He had always being that person. You know,
the kind of man that’s always on top of everything and whom everyone thinks
about. Many want to be like him and others want to be with him. But few have
ever get close enough to really know him as he has being intelligent enough to
keep it all separated, in order to keep up the illusion.
Yes, an illusion. Because Martin, the perfect
man, had always had to act and had always had to do things to stay where he
was. Martin wasn’t only an employee, he owned the company and ran it for the
last five years, after his father had decide, rather surprisingly, to leave
control of his beloved company to his son. This had been a matter of discussion
amongst the high class of the city and the commerce guilds but eventually all
doubts disappeared when they realized he was much more than what he looked
like.
He had gone to school in Europe and had a keen
sense of fashion. He knew every single member of the richest families on both
sides of the Atlantic and he had more than one affair with many of them, men or
women. Many would have looked over him because of him being a bisexual man but
another surprise; people found this a very interesting trait, complemented by
his great skills handling money and people. Because his most alluring trait was
the fact he could make anyone do anything he wanted. Sometimes, he didn’t even
have to ask.
Some people thought it was all about his
physical appearance. He was tall, tanned
but not too much, well dressed, manly but soft features and ideal in every
sense. Many magazines had asked him to do photo-shoots and he had accepted
gladly to all the offerings. He would even do them for free if it helped the
company promote some new article that they wanted to push on people or simply
to get everyone to know who he was.
People love to buy things to get to be like
someone. Because people are obsessed to be closer to their idea of perfection,
which is actually the idea of the media. And Martin was exactly that. Once he
was in every magazine, more than one man was getting their hair cut in the way
he had it and stores selling the clothes he liked had their sales rise for a
whole month. Of course, his company owned many of those stores so it was all a
very round business.
His father eventually died and his mother went
away to leave in France. This left him with free rein, more than ever, over his
company and his image. From time to time, he would let paparazzi’s come close
enough to get a few shots of him, maybe alone or maybe with a young beautiful
model or someone people would hate him to be with. Because his goal was to make
people want to be that model, be that person who had the unspeakable honor of
going around town with him.
So what people didn’t know very well about him
was that he was very manipulative of everything he did. Most people would never
calculate every single movement in their lives as he did but it was not as if
he had an option. From a very young age, he had realized it was best to be the
one with power and not the one being ruled. And if his family’s fortune was of
any help, he wanted to be that guy everyone admires for every reason possible.
It was him who started, not only doing
benefits and helping those in need, but he actually went to the orphanages,
hospitals and retirement homes to help in any way he could. Martin knew that he
needed people to admire him because it benefited both him and them: if they
were in love with him, the earning of his companies will rise but also the
amount of money he was able to invest in any charity he would like. So it was
great for everyone.
Once his family left, he was more and more
controlling of the company but no one ever said anything because it became one
of the best companies in the world in less than three years. Before, it had
been an old and respectable company but now it was on top of everything.
Besides, working there was seeing as the best that could happen to anyone. The
pay was great and employees enjoyed many benefits, all which had been
established by Martin. He thought that if they were happy, they would work
harder and the company would do even better.
In time, he started absorbing minor business
and it became one of the top companies in the country. It was so powerful, that
their endorsement in any way was almost a warranty of success. Martin, however,
had never cared for politics thinking those men and women always had underlying
intentions. He thought of himself of a more honest person than them and decided
to be clear, stating that his company would never serve anyone’s political
efforts. He would rather shut it all down before bow to a politician.
This
was rather hypocrite from him because Martin had never really being honest
about him. He had created a character, a sort of persona, who acted his life.
But the real Martin, the one that had existed back when he was only a kid, had
been trapped inside his brain and was never allowed to be outside, to be in
control. He sometimes had minor breakdowns, suffering from flashes of
depression. Martin’s acting had earned him a severe headache problem but people
knew and were not surprised: with everything he had on his plate, he was
allowed to have a headache from time to time.
When he reached the age of thirty five, people thought
he was finally going to get a wife but that didn’t happen. He was still being
photographed with many beautiful men and women but he knew them all too well to
have anything more compromising with any of them. The models were always dull
and the pretty faces always hid stupid minds. And Martin, handsome as he was,
was not as stupid fool at all. He would have wanted to meet someone like him,
someone that had fought his way to the top and wasn’t afraid to do or say
anything. Because that was another thing he loved about his position: he could
have any thought about any subject in current life and people would always
support him or, at very least, not even care.
And, to explain it further, he was a self made
man. In spite of his money, he had decided to become much more than he was
supposed to be. All his life he had heard it from the media, from his parents,
from the society he had been born into. He had heard of perfection and of the
rulers and the ones that are ruled. So he decided, at a very young age, to be
the one on top. To beat every single other guy or girl in that race and be the one to beat them all. That's who he had always wanted to be. He started learning about
everything and finally, he came back from Europe as a new man that would change
the world.
Of course, there were people that did not
trust him be he never worried about any of them. As far as he was concerned,
they were only jealous of the amount of power he had because, after all, that
is what people really look for. When improving ourselves physically, we are
only seeking to have power over other, to be better than the rest. Because
being better than other means that there is a sense of superiority and that
always entails powers. And Martin thought that those that were too mediocre to
improve were the ones expending their days criticizing his life and way of
doing business.
Martin acquired a big condominium in the
middle of the city, on top of one of the tallest residential buildings of town.
From there, he could see his office tower and the lives of many people below.
He felt even more powerful than ever but it was then, only then, when he
realized there was no one beside him to share everything with. No family, no
real friends, no lover. There was no one with whom he could share his visions
of the future or his passions. It was only a huge space, filled with riches but
with no soul at all.
When feeling like that, he would disguise
himself and walk around the people on the street and he realized what he lacked
was love. Not only romantic love but also every single kind there is in the
world. Some people that were far from being like him laughed in the street and
appeared to have the best time possible. They loved themselves far more than he
would ever love himself, because he had no idea who he was anymore. He had
renounced to his true self long ago and now that boy was lost forever.
After a few outings, he decided to cut off all
thought of that forever, focusing on the future of his company and how to enjoy
life with all the power and money he had. Because, after all, he had made a
decision all those years ago: he had decided to be perfect in every sense, to
go to the gym and get a perfect body, to handle money correctly to have the most
refined luxury items and clothes and teaching himself to be the business man
his father had never been.
He was going to be the best. And, according to
him, he already was.
