Regiment of Women (23 page)

Farley closed his tap with a decisive twist.

“Come on,
Al
, at our age we can't claim to be virgins any more.”

“Look, Farley, I thought I explained in our little talk the other day. I accepted the B.L. bonnet for two good reasons. One, it was offered to me. And I assure you, whether you believe it or not, I did nothing whatever to get it. The captain didn't touch me or try to. Second, it seemed to me that in a position with a little authority I might make it easier on the rest of the boys. And I think I have done that—like getting that toilet hassle worked out this morning.”

Farley wore a derisive expression.

Cornell said indignantly: “You don't know what I went through for that!”

“You're quite the hero.”

“You're being bitchy.”

“Up yours.”

Cornell felt like slapping his face. Instead, he breathed deeply and touched his fingers to Farley's forearm.

“We're being silly, do you know that?” He drew his hand back and put it on his bosom. “I'm as bad as you. We should be friends and work together instead of competing. I agree with you that a boy has to look out for himself, but that concept should be widened to include other men as well. We all must look out for each other.”

Farley flipped his thumb contemptuously at the door. “I should be concerned for those slobs?”

“They
are
our Brothers,” said Cornell, parroting the Movement line. “We're all in the same boat. We're being used shamefully, Farley. We're prisoners here. Worst of all, we're treated like children. As if we were schoolboys again, with embroidery and flower arranging.”

Farley closed his eyes, lowered his face into the basinful of water, and brought it out into the waiting towel. He gently blotted his eyes, then looked in the mirror to see whether the liner had run. It had, slightly. “You never find one that's really waterproof,” he said.

“We're denied all pride, Farley.” Cornell stamped his stockinged foot. It did not produce the dramatic sound that he had wished, and besides it hurt his sole. “We men are in a lifelong prison, really. We're
used
from the time we're born. When do
we
get to be the users? I ask you.”

Farley said: “You're exaggerating. I agree that maybe things aren't always what they should be.”

“What kind of job did you have?”

“I'm a beautician,” said Farley.

“In a shop owned by a woman, right?”

“I don't see anything weird about that.”

“Why don't
we
ever own businesses?”

“Because we're men. That just isn't the kind of thing we do.” Farley's face was close to the mirror. He was concerned about his eyes. “We're not soldiers, either. Do you think we ought to be? And kill people?”

Cornell was beginning to regret having chosen Farley to politicize. The Movement's arguments simply did not appeal to such a person. Cornell could understand that because he was himself much the same kind of boy—in a general way. Of course he would not have gone to bed with Sergeant Peters. He was also impressed by the fact that Farley had a real profession. He was not a whiner, a loser, who, because he never got anywhere personally, wanted to change the social order. Among the Brothers there were a few men like Jerry, nurse and self-trained surgeon, but even Jerry seemed motivated largely by spite. He had to prove he could do whatever a woman could.

Cornell smiled. “Well, personally I've never really been very political. I think men who are tend to be on the faggy side.”

“That's something else I don't really understand,” Farley admitted. “Exactly what a fag is.”

“A homosexual.”

“Oh, I know that, but I don't know what homosexuals are supposed to actually
do
. I mean, you hear the word all the time. But what does it mean except ‘effeminate'?”

Cornell was wryly amused at this ignorance, given Farley's looseness of morals; but Farley was normal enough.

Farley added: “I mean, I've heard the word all my life, and yet I never met a man who tried to feel me or anything.”

Cornell had to confess that neither had he. He was beginning to hit it off now with Farley.

Farley said: “Was this all you wanted to talk about, Georgie?”

“Al
. Please. I'll explain some other time.” He touched Farley's shoulder. “I didn't mean to criticize you earlier. Your private life is your own business.”

They returned to the dormitory, where Cornell lay down again and Farley redid his eyes. In a little while Sergeant Peters came out of her room and cried: “Everybody up!”

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.

M
ANIFESTO
, W
OMEN
'
S
R
IGHTS
C
ONVENTION
,
Seneca Falls, 1848

“W
HAT
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 happen 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.”