Stanley resumed speaking to the other men.
“Yet it was Georgie, the tame little robot with no history of militancy, who revolted violently and now is a wanted man, a sexual desperado. What this suggests is that there are other Georgies out there who need only sufficient provocation to rise up and proclaim themselves real men.
“It is our responsibility to provide them with that provocation, that stimulation, and the necessary leadership. I think that Georgie has already begun to understand that the simple revolt is not enough. Were it not for the Movement, he would either have already been recaptured or, alone and impotent, he would have been awaiting that terrible moment when the police arrived.”
Cornell would have liked to sit down. Perhaps he should not have been so rough with Harriet. He remembered the hatred in her eyes. Maybe he should have tried to explain that it had been merely personal. Perhaps he should now confess as much to Stanley and the Council. His predicament was becoming altogether too institutional, too symbolic. Cornell had a profound abhorrence of misrepresentation, yet he often had found himself helplessly acquiescing in a companion’s opinion, assumption, or taste—merely to be nice. At the least this frequently resulted in extreme discomfort: having to dine on Mexican food, say. At the most—well, there were inevitable junctures at which self-denial failed. Friends were disabused, felt betrayed: why had he let them go on thinking…? At worst, there had been that evening with Charlie, the issue of which was that he stood here, misrepresented, misrepresenting by his very presence, and Charlie rotted in jail.
But the Movement was the first fellowship to which he had ever been offered entry. These men admired him, felt his cause was one with theirs. That he had no cause was the latest item in the series of ironies that had begun with his leaving Charlie’s apartment dressed as a woman. Reality had been reversed ever since.
“To me, the most significant, and encouraging, aspect of Georgie’s rebellion is his age,” said Stanley, and asked Cornell: “You’re still under thirty, aren’t you?”
Cornell was flattered by this assumption; also it was again true that he did not want to disappoint his friends.
“Oh, yes.” He smiled at the audience. So he would see the end of his twenties in another five months: Stanley had not said “well under thirty.”
“I don’t have to remind you,” Stanley went on to the members of the Council, “of our difficulty in attracting young men to the Movement. Our mimeographed manifestoes, distributed surreptitiously near YMCA’s, dancing and sewing classes and the like, have, if picked up at all, quickly been discarded on the sidewalks. And while it is true that the average policewoman is a lazy, sub-literate timeserver, there are some zealots on the detective force, pathological man-haters, shrewd and deadly.”
Cornell wondered whether Harriet was of that company. In his experience of her, she had scarcely proved shrewd and not deadly at all, at least in performance.
“And there are also informers.” Stanley shrugged. “We are asking a young man to take quite a risk. He cannot very well stand there openly reading our literature. If he is seen slipping it into his purse for clandestine examination later on, he is putting himself in danger of an even more serious charge.”
Stanley coarsely made a fist. He was an odd mixture of elements, with his janitor’s dress on the one hand and his feminine gestures on the other.
“I have always maintained that to move men, especially young men, much more than revolutionary rhetoric is needed. We must offer them something more exciting, something satisfying, an opportunity for the exercise of true pride rather than the temporary pleasures of shallow vanity.
“Enslaved as we are and have been for more than a century, men have survived. We are basically more durable than women. Their death rate has been rising every year as ours has fallen. But there is still no substitute for youth. And that we did not have in the Movement”—he smiled at Cornell—“until yesterday. Now the problem is how to use Georgie to the best advantage. He cannot of course return to the world in his former character. He is a wanted sex criminal. Whichever role he is to play, his appearance must be altered. Something done with his face and also with his figure. Jerry, what do you think?”
The man in the nurse’s uniform leaped up and briskly approached Cornell.
“Let’s take a look at those boobs,” he said. He was small, dark, and sharp-featured. “Just lift your shirt.”
Cornell lifted the hem of the knitted shirt in his two hands. Before raising it he turned away from the audience.
“Georgie,” Stanley said, “we can’t afford false modesty in the Movement.” Jerry, the nurse, seized his arm and turned him around.
Cornell exposed his bra. Jerry deftly reached around to the groove of his spine and undid the hooks.
Oo, his hands were cold!
The nurse peered under, squeezed, and kneaded both breasts. “These aren’t injected,” he said. “These are mammary prostheses! Hell, one incision for each and slide it out.” He turned to Stanley. “It couldn’t be simpler.”
Cornell said: “I always thought they were injected.”
Jerry wrinkled his nose. “You didn’t even know what was put into your own body?”
“I guess I didn’t look too closely. I can’t stand operations.”
“These are much more expensive, a better job all around. They’re safer, and they keep their shape. What did they run you, ten thousand?”
“Twelve.”
Jerry sneered. “Know what a pair of those inserts go for wholesale? That’s why surgeons drive Rolls Royces.” He checked the bobby pin that held the winged cap on the back of his head.
Meanwhile Cornell stood there with his dugs hanging out.
The nurse had to make his disparaging point. “Two hundred at the outside. It’s just a silicone rubber bag filled with gel.” He smirked, shrugged, and, his white nylon skirt swishing, returned to his seat.
“Well, then,” said Stanley, “when could you do it, Jerry?”
“Monday’s my next day off.” Jerry’s white-stockinged legs were crossed, one squat-heeled shoe dangling.
Cornell lowered his shirt. He had chosen a general anaesthetic for his breast implant. He supposed he had now fallen in the estimation of these men. Jerry was a mean sort. And the idea of a male doctor was not appealing. There were a few around, specializing in men’s intimate problems: prostate disorders and the like. But Jerry wasn’t even an M.D.
Cornell realized that Stanley had asked him something.
“Excuse me?”
Stanley frowned through his steel-rimmed glasses and repeated the question.
“How do you stand with your sperm service?”
Stanley obviously thought him at least five years younger than he was! You registered at eighteen. If you hadn’t been called up by age twenty-five, you were exempt. For once Fortune had smiled on Cornell; his lottery number had been very low, and his years of eligibility were luckily those in which the birth quotas had been receding along with the economy, and also because casualty figures in the Balkan War had dropped away, owing to the long stalemate, etc., etc. All he cared about was that he had missed that loathsome sperm term, six months of living in a barracks, eating a high-protein diet, and being milked every so often.
He found it impossible to admit at this point that he was almost thirty.
“I’ve been lucky so far. I’ve got a very low number.”
“I’ve given the matter some thought,” Stanley said to the Council. “Willie, in your job at the draft board, do you have access to the records?”
He was answered by a stocky man with a glossy head of too-black dyed hair. Nor could Cornell condone such lavish use of blue eye shadow and the oversized bangle earrings that swung wildly as the man uncrossed his blunt knees.
“Most of the week I’m there by my lonesome,” said Willie. “With my typewriter and electric heater—my legs are cold even in summer!” He was one of those vain men who injected little personal data into every
statement, the kind who were so tiresome at stocking counters.
“Are the important files under lock and key?”
“Oh, no,” said Willie. “Well, that is, they are supposed to be, but the keys are always dangling from the cabinets where anybody—”
Stanley forced him to answer. “Then you do have access to them, and to the lists of call-ups?”
“I certainly do,” Willie cried, smiling vainly at his neighbors. “I really manage that office. Miss Wilcox—she’s president of the board—says she doesn’t know how they’d get along without me!” Suddenly he grimaced. “But I just get a clerk-typist’s salary. When I think about it, I get so mad.”
Another man, a bleached blond with a gray complexion, tapped his platform shoe on the floor and nodded vigorously. Jerry slapped his own knee.
“Hell,” he said, “I’ve assisted at operations where the surgeon was too drunk to hold the knife, and that damned woman has an estate in Greenwich and an oceangoing yacht. Don’t tell me. I haven’t had a raise in five years.”
“All right,” said Stanley. “The list of injustices is endless, as we all know. We have filled many a manifesto with them, and yet I can’t name a single Brother who has joined us for any such simple reason. The average man, I’m afraid, has been so conditioned all his life to think of himself as inferior that his reaction to the misfortune, the persecution, of his fellows is, if he himself has not suffered as much, an ugly feeling of triumph. If he has been victimized—and all men have, so I should rather say, if he is conscious of his victimization—then with his servile mentality he thinks that at least he’s not alone.
“Jealousy, Brothers, is the operative emotion of men: of men as they have been debased by women! Not of men as they once were, not of instinctive man, not of historical man until a century ago!”
Cornell was astonished to see that Stanley’s teeth closed violently at the appropriate places in his phrasing, that his fists were clenched and shaking.
But Stanley soon got hold of himself. “I’ve been thinking about the sperm camps,” he said abruptly. “Morally as well as physically, they represent one of the most crucial areas of male exploitation. Young men are conscripted for this service, required to live in virtual imprisonment, and receive a niggardly honorarium that is scarcely sufficient for a Coke or two at the post exchange and the weekly movie in the rec hall. It is six months of abuse.
“Whereas women volunteer as egg donors, spend a few days in a luxurious hospital in which every comfort is provided, and receive an extravagant emolument, plus the subsequent mandatory two-month vacation-with-pay from their employers, men often return from their own service to find that their jobs are gone.”
Stanley was working himself up again. Cornell knew all these facts, but had never thought much about the injustices which they allegedly represented. Stanley did not mention that it took only one egg for conception, but millions of sperm—well, actually, he believed only one little wiggly sperm thing was necessary, but multitudes had to be provided owing to the possible incompatibilities and inadequacies of many, the male role being lacking in certainty even at the very basis of life.
“Brothers,” Stanley said slowly. “I’m going to talk turkey. We haven’t made a significant gain in years. We all perform little acts of sabotage in our jobs, but Marty’s disconnecting phone calls at his switchboard, Garry’s misdirecting his boss’s letters, and I include my own operations in the women’s washroom at Huff House, shutting off the hot-water supply, altering the ball-cock so a toilet won’t flush properly—”
So that was what Stanley had been up to in the booth when Cornell encountered him the other day: how childish could you get?
“—these things contribute, we agree, to the general malaise of American society, the pervasive feeling that nothing works, nothing can be counted on, but I think they will hardly result in bringing down the female power structure in the near future.
“Sperm service is hated, dreaded, by American youth. Brothers in the Los Angeles Movement broke into a draft-board office last year, if you recall, and destroyed the records—alas, to no avail, duplicates having been deposited in the state headquarters.”
Willie nodded, swinging his earrings. “We do that, too.”
“Precisely,” said Stanley. “But you could alter someone’s status. You could find Georgie’s record and make him I-A and add his name to the next shipment.”
Cornell’s heart tried to batter an exit through the plastic prosthesis in his left bosom.
“A female bureaucracy is on guard against those who would flee obligations. If we tried to get someone out of the sperm service there would surely be trouble. Not so with getting Georgie in.”
Cornell crossed his arms beneath his bosom and squeezed.
“They’ll never look for that. Now, what’s the point of this? Here’s my thinking: these are healthy young fellows, precisely the sort we would like to reach but have not been able to because we haven’t come up with a program that appeals to them.
“My plan is to offer young men something that has obvious and, if managed properly, prompt results. In short, once he’s in the service, Georgie foments a strike in the sperm camp.”
Cornell shook his head to ward off a faint. He missed the feeling of the long, swinging hair he had possessed an eternity ago.
Willie protested. “That won’t work! For goodness’ sake.” The others gasped and muttered.
A thin ash-blond spoke urgently. He wore a tan wash-and-wear shirtwaist dress. “The sergeants were absolutely vicious when I served. You couldn’t ask a decent question without being abused! And the food! It’s supposed to be high-protein, but it’s just awful.” His voice broke. “I’m not even talking about being hooked up to those vicious machines.”
Willie’s continued headshaking resulted in the loss of an earring. He slid from the seat and squatted to retrieve it, looking all knees and bulging calves. Cornell was still shivering. Willie regained the seat and cocked his head to screw the earring back on; his lobes were not pierced.
While his fingers were still at his ears, he said: “It’s not going to work, Stanley. It’ll just get those boys emasculated.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘strike,’” said the blond, his neck all cords and bones, matching his legs. “You don’t get a chance to refuse anything. I mean, you are hooked up to that horrible milking machine, and it just drains you without you doing anything. When I was in, there were some fellows who would pass out, and then they’d give them what was called a ‘finger wave,’ reach up through the bottom and massage the prostate—”
Stanley said hastily: “Let’s not go into the gory details, Marty.”
Which admonition piqued Marty to say: “Well, Stanley, you were 4-F, weren’t you? Easy for you to talk.”
Stanley looked severe. “Do I detect a spiteful note there, Marty? Let’s not compete in injustice-collecting with our Brothers.”
Marty colored and looked down between his navy-blue pumps, showing the dark roots of his hair. “I’m sorry, Stanley. I didn’t mean to be personal.”
Stanley made a moue of acceptance. Then he said levelly: “Let me first deal with Willie’s dire prediction. They are not going to be quick about castrating anyone whose purpose it is to furnish semen. Wouldn’t you agree?” He looked about. “In fact, the threat of emasculation, while often used, is seldom carried out anywhere these days—in this country, at least. With their understanding of power, women are careful not to waste their ultimate weapon. The mistress-slave relationship is more subtle than it would seem. The exertion of power must be a continuing process, not a fixed state, which is why men are not emasculated at birth. The slave must not be rendered incapable of knowing, feeling poignantly, that he is a slave.”
Funny. Harriet had said the same thing. Cornell had now begun to prefer Stanley’s theoretics. He hoped Marty wouldn’t start again with the horror stories. Yet those horrors were what the boys in the camps had literally to endure. Ha
ving escaped his own term, he had never really sympathized with the victims. He was willing to feel guilty for such selfishness. Yet why should he pay?
“Now,” said Stanley, “let me explain what kind of strike I mean. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the term ‘strike’ at all. There will be no show of resistance. In fact, when the effects are felt, the perpetrators will pretend to be as disturbed as the authorities.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “And there will be no reason to doubt their sincerity.”
Stanley paused. Cornell knew he was going to say something dreadful.
“This is beautifully simple. The machines will collect no semen! Georgie will get the boys to masturbate just before milking time.”
Woman may be said to be an inferior man.
ARISTOTLE, 4th century, B.C.
7
CORNELL, nude, had waited forty-five minutes, along with his fellow conscripts, who were also bare, in a stark corridor of the Selection Center. The wooden bench was very uncomfortable on his fanny, and he was embarrassed by the male genitals that were hanging everywhere he looked: more by them, oddly enough, than by his own. Naked men were so ugly.
Because of his mission, he was supposed to get to know the others. He had tried to strike up a conversation with the boy on his left, a ringleted brunet.
“I wonder how long this will take?” Cornell cordially crinkled his eyes.
“I’m in no hurry, I’ll tell you that,” said the boy, showing the tip of his tongue.
“I guess we’re all praying to be rejected.”
The boy’s tongue continued to emerge, and when a sufficient length was available, put a fresh sheen on his lip gloss.
“I’ll just die if I’m turned down,” said he.
“You want to go?”
“I just won’t feel like a man. I’ll just die.”
Cornell was not prepared to meet this argument. How do you like that: six weeks of indoctrination and training, and it had occurred to nobody to tell him he might run into a patriot.
He gestured tenderly, almost touching the boy’s wrist. “I hope you make it, dear. I really do.”