinned men. We walked through the fields naked, letting the tall plants brush against our skin, weaving and waving and caressing without end. Strong arms lifted me into the wind, higher and higher, reaching toward the sky until I finally let go in one huge, orgasmic rush, and shuddered back to earth.

The next morning, I left early and went to my favorite place. There, hidden by the blackbrush and clapweed, I wept until my eyes were too puffy to see. I rinsed them in the river and made my way home.

That evening, I announced to my family that I’d broken up with him. “He’s just too slow,” I said. “I’ve kept it from you because I didn’t want to cause tension, but I had to write his college application for him. I had to walk him through Spanish class, too. I don’t know how he’ll manage in college, but I don’t want to find out the hard way.” He’d been fine for high school, I added, but it was time to move on.

And move on I did. Through my mother’s contacts, I managed to get an internship at LICE, our Local Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I began learning about the migrant workers who populated our fields, everything from their immigration status (H2-A visas, allowing them to stay as temporary workers) to breeding habits (birthrate dropping steadily, no one knew why). I learned that the word “temporary” didn’t have much meaning any more, because we needed them there to plant, and harvest, year round. The migrant workers had become the breadbasket of America, and we couldn’t let them go.

Because of Mother’s status in the field, I was trusted with information most interns never saw. There were problems with The Wall, problems nobody had foreseen. No one knew if there were similar issues on the other side; they’d cut off all communication in my great-grandparent’s time, when it was first built. But there were plenty of problems on our side.

I’d always been taught that the snipers were there to keep people from coming over the wall to our side. Now, I learned they were there mainly to keep people in. Trackers like my mother were occasionally permitted to “go over,” but the migrant families who’d been here when the wall went up, stayed, generation after generation, whether they liked it or not.

The distant gunfire we’d occasionally hear wasn’t from LICE agents defending our borders. It was from LICE agents shooting desperate workers as they tried to climb The Wall and get out.

I was troubled by what I learned, troubled enough to discuss it with my parents. Of course, they already knew all about it. My mother explained what a mess the country had been in before, terrorists running rampant and drug culture invading even the whitest homes. The Wall went up, immigration cracked down, and the country returned to its previous peaceful state.

Wasn’t I grateful I never had to worry about being raped when I walked home at night? Didn’t I understand that keeping those people here was, in a sense, saving them from the gang warfare that infested their own homeland? Besides, none of them were really Mexican any more. That was just a myth, like Palestinians claiming parts of Israel as “home.” True, the migrants weren’t really American either, but at least they had food, shelter, and a place to live.

Put that way, it all made sense. And I had a steady job waiting for me, if I keep my head down and didn’t make waves.

I rose through the ranks, from intern to Watcher to head of Enforcement and Education. I had my own desk, name plate and all, with an official title. I wouldn’t say I was happy, but I was certainly settled,

And then came Gabe. “Gabriel Alfonso Alvarez,” to be exact. Fourth generation green card holder, the right handed down from his great-greats in a direct line after the moratorium on new citizenship applications went into effect. Those original green cards, usually held by university professors or tech geniuses, were a closely guarded privilege. Even the head of our field office had never seen one before.

It had only been a few years since Roger’s betrayal, but during that time I’d convinced myself it was for the best. I’d slammed the lid on my desire so hard, I barely felt anything, even when I touched myself. The occasional bout with a vibrator was enough to release any built-up tension. As for the men around me, when I compared them with what I saw through my field glasses, they were pasty-faced and bloated. It would feel like being stroked by a dead fish. I’d set sex, and all thoughts of sex, completely aside.

So the hot flush that ran from my toes right up my hairline when Gabe first spoke my name was a shocking reminder that I still harbored a craving for contact. I managed to stammer something intelligent, like “How on earth do you know my name?” before lapsing into red-faced confusion.

Laughing, he pointed to the plate on the front of my desk, saying “You would be ‘Señorita’, then? Not ‘Señora’?”

“Yes,” I responded in my best I’m-the-teacher-here-don’t-get-out-of-line voice.

He sighed dramatically, slumping for effect. “A pity. Your offspring would be beautiful.”

Beautiful.

He thought I was beautiful.

Not “genetically clean,” or “well groomed,” but “beautiful.”

I don’t know that I’d ever spoken to a Hispanic person before, other than the women who cleaned our house over the years. They patiently let me practice my language skills on them. “Buenos dias, señoras,” I would say, and they’d respond with “Buenos tardes, señorita.” I would ask, in halting Spanish, how their day was going. “Bueno, señorita, bueno. Estamos muy contente,” they’d say, and we would be finished with the lesson.

I still dreamed of them, though, as I had all my life. Dreamed of Hispanic men, their golden bodies glistening in the sun. Wondered whether drops of their sweat had watered the tomato I brought to my mouth. Slowly savored a peach, licking the skin and imagining the sweet salt of their perspiration on it. And here he was, calling me “beautiful.”

I was lost.

Not that I was blind, nothing of the sort. I looked at him long and hard before agreeing to anything permanent. There were concerns. Gabe had tried his hand at half a dozen jobs, but never settled on anything. He had a small inheritance from his parents, and it was enough to provide the necessities, but not much more. Despite his obvious intelligence, he had no real drive. He’d come here, to our little town, hoping to find his passion.

And then, he found me.

I’d like to say it was love at first sight, but it was more like instant lust. He asked whether I was seeing anyone, then took me to lunch. We stayed through dinner. He walked me home, striding confidently through the town, oblivious to the stares and whispers. He moved sinuously, muscles obeying without thought. I could feel them through the sleeve of his shirt when I took his arm. It was like walking with a tiger.

I want to be clear. I loved him then, as he was, and I love him now, as he is.

We dated for several months, while my parents ran the usual checks. I understand it was much the same during the age of AIDS, when two people interested in sex would go to the doctor together and get tested. Protective measures. After all, no woman in her right mind wants to get pregnant and then find out her child’s genes also came from an anarchist or, God forbid, a terrorist.

Gabe came up clean in every respect, for three generations back. No questionable antecedents. No criminal elements. Nothing but your basic hard-working American dreamers.

After that, events moved along by themselves. We married with little hoopla, took our honeymoon in San Antonio, then settled down. Thanks to my parents, he was able to get a job supervising workers in the broccoli fields. He seemed to enjoy himself.

As for me, I was deliriously happy. Every pent up emotion came roaring out the first time he touched me. I think I even fainted for a moment.

He was an incredible lover, knowing just how far to push and just how long to make me wait. And, he was inexhaustible. We’d make love first thing in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, come home, make love again, have dinner, and sometimes make love for a third time. There wasn’t a spot in the house we hadn’t tried, from the guest shower to the kitchen table.

We didn’t plan on children, at least, not yet. I wanted him all to myself. I loved to watch him, shirtless in the Texas heat, as he mowed the yard. I needed to feast my eyes on his skin, and imagine what the night was going to bring. Just the sight of his fingers buttoning a shirt made me wet. Absurd as it sounds, watching him take out the trash made me weak at the knees. I was in perpetual rut, and it showed no sign of ending.

Back at work, things were different. There was tension around the border, whispers of trouble passed desk to desk when no one else was listening. More and more of the migrant workers were dying, of old age, of illness, of simple neglect. We saw the reports and were told to ignore them. “Don’t worry. They breed like rabbits,” one supervisor said.

But that wasn’t true. The migrant laborer’s birth rate had begun falling a year after they were told they were permanent guests here, and the decline had continued. According to the Homeland Security statistics, we had less than half the workers we’d had three generations back—and almost twice the regular population. Asking Americans to work under those conditions was unthinkable. Paying a decent wage, which might allow migrants to send their children to school and work their way out of the fields, was unaffordable. Americans wanted cheap food, be it soda pop or brussel sprouts, and they didn’t much care how they got it.

The anxiety I felt at work began to surface in our home. As Gabe moved around, from broccoli to tomatoes to sweet corn and snap beans, he began to know individual families. He’d come home each day and tell me their stories as we lay sweating in the heat, exhausted by foreplay and its aftermath. He worried over them. He felt helpless.

There was one little boy he kept returning to, a seven year old named Hector. The child was obviously very bright, Gabe said, but he’ll never have the chance to be anything but a “potato puller.”

When Gabe started talking about changing the system from without, if it couldn’t be changed from within, I realized his kind heart might be his undoing.

I worried over it incessantly. The more involved he became with the migrants, the more I begged him to distance himself. He began to resent what he termed my lack of empathy. I began to resent his willingness to throw away everything his family, and mine, had worked for over the years.

“Aren’t you grateful to your ancestors for making sure you never have to live like that?” I’d ask. “Don’t you owe them something for their bravery, their willingness to rise above their beginnings and make this their permanent home?”

And he’d respond that the workers’ families had been brave as well, coming to a new country where they didn’t even speak the language, working in the fields, hoping their children would have a better life too.

We’d argue, pushing and pulling, going around in circles. I’d bring up our future children; he’d answer that he didn’t want them growing up in a world where only those who already had, could have more. I’d tell him that for every bright little Hector, there were a hundred slow-moving dullards who were fit only to till the soil. He’d tell me that if my parents hadn’t gotten enough protein, I’d be a dullard as well. And so on and so on.

Frustration grew on both sides until I reached for him one morning, and he pushed me away. I rubbed against him, whispering in his ear, but he rolled over and ignored me.

A few evenings later, he came in and immediately hopped in the shower, then fell asleep on the couch. When I woke him up to bring him to bed, he said he’d forgotten his hat that morning. He thought he had a bit of sunstroke, but just in case he was getting sick, he’d sleep on the couch instead of our bed.

And so, slowly but surely, the love making stopped. I felt like I was losing my mind. My body was used to constant satiation, an erupting geyser that was suddenly capped off. The pressure began to build. I could relieve myself just so many times before I began feeling like a narcissist. Frankly, I only found my own body interesting when Gabe was playing with it. Otherwise, relief was a mechanical necessity, and I hated it. I was desperate for something that would take my mind off my body, and not finding it at home, I looked for it at work.

So when a rumor went around about a special meeting coming up, I was all ears. The affected employees had to sign a full non-disclosure agreement, on top of the multiple secrecy papers we already signed off on again at the start of every year. There were dire warnings about what would happen to anyone found taping, or filming, or even taking notes. We talked about it in the restrooms and around the water cooler, speculating on what could make the administration so nervous.

They held the meeting in our regular conference room, but the windows were blacked out. Once we were all in, the door was locked. A U.S. marine stood at either side of the door, weapons at the ready. All four senior department heads were there: North, South, East and West. There were a few local employees like myself, along with several representatives from the agricultural and chemical industry. And a slew of government officials, with buzz-cut scalps and chests full of metal.

Last to enter was the Surgeon General, who told us all to sit down while he made his opening remarks.

He explained that the birth rate problem among migrant workers had finally come to the attention of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), who’d contacted the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), who in turn had called in the NSA (National Security Administration). The security people then reached out to all the scientists under their command, demanding an answer that would ensure America’s continuing food supply.

The scientists were given carte blanche funding, and a few months ago they’d presented the NSA with a potential solution.

From there, it went to the Secretary of Defense, and then to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Finally, the National Security Council, who advised the President directly, were brought in. They informed the President of their conclusions. He, in turn, heaved a sigh of relief at such an elegant solution, and green-lighted it immediately.

After that, the army Chief of Staff took the floor. He reminded us of our patriotic duty. He said that while The Wall protected our nation’s borders, we were the human wall that stood guard over the rest. While we might not like it, we had to face the fact that stringent measures were needed. We had to safeguard our country’s future, not just for ourselves, but for our children. While the solution might appear drastic at first, he was sure we’d come to understand that it was all for the best in the end.

In closing, the Chief of Staff said “Let there be no confusion here. We will not take away anything that will be missed.”

Then he introduced a team of army neuroscientists, telling them with a grin to “keep it simple, keep it basic, keep it quick.”

The lights went out, and projections of human brains appeared on the walls. There were specific sections, colored pink and blue and green, labeled ventromedial prefrontal cortex, left anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala. The youngest in the group pulled out an old fashioned pointer, and proceeded to tell us what each area did. It was incredibly boring.

When the lights went back on, an older neuroscientist took over, explaining that thanks to government-sponsored research, they’d recently made some tremendous technological advances. For instance, they could now isolate precise regions of the brain. Not just over-all areas dealing with specifics like math, or speech, but the more fluid areas. The parts that governed free will. Happiness.

Sexual desire.

Operation MASS, or Migrant Attitude Selection Service, would ensure that only the most necessary areas of the brain were targeted. Husbands would still love their wives, and children would continue to love their parents. The only changes would be in their over-all happiness quotient, and their increased desire to “go forth and multiply.”

There were snickers all around when he said that, because any Sunday School student knew that the phrase from Genesis 1:28 was Biblically polite short-hand for “Get you some nookie, and fast!”

Under the guise of free dental check-ups, workers’ heads would be held still so x-rays could be taken. At the same time, a guided laser operating outside the detection range of the human eye would swoop in, destroying some bits of tissue, and exciting others. The patient would feel nothing but the dental plate clenched between his teeth.

As he droned on, the army people paying close attention, the rest of us were busy trying to figure out how this would apply to our own jobs. Sure, we’d be a necessary part of convincing the workers to go in for check-ups in the first place, but how exactly would that be done?

The obvious answer was to have some of the field supervisors volunteer to go first. That way, the migrants could see it was safe, and painless. They’d even be given the day off with pay, courtesy of a grateful U.S. government. The chemical companies would foot the bill for that, while the agri-business corporations would cover the cost of dentists, laser technicians, and mobile units.

Of course, the lasers wouldn’t be used on the supervisors. That was out of the question.

We all agreed that this was an incredibly elegant solution, and the meeting was adjourned. Except for me. I needed just a little bit more information, and the junior neuroscientist was kind enough to provide it. He even let me take a few notes, after I mentioned my parents’ positions and the length of their tenure.

The first thing I did when I got home was apologize to Gabe for nagging him about the migrant workers. I admitted I’d been wrong. They deserved his attention, and our support. I was going to speak with my parents and the head of LICE about it, particularly about Hector. There had to be some way to give boys like him a chance to escape the vicious circle their great-greats had left them in.

Next, I apologized to Gabe for taking my sexual frustrations out on him. After all, he was my husband, not my boy-toy. He deserved to come home to welcoming arms and a supportive spouse. I’d do better in future, but for now, just to even things up a bit, any first moves would have to come from him. The look of relief on his face almost made me ashamed of what I planned to do, but fortunately, it passed.

We made love a couple of times that week, and I reveled in it, while reminding myself that it could end at any moment. I would never let that happen again.

The free dental exams were first announced over loudspeakers on the water trucks. Then came billboards in English and Spanish, as well as bi-lingual flyers. They even left bags of candy out for the children, with dates and times of the upcoming examinations written on the wrappers. It did my heart good to know this was happening all over the country, even in cities like New York, where the trucks were rolling through Chinatown making announcements in Mandarin and Cantonese.

The day before the check-ups were to begin, I suggested to Gabe that he attend them incognito. “Dress like one of the workers,” I said. “Let another supervisor go first, and you spend the day among your friends, reassuring them. They won’t believe the other bosses, but they already trust you. After they see you came out looking the same as when you went in, they’ll feel a lot better about things.”

He praised me for being so compassionate, and got up the next morning to put on the clothes of a campesino. I even accompanied him to the mobile station, though of course I couldn’t stand with the migrant workers—as much as he’d told them about his gringa wife, I might still engender mistrust. So I watched from the sidelines as he went in, and waited until he came out.

He was smiling, pointing to his mouth, opening it wide and saying “Ah-h-h-!” to the children. He gave out sugarless chewing gum, reassuring everyone in Spanish. There was much back-slapping and many looks of relief all around.

For the rest of the day, Gabe and I stood and watched as they filed into the mobile units with their families.

When it came time to go home, I looked at him and said “What would you like to do now, dear?” and he said “I don’t know, mi esposa…but for some reason, I’ve never felt happier in my life. What would you like to do?”

It’s been two years now, two years that feel like a constant honeymoon. The workers are content, and as they say, “breeding like rabbits”. There are babies underfoot wherever I look; the fields will soon be full of children earning their keep.

Meanwhile, Gabe is content to go to work, eat his meals, and make love whenever and wherever I ask. We even managed a quickie in a two-person kayak one cloudy morning. True, he isn’t terribly pro-active about it, but so long as I remember to tell him what I want, he comes through like a champ.

Sometimes I knock off early and sit on our veranda, watching him in the fields. The children love him, and the adults all tip their hats. Once in a while, he gets down in the dirt with them, yanking and pulling and lifting the baskets high over his head as he leads everyone toward the waiting trucks. Beads of sweat collect at the nape of his neck, then run down his back in rivulets, sparkling like stars on the Rio Grande.