The Broken Machine
Jack was fed up with his washing machine.
"Goddamnit! This thing is busted as shit!"
"Why don't you call the maintenance guy?"
"Again? AGAIN? Are you loopy? He'll come in here, dick around with it some, it'll work for, like, a few days and then BAM! Busted again. What a joke."
"Call Ted."
"Ted? What's Ted gonna do? He'll just tell me to call the maintenance guy."
"Just tell him we need a new washer."
"Sure. Sure. Then he'll go get another one, just as busted as this fucking thing and pretend it's new. It'll look the same, sound the same, and break the same. Then when it breaks, he’ll blame us."
Jack sat down on the floor. He was beyond exasperated. This had been going on since he and his wife moved in three years ago and he was at his breaking point. Over that time, he'd had four different repairman "fix" it dozens of times.
“Something needs to be done,” he mumbled to himself.
He didn't have the money to buy a new washing machine. If he did, he would but then would have to rely on Ted to get it installed. Jack was pretty much helpless around machinery and plumbing was completely out of his grasp.
"It's systemic."
"What did you say?"
"Systemic. It's all planned obsolescence. They don't build things to last. You know why the electric car was blocked back in the seventies? It wasn't big oil. It was the automobile manufacturers."
"Are you going on another one of your rants because, seriously, Jack. I don't have the time this morning. I have hot yoga and then am meeting Sheryl for brunch."
"They made all their money on replacement parts. Hoses. Spark plugs. Carburetors. The electric car didn't have a combustion engine so they would be out billions in replacement parts so they shut it all down. Only now does a technology that was totally viable forty years ago seem practical. Fuck this. Something needs to be DONE!"
"Oh, god. I have to go. Please don't get nuts today. I'll call Ted. He doesn't like you but he likes me. Let me handle this, OK, honey?"
"...something needs to be done..."
∞∞∞
Carmen's phone rang for the third time during her yoga. It was becoming a distraction for the other ladies. "I'm so sorry. Let me go take this. Keep breathing."
"Hello? This is Carmen and I'm a little busy right..."
"Carmen? This is Ted. What the fuck is wrong with Jack?"
"Wrong? Shit. What's he doing?"
"He's out on the sidewalk in front of the building with a sign, screaming to everyone that they should be fed up with the systemic obsolescence of their washing machines. Christ, Carmen. He's dressed in fatigues and a rubber mask. I think it's Nixon. Maybe Kissinger. Can you get over here?"
"Well, Ted, I'm in the middle of..."
"Now or I'm calling the cops."
Fuck. There goes brunch, she thought as she hung up and headed to her Escalade in the parking lot.
∞∞∞
The police officers were getting visibly annoyed. "Please remove the Nixon mask, sir."
"It's not Nixon? You seriously think this looks like Nixon? Have you even seen Point Break?"
"I don't care who it is, I need you to remove it immediately."
"Not until you tell me who it is!"
"The other officer nudged the first. "I think it's Khrushchev."
The first cop whispered back. "It isn't Khrushchev. He was bald. Maybe it's Lyndon Johnson?"
"WRONG!" shouted a muffled Jack. "It's Reagan. Ronald Reagan!" He removed the mask with what he thought be a flourish but it snagged on his nose on the way off and made a big smooching sound.
"Sir. I need to see your identification. I've asked three times. This is going to become a problem."
"I don't have to show my ID. I'm practicing my right to protest and you have no probable cause to require my 'papers,' Herr Commandant!"
Jack was neither young nor black so no one bothered to film the exchange much to Jack's frustration. He thrust his sign ("YOU ARE A VICTIM OF PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE" which was, at the very least, spelled correctly) up into the officer's face. Both jumped back and pulled out their tasers.
"Sir. That's it. Put the sign down and get down on the ground!"
"ATTICA! ATTICA!" Jack bellowed without any understanding that the reference likely went over the heads of the Millennial policemen.
"I'm going to count three and if you are not on the ground and have ceased resisting, I will blast you with this taser!"
"I CAN'T BREATHE!" Jack looked around frantically looking for anyone sympathetic. "I CAN'T BREATHE! POLICE BRUTALITY! What the fuck?"
Carmen turned the corner just as the first officer tased her husband. Jack's eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed as if he suddenly was boneless. The police leapt upon him, turned him over and cuffed him.
She lowered her head and continued driving past. Brunch was back on and now she had a story to beat anything Sheryl could bring to the table.
∞∞∞
"What the hell! Why weren't you answering the phone?"
"I was busy. How was I supposed to know you were arrested for protesting the washing machine?"
"I spent the night in jail! Didn't you even notice I was gone?"
"I wondered but I thought you were out with your friends."
"I have no friends! I have no friends! I only have followers online and they aren't really my friends, you know?"
"You don't have that many followers, Jack."
"How is that the point? At all!"
"Then please mansplain the point to me, honey."
"Mansplain..? The point is that the system is broken, not the washing machine. This is a conspiracy that needs to see the light of day. Why would the authorities tase and then arrest me if I was just nuts? I'm on to something. Something needs to be done."
"And you're the one to do that something?"
"Who else is gonna? YOU? With your hot yoga and avocado toast? No way. You don't see the injustice. You don't see the fractures in the structural capitalism at play. You're wearing blinders like everyone else. I think you might even be a Nazi."
"A Nazi? You're calling me a Nazi? Sure, then. 'Heil Hitler' and all that. Good god."
She left the room. Under his breath, Jack muttered "I knew she was a Nazi..."
∞∞∞
"Carmen. We need to talk."
"Uh-oh. I hate it when you begin a conversation wioth 'we need to talk.' This isn't a good thing, is it?"
Jack sat down on the edge of the coffee table. "I've been fired."
"Fired? What? How can you be fired? What'd you do?"
"I guess someone uploaded a video of my protest last week and the video went viral on TikTok and...well..."
"You got fired over it. Goddamnit, Jack. You just lost your six-figure fucking paycheck because of a broken washing machine? I can't believe this!"
"It wasn't about the broken machine. It was about the broken system."
"Oh, for fuck's sake. Stop with that. What're we gonna do? I can't get a job. I don't even have a resume. Oh my god. This is a nightmare, you understand? How will we live?"
Jack took a deep breath. "Why is it so easy for you to dismiss the truth for your convenience? You have to understand that the personal is political, right? That by simply ignoring the planned obsolescence of things like that washing machine, you're a part of the problem. There's a moral imperative here and you need to open your eyes."
Carmen merely stared at her husband. He was a lunatic. Her eyes welled up with tears. She knew she had to leave but she hated goodbyes. In that split second she mentally planned her escape. She'd clean out the savings, go where he couldn't find her, and send him a DM letting him know she was done.
Cleaner that way. Simpler. He's completely nuts and I have to take care of myself, she thought.
∞∞∞
The room stank. Not only were Jack’s clothes unwashed in odd non-matching piles throughout, the coffee table was covered in Triscuit crumbs and frozen burrito wrappers. Three empty handles of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Apple congregated conspiratorially in the corner by the TV. A shallow pile of notices blanketed the area in front of the apartment door blaring FINAL NOTICE and EVICTION NOTICE as well as a few handwritten notes and five unopened electric bills.
Jack sat slumped against the coffee table, his weight shifting it slightly on an angle.
"...you can't defeat me. I am not defeated. Defeat is not in my vocabulary..." he muttered but his was the very portrait of a man defeated.
