Regiment of Women (16 page)

“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. Having 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.”

A
RISTOTLE
, 4th century,
B
.
C
.

C
ORNELL
, 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.”

The object of his good wishes fingered a ringlet and turned away.

A wide, brawny man with a head of woolly brown curls sat to Cornell's right. At one point their naked thighs had touched, and the man gave him a dirty look. Which is why he had chosen the other one to talk to. Well, he could hardly have done worse!

The robust fellow was conversing with the man on the other side. To get his attention Cornell found it necessary to lean close. Their shoulders touched.

The man turned slowly, his large nose high and his eyelids lowered.

“Really,” he said. “Do try to keep your body to yourself.”

Cornell forgot his mission. “I
beg
your pardon,” was his frosty response.

He decided it would be politic to wait until they were all dressed again before making further overtures to his fellow recruits. Such feeble aptitude as he had for exhortation was ruinously diminished by the common nudity, men naturally tending towards paranoia when stripped. A good many boys sat with crossed hands in their laps. He sighed and felt a sensitivity in the thin red scar below each nipple. Jerry had excised his boobs six weeks earlier. The stitches had been taken out long since, and the skin had certifiably healed, but any unusual intake of breath was a reminder of that surgery, as was a damp day. Supine on the sheet-covered subway bench which served as operating table, Frankie pressing that mask over his face and dribbling ether on it, wrestling Frankie to the floor of the car, being overpowered by reinforcement Brothers, green-gowned Jerry approaching with the gleaming scalpel…. The ether was the worst part: he vomited for the next twelve hours.

Now, as he saw, here and there around him, boys with protuberant mammaries, he wondered again what real need there had been for his alteration. Who from the old days could have identified him from the curve of his breast? And anyway, scarcely a week later—his chest was still sore—Jerry had gone up his nostrils and done something to the cartilage to change the shape of his nose: black eyes for the next fortnight. When the bandages were removed, he and the stranger he saw in the mirror shrieked at each other. Eventually he got over the shock. He had not been actually defaced, just coarsened somewhat, the nose broader and no longer retroussé. Perhaps he was now, in a way, more attractive. He tried to make the best of it; but the loss of his breasts still rankled.

At last the door at the end of the hall was opened by a stout little soldier in the uniform of the Sperm Service staff.

“O.K.,” she shouted, pointing her finger like a pistol, “First!” When the man nearest the door rose and went through it, she ordered the others to move their asses along and close ranks. Cornell took the precaution to raise his behind and not slide along as some did, collecting splinters and squealing. He had arrived early; there were only a half-dozen ahead of him.

Even so, it was a good hour before he confronted the young medical officer in the examining room. She wore the chino summer uniform, the twisted-snake insigne on one side of the open collar and a silver bar on the other, top of T-shirt visible in the vee, stethoscope around her neck, and a mirror on her forehead.