“All right, Alcorn,” the sergeant called out. “Go through the door, down the hall to the disrobing room, get into your clothes, get your baggage, and report outside to the trucks.” She spoke in a weary, contemptuous monotone.
From the PFC in charge, Cornell reclaimed the wire basket in which he had left his clothing, stepped into his bikini underpants and half slip, and put on the wash-and-wear shirtwaist dress for which Murray the tailor had exchanged the chino trousers and female gear he wore in the subway tunnel. It had been strange at first to dress normally again, and disheartening to look down at the flat bosom. He wore no hose, it being midsummer and hot. His shoes were simple penny loafers.
With the change of name it had not been necessary for Willie to look up the records for Georgie Cornell, so his true age was irrelevant. A new file was added for Georgie Alcorn, age 25, with a bogus history. Like most governmental bureaus, the Sperm Service was smothered in reams of paper, incompetently filed, and no official cared as long as the quotas were filled with living bodies.
Cornell’s principal difficulty lay in maintaining the distinction asked by the Movement: one must be of one mind, but two styles of demeanor. Mentally, one was a Man. This identification had been simple enough all his life. But according to Stanley, maleness meant being forceful of spirit, not necessarily always downright aggressive, but possessing the capability of so being when the situation demanded. As, in fact, Cornell had been in his escape from jail.
But Cornell had spent almost thirty years in supposing that such a condition of soul was peculiarly feminine; and all the world outside the subway tunnel agreed.
Further to complicate the matter, in his assignment Cornell now had to act as a man by the Movement definition, while continuing to appear as a normal, passive male by accepted standards so as not to attract attention to himself.
He now wondered whether he had gone too far in extracting the aspirin from that sergeant. He picked up his clutch purse and the little valise, containing only a change of underwear and a nightie—uniforms would be forthcoming at camp—and, smiling at the sour-looking one-striper who managed the disrobing room, went through the door and into the parking lot, where three large, olive-drab-painted trucks, with white stars on their doors, were drawn up.
A thin, tall-for-a-girl corporal took his name and checked it off on a roster.
“On board, Alcorn,” she said, and when he started for the second vehicle—because of some quirk, the same by which he never took the very first stool at a lunch counter—she shouted: “The first truck, jerk!”
He restrained an impulse to make a snotty rejoinder. The bed of the truck was dark under a canvas roof, and very high above the ground, with only one cast-iron step for access. He hitched up his skirt to take the steep climb, and in a quick turn of head saw the corporal ogling his exposed thigh. Cornell stuck out his tongue.
“Here.” A boy’s face looked out and a hand was extended to him. He clambered up. There were facing benches along the sides of the vehicle. One was filled with conscripts. The other side still had some room, and he sat down, his suitcase at his knees. He had banged someone with it in the awkwardness of boarding, but heard no complaint.
He looked across and said to any of the three young men in that area of the bench: “Sorry.”
One of them smiled, one moued, and the other’s general expression of melancholia did not change. The smiling one had given him the hand.
“Hi,” said he. “I’m Gordie.”
“Georgie.”
Gordie was a husky lad with long blond hair and quite a bosom. Cornell did not remember having seen him during the examination, and wondered whether the breasts were prosthetic.
“I wonder,” said Gordie, “how long we’ll have to wait here.”
With great assurance Cornell said: “We’ll pull out for camp as soon as the truck is full.” Even if he had no way of knowing that; perhaps they must stay until all three vehicles were loaded.
He thought he saw, now that his vision had adjusted to the lack of light, a certain resentment in the face of the boy who sat on Gordie’s right, a wan brunet in textured stockings. Cornell realized he must be careful: he himself did not much care for know-it-alls.
He took off the edge: “At least that’s what I think.”
“I wonder where we’re going,” asked Gordie.
Cornell checked an impulse to answer this, though he was equipped to pronounce the alternatives: Staten Island or New Brunswick, N.J., the two local sperm camps. He wanted to de-alienate the brunet.
“Don’t ask me,” he said, shaking his head in a clueless, self-deprecatory way.
The brunet turned back and said quickly: “Camp Kilmer, I just know.” He recrossed his legs the other way. “I just hate Jersey.” He gave Cornell a defiant look.
To which Cornell responded ingratiatingly: “I know what you mean.” But the brunet turned away again; he was not to be won so easily.
A new arrival was trying to get aboard. Cornell beat Gordie to the tailgate. It was Jackie.
“Georgie!” he said. “I was afraid I’d never see you again.” Cornell pulled him up.
“Where’s Howie?”
Jackie callously elevated one shoulder. “Probably rejected. Probably sterile.” Lowering the shoulder pettishly, he banged the brunet with the overnight case he was carrying.
The brunet rubbed his textured knee and gave Jackie a resentful look. Jackie was totally indifferent. Cornell understood that Jackie was the feckless, self-concerned type of boy who might bring him more trouble as friend than as enemy. He decided a little discipline might be in order.
“Watch that case, for Mary’s sake,” he told Jackie. “And sit down. Right here.”
Jackie accepted these orders almost gratefully. The brunet, however, had another grudge now, having suffered without being noticed. Cornell could see he had got the blame.
He decided to show compassion. “Poor Howie,” he said to the truck at large. “He’s the boy who was next to me inside. He’s very patriotic. He’ll probably kill himself if he’s 4-F.”
The brunet said spitefully: “He’s a fool then.”
“You and I know that, but he’s awfully unsophisticated.” He was taking a certain chance: there might be other patriots in the company and, Stanley had warned him, spies as well. “We are all willing to do our duty, of course, but if, through no fault of your own, you can’t—”
“I know lots of fellows who haven’t been called up,” said the brunet. “You make friends in the right places. I could have. I probably should have.” He was very vain.
“Gee, I wish I could have,” Cornell said, giving the fellow an admiring once-over. This proved successful. The brunet came off it and actually smiled.
Cornell moved to exploit his advance. “Hi, I’m Georgie.”
“Farley.” Farley lowered his eyes in embarrassment at his abdication from hostility. Cornell sensed it was time to let him alone for a while. And anyway, there suddenly was Howie, who climbed into the truck without assistance, canvas bag swinging from a shoulder strap. He wore a tartan miniskirt and scarlet knee-stockings and was a far cry from what he had been when last seen.
He was radiant, bubbling. “I made it, Georgie!” Jackie uttered a doleful sound.
With Howie’s arrival, both benches were filled. The corporal slammed the tailgate with an awful noise, and almost immediately the truck moved off, just as Cornell had predicted.
And it turned out that Farley had been right about their going to Camp Kilmer, in New Jersey, another piece of luck for Cornell, because this was the sort of success that might sweeten the temperamental brunet.
The Lincoln Tunnel was foul with seepage from the Hudson Sewer above, and most of the men put on their gas masks. Jackie, wouldn’t you know, had forgotten his, and Cornell had to share his own mask with that exasperating acquaintance, holding his breath in between.
The camp, the gates of which they first saw receding from the back of the truck as it
bumped along towards the interior, looked unprepossessing, and the facade of the barracks at which they deboarded maintained the same bleak tone. A stout sergeant appeared, cigar in the corner of her mouth and a dark stain on the front of her open-necked chino shirt. She arranged them into a single line and led it into the one-story frame building.
The interior was rather more attractive than one was prepared to find. There were flowered curtains at the windows and matching bedspreads on the cots. Continuing the scheme, little vases filled with plastic blossoms hung from the wooden posts which supported the roof, posts which themselves were painted pink, as were the walls. Each bunk shared a fuzzy turquoise bedside rug with its neighbor. Behind the cots were standing wardrobe closets, also turquoise, closed with shirred draperies, rather than doors, again in the fabric of the bedspreads and curtains.
The sergeant cried a halt when they were all inside. She began to read names from a roster and point to consecutive beds. Jackie, Cornell, Howie, and Gordie, in that order, were along the middle of the east wall. Farley was across the aisle. Unfortunately, Cornell had to share his closet with Jackie.
It is within my knowledge that a man who had weighed many human brains, said that the heaviest he knew of, heavier even than Cuvier’s (the heaviest previously recorded), was that of a woman.
JOHN STUART MILL, 1869
8
EARLY ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING they were issued their uniforms: simple one-piece, knee-length dresses in apple green; black shoes with squat one-and-a-half-inch heels; three pairs of opaque pantyhose in a muddy brown; three pairs of white cotton underpants of the kind you wore as a schoolboy; and to those who needed bras, two (for the first time Cornell did not regret having lost his boobs: the brassieres looked coarse and excessively stitched). There was also an exercise outfit consisting of pleated, flared-leg shorts in navy, two white pullover blouses, bobby socks, and sneakers which they were warned to keep sparkling.
A light cardigan, a raincoat, a plastic shower cap, and six plain handkerchiefs. A shoulder bag of green plastic, containing a compact and change purse. Also a vanity kit that was far from sufficient: card of hairpins, cheap comb, lipstick in one sickly pink shade for all, and a steel safety razor and a dozen blades. Cornell had been advised by sperm-term veterans in the Movement to bring along his own cosmetics and beauty-tools. All the conscripts had so done. Jackie’s suitcase contained little else, being crammed with portable hair drier, electric shaver with manicure attachments, a set of heatable hair rollers, hormone creams in the giant-sized jars, and whatnot. The first thing he did on unpacking was look for a receptacle into which to plug his devices. The one he found was labeled “no v.,” which was good, but also “Direct Current,” which was very bad, the hair drier operating only on A.C. Nothing would stop the silly boy’s hysteria but Cornell’s promise that Jackie could share his machine.
They had dined the evening before, their first, on steak and eggs, a hearty repast in which few made more than a dent. They were chided about this by the medical officer who strolled, inspecting, about the mess hall: a lean, sallow woman, she was an incongruous advocate for a robust diet, but then, it was their semen that would be drained, not hers.
Dessert was a handful of vitamin capsules for each, washed down with a half pint of whole milk.
The sergeant extinguished the barracks lights at ten o’clock. At ten the next morning, by which hour most of the boys had risen long since and performed their toilets, several being in curlers, she returned with a metal triangle in one hand and a little mallet in the other, and was in the act of striking the latter upon the former when, face full of indignant wonder, she reacted to the passing parade.
“What are you boys doing up?” She pointed with her little mallet. “You just get back in those beds!”
Thirty men began to carry out the order.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” the sergeant said. “You don’t get into bed with your clothes on. You undress and put on your nighties, and you be quick about it.”
When this was accomplished and thirty heads touched thirty pillows, the sergeant strode to the center of the room.
“Now hear this,” she said, holding the triangle at one hip and the hammer at the other. “You are to sleep twelve hours a night, from ten to ten. Anyone out of bed between those hours, except for a quick trip to the john, will be in trouble with me, personally, and I am rough as a cob.” She lifted her instrument and struck it three times, bing, bing, bing. “This is the morning call. On hearing it you will rise.” She produced the signal again. “Well, all right, get those lazy heinies out of bed!”
Thirty men docilely arose and began to dress.
Jackie was whining about his uniform.
“Don’t we get slips? Look how this skirt hangs without a slip underneath!” He flipped through his issue of pantyhose. “Perfectly hideous. Oh, why can’t they be sheer!”
“I guess the idea is durability,” said Cornell. He had modestly got into the dress first. Now, reaching up under the skirt, he pulled off his civilian black-bikini pants and stepped into the cotton panties of a style he had not worn since small-boyhood. At least they weren’t as grotesque as the jailhouse bloomers.
“Well, they aren’t durable either,” Jackie said. “Here’s a run already. Oh damn! Will they give me a replacement, do you think? Or will I just get abused if I ask?”
“I’ll speak to the sergeant,” Cornell promised.
“She looks like she can be nasty. This is a terrible place, Georgie.”
“Now, don’t keep telling yourself that. We’ve got to make the best of it for six months.”
It would take more than a slip to make Jackie’s uniform presentable. The dress was far too small, the skirt far above his knobby knees, and the style was not intended to be mini. At the bosom the buttons strained the holes, mainly because of Jackie’s barrel chest: his boobs were modest today. Their size changed with his outfits.
Howie, on the other side, had got a good fit, but, being only eighteen, he looked good in anything. But Cornell himself did not fare badly. His dress was slack on top, of course, but sleek across the fanny and hips, and the hemline fell properly just below the kneecaps.
“Howie,” Cornell asked. “Do you mind telling me about those?” He gestured at the boy’s rounded breasts. “Are they injected, or what?”
Howie shrugged. “They’re just balled anklets. That’s all. I used to use paper towels, but you could hear them rustle.” He was a naive sort.
They were seated on folding chairs in the camp theater, along with hundreds of new conscripts from the other barracks. A middle-aged officer walked briskly from the wings to stage center, before an enormous, blank motion-picture screen. She wore a gray crewcut and a well-tailored uniform, above the left breast pocket of which were several rows of multicolored ribbons.
“Welcome to Camp Kilmer,” she said into the standing microphone, after tapping it smartly to see if it was live. “I am your commanding officer, Colonel Peckham. You are at the beginning of your sperm term. Some of you may be apprehensive now, but I think I can say you will soon find it more of an adventure than an ordeal. Thousands of young men have passed through this camp in its long history—and before that, thousands of young women, en route to the wars, and many of those brave girls are buried in some foreign land, having sacrificed their lives in the defense of democracy.
“This very camp is named for one of them—Joyce Kilmer, the poetess who authored ‘Trees’ and subsequently died in combat. That was a century or more ago, and yet she is not forgotten.
“Be assured that while your own contribution may not be so spectacular, it is valuable—uh, very valuable.”
The colonel looked into the palm of her hand; she seemed to have a note there.
“Now, the next item on the agenda will be a training film. Watch this closely. Experience has shown that the semen-gathering process can be somewhat frightening to certain conscripts if they come to it without intellectual preparation. This fil
m was created with just such a purpose in mind: it will remove and/or correct the false impressions that many of you may have gotten from sperm veterans of other eras. Techniques have been vastly improved in recent years. Old vets may have told you horror stories about the inefficient, even dangerous, milking machines to which they were strapped, etcetera, etcetera. Most of these tales never held water.”
The colonel smiled and shook her close-cropped head. “And insofar as they did, they do so no longer. At this installation we have the latest equipment, and our technicians are graduates of an intensive training course. They are supervised by doctors. You have already had two of our meals. The government spares no expense in maintaining the quality of the high-protein diet. I urge you to eat everything on your trays. It is put there for your own good, to ensure your continued health and provide strength for your efforts.
“I also recommend that you cooperate, with good will, in all phases of the program; that you participate wholeheartedly in the supervised recreation. That way the time will pass like a dream. There are rewards for doing your duty, and there are penalties for failure to do it. This is not a penal colony, and speaking as your commanding officer, may I say that no sight pleases me as much as a new crop of bright young faces and robust young bodies.
“I wish you good ejaculations I” She looked over their heads at the projection booth in the rear of the balcony and snapped her fingers. “Roll the film.”
The lights went out. Jackie leaned against Cornell.
“I bet she can be mighty nasty.”
There were other mutterings in the auditorium, which seemed more stifling in the dark. It was beginning to be a hot day outside, and the place was neither air-conditioned nor effectively ventilated. Some conscripts were not given to using deodorants. Cornell raised his handkerchief, on which he had fortunately sprinkled some cologne before leaving the barracks.
The lights went on again, and the colonel marched onto the stage.