She formed them into a double file, with Barracks Leader Cornell getting only the privilege of walking directly behind her in the front rank. Peters marched them to a nearby building which Cornell had assumed was another barracks, but which proved to be a sort of laboratory full of machines attended by women in white uniforms. The men were ordered to pull up their skirts, pull down their panties, and sit upon the stool before each machine. The attendants then fastened to each male member a flexible metallic pipe terminating in a soft plastic tube which adjusted snugly to that which it gripped, and expanded when required. The power was turned on, and the thing began to surge and vibrate in a hideous way.
The yellow bonnet was inefficacious here. Cornell sat before the milking machine just like any ordinary conscript. He withheld as long as he could but inevitably gave way to nature at last. However, unlike many of the others, he did not howl or sob. When it was over, his jaws, from the clenching, ached more than his groin. His soul was limp with shame. On the stool to his left, Jackie had fainted. Farley sat to his right, quietly weeping.
Cornell was allowed to resume his authority at this point. Sergeant Peters slapped his back and said: “Take over, Alcorn. That’s all for this afternoon. March ’em to the barracks. I got a date with a beer at the PX.” She waved him farewell with her soggy cigar.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of a tyranny over her.
MANIFESTO, WOMEN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION,
Seneca Falls, 1848
10
“WHAT GETS ME,” said Cornell, “is why we feel the guilt and shame. They do that to us, and yet it is we who suffer self-hatred.”
Jackie said: “It’s the same thing when a woman rapes a man. He feels guilty, and has this suspicion that maybe somehow, subconsciously, he provoked it.”
Cornell was addressing the conscripts, who sat or lay in various attitudes on their cots. The incredibly degrading experience they had all undergone an hour before had evoked something new from his soul. It was inexcusable that the Movement indoctrination had not prepared him for impromptu semen-milkings. The masturbation scheme could not possibly have been carried out. Unless of course the men continually manipulated themselves to the point of swooning, so as never to be in condition to furnish the official supply. Even so, would not those terrible machines, which had some automatic cut-off that was triggered only by the end of the flow, keep pumping?
All at once, Cornell understood: the semen-strike was intended to provoke a ferocious reaction from the authorities. Cornell and his boys would be emasculated, and the Movement would then have an issue on which to capitalize in their propaganda. Oh, he had been so naive! He hadn’t even asked Stanley what he should do after the strike. And no wonder Stanley had sounded so impatient on the phone. What difference did it make to his scheme that Harriet had turned up? In fact—and this was really an awful thought—was it merely coincidental that Harriet had appeared in camp at this time?
To his boys Cornell said: “They can do what they want to us, and we must accept it. That’s what it amounts to. Because they are women. But it’s strange, isn’t it?, when you think that men amount to more than half of the existing population. About fifty-two or -three percent, I believe. So we’re in the majority. And we’re also individually a lot bigger, on the average.”
“But we’re not intellectually inclined,” Jackie whined.
“Aren’t we? Or is it just because we’ve been told that all our lives?”
A heavyset conscript whose name Cornell could not recall scowled with thick black eyebrows beneath forehead curls of platinum bleach.
Cornell nodded at him. “Do you disagree?”
“I wouldn’t state an opinion,” said the man. “I don’t like to get involved in anything controversial.”
“Did you like what they just did to us?”
“Well, it’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” said the man. “It’s our duty.”
The word reminded Cornell to look at young Howie, the patriot. Howie’s unhappy eyes were fixed on the floor. Gordie, though, big, blond, and robust, returned his gaze with candor.
“I guess we’re just stuck for six months,” he said. “It’s not your fault, Al. I don’t think any of us blame you. You’re in the same boat with the rest of us when it comes to the milking session.”
Cornell was somewhat irritated to have his remarks interpreted so personally. But what could you expect from your fellow men?
Gordie went on. “I mean, it was different than what they showed in the film the other day, but everything usually is different than what’s promised. Did you ever take one of those Cats-kill vacations? The hotel room never looks anything like the picture in the brochure, and there are so many other unattached boys there that you spend all week dancing with each other—or squabbling over the few girls.” He moued. “Once was enough for me.”
Jackie flipped his head vainly. “Oh, I always get dates up there.”
Someone on the other side of the barracks said, in a stage whisper, “I wonder how?”
“I heard that,” said Jackie, staring daggers.
Snickers were heard.
“All right,” Cornell said. “Let’s not have that sort of stuff. You are demonstrating why we’re in this position. Women like or at least tolerate one another and can work together for a cause that will benefit their sex in general. But what matters too often to us is some damned little petty spite.” For emphasis he adjusted his barracks-leader’s cloche, his elbows thrusting out “What difference does it make what Jackie does to get a date?”
Jackie squealed, and Cornell turned to him. “And as for you, why should you give a hoot about some bitchy innuendo? The success you have in the Catskills should armor you against that Among women, libertines are admired. They boast of their conquests. To be a Dona Juana is the next best thing to making money.”
Jackie cried: “I’m no whore!” He put his face in his hands and wept. Cornell understood that he was not getting very far.
Howie was looking at him gravely.
“Did you want to say something, Howie?”
The boy asked quietly: “You don’t admire loose men, do you, Al?”
Helpful Gordie offered an explanation: “I think what Al means is that there’s a double standard, and you can’t apply the same values to men as to women—”
“I can speak for myself!”
“Sorry,” said Gordie. “I was only—”
Cornell lost his temper then. “Oh, shit! You are an impossible bunch!”
The vile language had its effect. Howie’s peach complexion turned strawberry. The men were thrown into stunned silence. Cornell looked at inanimate things like ceiling and floor as he proceeded to voice his chagrin, which was even more passionate than he himself had anticipated.
“You deserve to be clamped in those machines! You are a wretched, miserable, passive, negative sex. You are good for nothing but the menial, debased role that women have cast you in. You—”
“You? Are you excluding yourself, uh, Al?”
It was Farley who had spoken. He wore a mean, cynical expression. Cornell realized he had always hated Farley from the first, as, somehow, his only true rival, and he wondered at that: rival for what? And why? He was prettier than Farley and much more moral—or should he say moralistic? To question yourself was to admit weakness. He was weak, but to admit weakness was a kind of strength. Why a kind? Why was he invariably so tentative? So apologetic even to himself?
“You’re right, Farley!” he said vigorously. “I don’t mean you. I mean us. We’re in this together, all of us. And not just here, in the Sperm Service, but in society at large.”
“I don’t understand that statement,” Farley said, his legs crossed high, at the thighs, and his wrists clasped just under his small breasts, defining them as cones.
“Why do we let them get away with it?” asked Cornell. “What would h
appen if we refused to go to the next milking session?”
There were sounds of consternation. Cornell did not look at Howie.
Someone said: “We’d be castrated.”
“Would we? You hear that threat all the time, but have you ever actually known anyone to whom it was done?”
Howie asked quietly: “Al, who are you?”
“I’m a man, Howie. I’m a man who is trying to understand what it means to be a man—or what it ought to mean.”
“Al, you seem to be talking treason.” Howie leaned forward, his young face earnestly disconsolate. “Do you know what you’re saying? I don’t want to be unfair.”
Gordie rose from his bunk, came to where Cornell stood, and embraced him lightly about the waist. “Don’t worry so much, dear. We’ll survive our sperm term, as thousands have before us. The first time is a shock, but we’ll get used to it in no time. And it is our duty, as Greggie said.” He nodded at the thick-eyebrowed platinum blond. “It makes the world go round. Without us there’d be no future people.”
Cornell felt suffocated. He loosened himself from Gordie’s thick forearm. He looked around at the faces of his men. They were watching him with what he interpreted as compassionate wonderment.
Gordie said: “Anatomy is destiny, Al. I guess all of us would rather have been born women.”
Cornell cried: “But we weren’t, were we? And this is the only life we have!”
“Please,” said Gordie, seizing him again, this time not so gently as before. “Please, Al, you’ll get into trouble. Suppose some passing officer hears you talking that way?”
“I hope she does,” Cornell cried. He wrenched himself away from Gordie, and ran to the screen door. He hurled it open and shouted: “Rotten women!”
When Gordie grabbed him from behind, he rammed both elbows back, freed himself, and turned to meet the assault of not only Gordie, but Greggie, several others, and even Jackie.
He was subdued by his fellow men and carried into the lavatory and held under a cold shower.
“I’m all right now,” he said five or six times before they let him out. He was still wearing the cloche, which now drooped with water. He went dripping into the dormitory and took out his spare uniform dress. Luckily he had not been wearing his shoes. The others followed him and stood around behind. He did not look at them. He had contempt for them all. But neither was he proud of himself. He should have seen it was hopeless to try to rouse them. He should not have lost control. He would do better next time. He didn’t know quite what he would do, but he would do better. And it would be by, with, and for himself alone: not, certainly, for the Movement, and not, indeed, for the wretched male sex, whom he believed women were quite right to despise.
When he was fully dressed, except for the yellow cloche, which lay dripping where he had hurled it, he felt a touch at his shoulder. It was Farley, who had not been one of his subduers. He could imagine Farley’s having lain sardonically on the bunk while the spectacle was in progress. But Farley had a point; Farley was always for himself alone.
“Georgie,” said Farley. He took Cornell by the elbow, as Cornell had taken him for that heart-to-heart talk. But this was different. Cornell shook his hand off with a bird-wing movement.
“Don’t touch me,” he said, and turned away, seeking other eyes. But no one would look at him except Gordie, who had lately been his principal restrainer. Gordie raised his husky shoulders and let them fall; his broad pink face was expressionless. Jackie was seated again, working at his cuticles with an orange stick. Howie’s back was towards Cornell and quivering slightly. Was he crying?
Cornell finally stared at Farley.
Farley shook his head. “You’re sick, Georgie. You’ve got everything turned around. Marching us back and forth, calling yourself ‘Al.’ And now you go berserk. I should have seen it coming from your remarks in the bathroom. For a while I thought you were some kind of radical rabble-rouser, talking about the exploitation of men. But then you said you weren’t interested in politics, and now you run amuck for no reason at all. What if some officer had heard you? What would happen to us?
“You need treatment, Georgie, professional treatment. Let’s go to sick call.”
“Who are you?” Cornell screamed. “When did you get so stinking big?”
Farley slipped an arm around his waist.
Gordie, as usual the diplomat, said: “It wasn’t Farley’s idea personally, Georgie. We all got together and decided. And we elected Farley because you and he are friends. So don’t resent him. It isn’t an easy job, by any means.”
Jackie raised his face at that and said spitefully: “Georgie didn’t break down when he and I were best friends.”
“And I haven’t broken down now, you shits!” Cornell screamed. He ripped himself away from Farley, then seized Farley and threw him onto the seated Jackie. Jackie fell back and Farley tumbled to the floor. Gordie advanced, and Cornell kicked him in the testicles. Gordie instantly lost his high color, clutched his stomach, and without a sound collapsed onto Farley, whom his big body covered entirely.
Without these leaders, the other men fell back and continued to give ground in an expanding semicircle as Cornell moved into the aisle.
“Georgie.”
He turned and saw young Howie, who had climbed over a cot to reach him. Howie wore a sorrowful expression, but somehow Cornell was not offended by it as he had been by the fake sympathy of Farley and Gordie, which was really cynicism in the service of bitter envy.
“Howie,” Cornell said, “you understand, don’t you? You know I’m not nuts.” He gestured. “Look at them, the disgusting little slaves. That’s all they’re good for—to be milked. Well, not me! I’m busting out of here, and I can do it. I’ve done it before. No woman can stop me!”
Howie’s hand came out, and Cornell reached to shake it, but missed because it moved too rapidly, changing into a fist which struck him on the point of the jaw, causing him to smell a sulfurous odor and to lose consciousness.
When Cornell awakened, he was dressed in a frilly pink nightgown through the neckline of which was threaded a satin ribbon. He lay in bed, alone in a small room with walls of raw plywood. A doll in a gaudy evening gown sat on one corner of a vanity table, the top of which was otherwise furnished with cosmetic bottles, boxes, and jars. A skirted stool stood in front of the vanity. There was a bedside table with a pink-shaded lamp, which provided the only light in this windowless enclosure. An air-conditioner, set into the wall, hummed quietly.
After a moment Cornell swung out of bed and went to the doll. He picked it up, and it spoke in a tinny voice.
“Hi! I’m Larry. What’s your name? Won’t you be my friend?”
With his free hand Cornell felt his jaw, which ached from Howie’s punch. He had a feeling that had happened a long time before. He turned the doll over, raised its stiff satin dress, lowered its pantyhose and lace bikini, and found the button between Larry’s buttocks, looking like the stub of a dildo which had been broken off there. He pressed the button, then let it out, and the doll repeated its salutation. He looked around front and saw that Larry was indeed represented as anatomically male. Its little plastic pudenda looked both pathetic and ridiculous. When Larry was horizontal, his eyes were closed. Cornell erected him, and one blue eye clicked open. The other was stuck. Cornell pried it open with a fingernail, and then suddenly was murderously sick of Larry, picked him up by the heels and was about to knock his head off, when the door opened.
“Go ahead, Georgie.” It was a plump young officer. She had dark hair and could not have been more than twenty-five. Her collar showed a first-lieutenant’s silver bar and the golden medical emblem. The summer uniform of tan shirt and trousers was a tight fit on her chubby body.
“Go ahead,” she repeated. “Bust it.” Her round pink cheeks and tiny teeth were smiling.”
Cornell carefully lowered the doll to the vanity table, back on its button. He picked up a comb and, looking in the oval mirror, began
to work on his rumpled hair.
“I’m Lieutenant Aster, or if you like, Doctor. You might prefer to call me Doctor: the decision is up to you.”
Cornell winced as the comb caught in a tangle.
“You probably wonder where you are, if you have just woken up. You were brought to the camp hospital yesterday. While you were under sedation we had an interesting talk. Then you were brought to this private room, which is still in the hospital but isolated from the wards.”
Cornell’s face was smooth. Someone had shaved him. He pulled the front of the nightgown away and looked down. His chest, between the scars of his vanished breasts, was smooth as well. His fingertips went under his arms, then swooped down to rub his calves: both areas had been shaved. He took the pink stool from the slot in the vanity table, sat down and, ignoring the lieutenant’s reflection, went back to work on his hair with a rat-tailed brush he had discovered among the cosmetic accessories provided.
The lieutenant stood behind him. “Believe me, Georgie, I know quite a bit about you: wishes, dreams, hopes, fantasies. But my diagnosis is encouraging. It is my belief that you are emotionally disturbed, surely, but not crazy.” She hooked her thumbs in her woven belt and was probably leering into the mirror, but he avoided her eyes.
“Now, I’m new around here, and you are kind of a test case for me. What happens to you will largely determine what happens to my career.” She touched his shoulders lightly with her two hands. “There’s a new generation in psychiatry, Georgie, and I belong to it. For example, we believe that anal therapy is ineffectual in many cases and perhaps in some even deleterious, and only as a last resort would we recommend castration. I’m not criticizing the older practitioners, mind you. They were the pioneers, coming upon a frontier by covered wagon, as it were, to build log cabins. But time moves on and new building materials have been discovered, new techniques of construction.”
Bending, she put her head close to his and spoke confidentially. She smelled of a familiar women’s lotion, Saddle Leather, bringing Cornell an oddly unpleasant memory of a certain former girl friend who had reeked of it.