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Vanishing Manhood: Part 11
Vanishing Manhood:
Part 11
Men’s Rally And Riot
Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand. Listen to the
► Podcast at Explicit Novels.
The
Persians marshalled all the nations under the Sun and Stars yet they were
defeated by a single idea: Sacrifice, and their inability to appreciate it.
After tonight, we would become a democracy because I could
trust the group to see beyond gender and into the ideas and ideals of the
speaker. True democracy was not about the tyranny of numbers, but consensus.
Consensus was the result of the belief that everyone in the group, even the
opposition, had worth, they counted.
How in the Hell, after all the wrong turns my life had
taken, could I still believe I was an idealist? It was simple. I had not let
them win. In a very crude, sexual way it was that I had the confidence in one
girl, my first date, to ask her to hold off on true intercourse and she
respected my wishes. In the kaleidoscope of my fractured mind, that memory
burned through.
Listening to the women in my living room talking while I
dressed in the bedroom, a tiny shiver of one memory collided and melded with another.
No women I had ever known had not betrayed me in one way or another. That was
the terror of distrust for me, but, no woman, or man, was perfect. They would
all betray me, sooner or later.
I now understood this wasn't bad. It was human nature. We
all let people down around us, even the ones we cared about. Pain had led me to
hunt for perfection. That was a pointless quest and a pursuit that led to
madness. What I should have been looking for was restitution. Did that person
know they had wronged me and were they trying to make it up to me?
The same held true for me. Was I a true friend, looking
after those I had wronged and balancing accounts with them as well? Honesty,
Truth and Love, the harshest bitches on the block. I meditated for twenty
minutes before heading back to my assembled friends.
"You look nice," Kuiko beamed. "Really
nice."
"Thank you," I blushed slightly. More Bethany
clothes.
"That wasn't a compliment, you jerk," Capri
glared. "Last chance. This is stupid."
"Noted and acknowledged, Miss O'Hara," I nodded.
"I need a taxi." I pulled out my phone and began looking up taxi
services. My phone rang.
“FBI across the street” it read. I shuddered. I wasn't
upset. I was peeved.
“Do you like my new underwear you Pervs?” I hung up. I
didn't care if they liked my underwear.
"Them?" Capri asked softly.
"Yeah."
"Damn it, you just took a shower, shaved and got
dressed. Can't they leave you alone for an hour?" she griped.
"Who?" Roni got out first.
"Santa's Little Helpers," Capri grumbled. "I
really ought to do something about them."
"Let us not revisit the whole 'you dismembered in the
morgue' thing, shall we," I requested. "Besides, I gave them a piece
of my mind this time."
"Not the sexy part!" Kuiko blurted out.
"What did you do?" Capri studied me.
"I called them pervs," I declared. "No, I did
not, Kuiko. The sexy is all for you." She smiled.
"Oh yeah, that will do it," Capri pressed her
wrist to her forehead and announced dramatically.
"What do I want to do more," Venus mumbled,
"fight over the sexy or find out what the hell is going on?"
"Perverted Santa's Little Helpers who leave dismembered
bodies in the morgue and have an apparent issue with Israel naked or
semi-naked," Roni mused. "Capri, after he leaves, you are going to do
some explaining."
"I think this is my cue to leave," I told the room
then headed for the door.
"Aren't you going to call a taxi?" Aniqua reminded
me.
"The FBI is going to drive me there," I grinned.
"What makes you say that?" Samantha gulped.
"When the alternative is letting me flag down a cabby
that may, or may not, be homicidal, my bet is they'll drop me off at the
arena," I explained.
"Makes sense to me," Kuiko nodded. "If I had
a car, I'd give him a ride."
"Kuiko, for once I agree with you," Venus
muttered.
"I'm not as dumb as I look," Kuiko turned that
1000 watt smile on Venus.
"Of course you are not," Roni chortled.
"Otherwise you couldn't walk and talk at the same time."
I went around and kissed each one of them, on the lips.
Normally that should have made them happy, but they kept looking at me like
they'd never see me again. Clever girls. I left the complex and scanned the
streets. There was the car, at the edge of a car park down the street. It
wasn't as if there were many car owners in this part of town.
I hurried across the street and I was whistling. Special
Agent Sosa lowered the window as I approached. Across from her was S A Saris,
also with Dimple's team.
"Yes?" Sosa sighed. "When staking out a place
it sort of blows our cover if you walk right up to us, by the way."
"That's cool," I grinned. "We aren't staying
here anyway. I need a ride to the Arena."
"Do we look like a taxi service?" Sosa smirked.
"I'm going, you are following. We might as well make it
easy on us, save a few volts," I reasoned.
"Get in," Saris grumbled. I gladly did so and off
we went.
"Planning to get arrested?" Saris asked.
"Planning? No. Expecting it to be a possibility,
yes," I admitted. "Any news?"
"Dr. Fremont is still missing, but her company hired a
GlobeMaster to haul a whole lot of something to Bolivia," Sosa answered.
Seeing my confusion, Saris added.
"A GlobeMaster is a really big aircraft, used for
hauling freight, not passengers."
My impulse was to say 'can you shoot it down,' but the
illegality of the action was stunning.
"Anything on your front?" Sosa inquired.
"Let me see, my Capri's Mom wants her to be a
cum-dumpster, seven girls stopped by my place today to drag me out of my home
and make me their bitch. My tribe made them back down, this time. Now my ladies
are camped out at my place, murdering my AC unit and praying I make it back
home in some sort of working order," I outlined.
"Why did they let you go? Are they some kind of
pansies?" Sosa mocked.
"I'd hit you upside your head for that comment, but you
are driving, armed and most likely a much better fighter than me," I
replied. "They are not pansies. They risked harm for me today."
"What happened at the firefight today, anyway?"
Saris asked.
"Not really sure," I lied. "Bullets were
flying and I was running for my life."
"You didn't see anything?" she persisted. Damn her
interrogation abilities.
"Wait, with guns going off I thought you would be happy
I was running away," I evaded.
"Why didn't you wait for Agents Vabishi and Fraklos to
get there?"
"Capri and I got across the street so we ran for
it," I shrugged.
"Next time, lay flat and we'll come get you,"
Saris told me.
"Thanks, G I Jane," was my snarky comeback.
"Maybe if you let me have some sort of combat training I'd know what to do
next time." I was making light of things, but in the back of my mind, like
a cornered badger in the dark, I knew I was in a vehicle with two women I
didn't know.
It wasn't like I could tell myself they were law enforcement
agents and feel better. Kwan, Riga, Seger and Somerset had all be cruel to me in
some way. Dimples' crew had tackled me on the ground, intimidated me, deceived
me, torn away my rights and played upon my feeble psyche. Trust hadn't placed
me in this car, expediency had.
The FBI was the best chance I had to get to the Arena
intact. I doubted they would have appreciated me defining their actions as our
evolving tribalism. I was their investment, so it behooved them to take me
safely to my destination. I didn't believe they yet understood that they had
stopped working for the Director of the FBI, or the Attorney General and had
become self-employed.
They may have had this delusion that this would end up with
criminal indictments against the people behind the Big Lie and Carabolix-37,
but that was an unsustainable fantasy. Once the system betrayed them, as it had
betrayed me so often, Dimples' crew would know that escape was the only option
left. It was obvious to me the moment I saw Dimples.
She would never let them win. She was the only one allowed
to win. I didn't count the freebie she threw my way. That was a draw at best.
The ride to the Arena turned out to be nothing much. I was dropped off. Men,
and cops, were all around. I dutifully showed my I D to Arena Security, they
triple checked it and then brought a coordinator to check it one more time.
They realized I was in the front third of the arena floor
seating. I had a nice folding chair on the outer aisle. The coordinator decided
that was a bad idea so she had me exchange seats with a guy in the middle of my
row. I knew why this was, though I only had theoretical knowledge how a rally
would work.
When the authorities left, having neutralized me, I politely
went to the man I had exchanged seats with and asked him to switch back. He
seemed dubious, but when I explained that all the blame would be foisted on me,
he relented. See, here is how it worked. First your Talking Heads would get up
and make their speeches.
Then would come the long question and answer portion of this
farce. Women would walk up and down the aisles, men would raise their hands,
wave and asked if they could present a question. In a totally democratic
process, these women on the aisles would provide a sound system for the men to
ask the speaker their question.
The speaker answers, on to the next man. As you might guess,
men sitting on the aisle seats had the best chances of being heard. Men stuck
in the middle were out of luck, men like me and my 'new' assigned seat. Men
like me in my original seat, were potentially dangerous. Still, things went
along very smoothly until the tenth question.
Up to that point, the speakers had done their thing with the
basic theme being 'all you men are appreciated, doing your part, and we love
you.’ Not that they were going to do a damn thing to help us beyond patting us
on the head, but they loved us. They loved us because we were doing what we
were told. The men in the audience ate it up. It was what they wanted to hear.
I imagined that handing us all 'little lamb' outfits to wear
would have been counter-productive to their agenda, though it certainly would
have been more appropriate to how these women viewed the situation. It was
clear to me that all the questions the men in the audience were asking were
scripted. Some had to actually look down at their phones when reading off their
instructions.
Most adults don't like being treated like six-year olds, so
they ignored this mounting stupidity until Man 10 stood up, was recognized and
read off his question. He was around fifty and clearly in a prosperous
profession, positive he was a member of the winning (female) team.
"Is it true that at this very moment Congress is voting
on increasing the cycle from 28 days to 14, and abolishing marriage?" he
asked.
There was a hush. By the dumbstruck expression of the woman
on stage, this was not the prepared question. The problem wasn't moving the
cycle to 14 days. Men were prepared to knuckle under and do their part for the
Human species. But marriage? Men loved marriage. They didn't love the idea of
finding love, getting married and living happily ever after.
That was idiotic. No, men loved marriage as our last refuge
from a women's world. Gaining 'attachments' was a warning flag we could wave at
other women, telling them 'hey, we are doing our part, so please, leave us
alone.' Marriage was your shield and armor. It was 'Don't touch. I'm with
somebody!'
The hope was that if someone did do something to you, your
wife would scream bloody murder and things would get done. She was a woman
after all. Marriage had been preserved in the Gender Inequality Act because
most of the signers were either married or had been recently married and lost a
loved one to the Plague.
I imagine they thought it was a quaint institution that
would gradually fall to the wayside as society progressed. At the start, it
looked that way. The number of marriages did slowly decline for thirty years,
but about ten years ago, the trend began reversing. When a man is in his late
teens, early and mid-twenties, going out with lots of girls sounds nice.
Women pay for everything, they take you to nice places and
if you end up in the three- or four-way occasionally, well, you've got the
stamina for it. When you hit your late twenties and early thirties, men start
slowing down. Pulling a train on a Saturday night, all night, becomes a burden
you could do without.
About that time, marriage starts looking good. You've
probably been in a few attachments. You pick the one you can live the best with
and who has the best financial status and you keep dropping hints until she
realizes what you really want and she pops the question. Congratulations, you
only have to screw one women for the rest of your life.
Okay, maybe her sisters, your mother-in-law and her boss,
but still, that's not too bad. Ten years ago, that generation of men who grew
up after the plague were hitting their thirties and they were taking a renewed
interest in the dying institution of marriage. Men got interested, women got
real interested. For women, it meant no more desperate hunting every weekend.
You wanted cock? Call your husband, tell him to be home by
six and wear something sexy and it got done. Best of all, you could make that
call, look around your office and see all your female co-workers dripping with
jealousy. If you truly wanted to turn the screws, during that call, you told your
hubby to take some enhancement drugs because you wanted it deep and hard all
night long.
By this time in our social evolution, men didn't mind being
treated like that too much. We had safety. As married men started to bask in
their safe status, their unmarried brethren began wondering if marriage would
be a good idea for them, too. More took the plunge and most of them were
marrying up social and financially.
As I keep repeating, women aren't stupid. When rich,
successful bankers began marrying sales clerks and custodians, the social
stigma of marrying beneath your station evaporated in the burning reality that
they had their genetic future waiting at home, willing to do his duty. The
floodgates were open.
More married men meant fewer men in the fishing pool. That
meant greater pressure on the remaining men, who were now opting into marriage
to relieve that pressure. That meant even greater pressure on the fewer and
fewer remaining men. Last year the marriage rate began its climb toward 30%.
From the gender quota point of view, this was a disaster.
To put that in perspective, that's thirty percent of all
men. Then you have to drop out every male below the age of 16. Then you have to
consider that once men are over 59, they need a yearly physical. If something
is wrong, you get a limited deferment. That means you don't have to have sex as
often.
You never get to 'not have sex' unless you are on life
support, or a rape victim. There are waiting lists for kidneys, livers and
hearts, if you are a woman. If you are a man, they'll slap an artificial heart
in you if they have to. Men must perform for the general female population,
unless they are married.
Back to the question at the Arena. Men had been quietly
bleating, nodding our heads, and smiling without real passion until that point.
Sudden, like scenting a wolf for the first time, they were very attentive. If
you were a twenty-something guy, this wasn't 'good.’ If you were a forty-two
year old husband, with a wife, three kids and twelve years of marital bliss,
this was disastrous.
The government was about to shove you back into the deep end
were packs of starving women were going to devour you because your avoidance
skills were rusty. You were about to be waking up wondering if the pain coming
from your groin was worse than the headache you had from whatever the hell
those women drugged you with.
Oh, and by the way, you were about to lose your parental
rights to your offspring and most of your shared property. Effectively you were
being forced to divorce. The magnitude of this was amplified by the speaker. If
she had a pat lie handy, she could have defused things because men wanted
comforting words more than unforgiving reality.
But she stammered. She could have said yes, and that might
have been better. By stammering, she told the men that 'Yes, you are boned, but
we are going to lie to you about it.’ In my opinion, she did the worst possible
thing.
"Next question?"
That was the equivalent of 'Yes, but you don't deserve to be
told about your fates.’ There was no riot over that. No, it was something far,
far worse. Before that moment, the 20,000 men in the arena thought they were
part of this society. They were deluded into thinking they were equals. They
thought I was a lunatic. Now?
As a group they came to a consensus and it wasn't a pleasant
one. 'They think we are sheep, Mother-fuckers!'
This wasn't the crowd that carried dowels this morning but they were starting
to wish they had some now. The shift was subtle. Men had been sitting back in
their seats. Now they were leaning forward.
There had been polite whispered banter. Now there were grim
faces and quiet. I jumped up and waved my hands around. The communications girl
came my way, was offering me her microphone when she suddenly realized who I
was, I wasn't the man they had reassigned to that seat. She back-pedaled and
another questioner was immediately tapped to speak.
"Let him speak," the man pointed my way. There was
a hush. His comm girl backed up as well. Another man was found. He started
asking his state-sanctioned question but then the hissing and boos began. The
speaker's response was barely audible over the racket. I jumped up again. The
next man repeated the plea, though it was more insistent now.
"Let him speak!"
I wasn't sure what they expected me to say. I wanted some
sort of redress to our legal plight, something to defend us against the G E D
and the most egregious insults to our dignity. An arena security guard, neat
and prim in her freshly pressed uniform, moved from the wall nearby and was clearly
coming for me.
The world cracked a little more.
Five men jumped up around me and they looked angry.
"Don't," one of them menaced the guard. Cops would
have kept coming. It is what they do, but this was a security guard. She wasn't
armed and she certainly didn't like the mood presented to her.
She suddenly realized she was down on the floor of the
arena, back to a wall with a sea of angry faces looking her way. She stepped
back then ran, calling for back-up. It was the most horrible thing she could
have done. Two cops were already advancing my way from the front of the arena.
The ripple of the men's successful defiance moved through the crowd.
The majority of men kept their seats. They had not come to
get in a fight. They were not rowdy. In fact, they were becoming afraid as most
sane people do when violence approaches. Two patrolwomen came my way. Men rose
as they passed by, but they held firm. Courage was the important thing. The
belief was if they held firm, the men would back down because they always backed
down.
I saw Officer Passey and her partner as they closed. They
didn't have weapons drawn because they didn't want to spook us. There must have
been sixty men standing around me. I was still standing at my aisle seat and no
men had left their seats to pour into the aisle so the cops had unimpeded
access to me.
"Come with us," Passey beckoned.
"I haven't done anything wrong," I begged. She
grabbed my arm, and then two men hit her. Passe
View all episodes
By Steamy StoriesVanishing Manhood:
Part 11
Men’s Rally And Riot
Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand. Listen to the
► Podcast at Explicit Novels.
The
Persians marshalled all the nations under the Sun and Stars yet they were
defeated by a single idea: Sacrifice, and their inability to appreciate it.
After tonight, we would become a democracy because I could
trust the group to see beyond gender and into the ideas and ideals of the
speaker. True democracy was not about the tyranny of numbers, but consensus.
Consensus was the result of the belief that everyone in the group, even the
opposition, had worth, they counted.
How in the Hell, after all the wrong turns my life had
taken, could I still believe I was an idealist? It was simple. I had not let
them win. In a very crude, sexual way it was that I had the confidence in one
girl, my first date, to ask her to hold off on true intercourse and she
respected my wishes. In the kaleidoscope of my fractured mind, that memory
burned through.
Listening to the women in my living room talking while I
dressed in the bedroom, a tiny shiver of one memory collided and melded with another.
No women I had ever known had not betrayed me in one way or another. That was
the terror of distrust for me, but, no woman, or man, was perfect. They would
all betray me, sooner or later.
I now understood this wasn't bad. It was human nature. We
all let people down around us, even the ones we cared about. Pain had led me to
hunt for perfection. That was a pointless quest and a pursuit that led to
madness. What I should have been looking for was restitution. Did that person
know they had wronged me and were they trying to make it up to me?
The same held true for me. Was I a true friend, looking
after those I had wronged and balancing accounts with them as well? Honesty,
Truth and Love, the harshest bitches on the block. I meditated for twenty
minutes before heading back to my assembled friends.
"You look nice," Kuiko beamed. "Really
nice."
"Thank you," I blushed slightly. More Bethany
clothes.
"That wasn't a compliment, you jerk," Capri
glared. "Last chance. This is stupid."
"Noted and acknowledged, Miss O'Hara," I nodded.
"I need a taxi." I pulled out my phone and began looking up taxi
services. My phone rang.
“FBI across the street” it read. I shuddered. I wasn't
upset. I was peeved.
“Do you like my new underwear you Pervs?” I hung up. I
didn't care if they liked my underwear.
"Them?" Capri asked softly.
"Yeah."
"Damn it, you just took a shower, shaved and got
dressed. Can't they leave you alone for an hour?" she griped.
"Who?" Roni got out first.
"Santa's Little Helpers," Capri grumbled. "I
really ought to do something about them."
"Let us not revisit the whole 'you dismembered in the
morgue' thing, shall we," I requested. "Besides, I gave them a piece
of my mind this time."
"Not the sexy part!" Kuiko blurted out.
"What did you do?" Capri studied me.
"I called them pervs," I declared. "No, I did
not, Kuiko. The sexy is all for you." She smiled.
"Oh yeah, that will do it," Capri pressed her
wrist to her forehead and announced dramatically.
"What do I want to do more," Venus mumbled,
"fight over the sexy or find out what the hell is going on?"
"Perverted Santa's Little Helpers who leave dismembered
bodies in the morgue and have an apparent issue with Israel naked or
semi-naked," Roni mused. "Capri, after he leaves, you are going to do
some explaining."
"I think this is my cue to leave," I told the room
then headed for the door.
"Aren't you going to call a taxi?" Aniqua reminded
me.
"The FBI is going to drive me there," I grinned.
"What makes you say that?" Samantha gulped.
"When the alternative is letting me flag down a cabby
that may, or may not, be homicidal, my bet is they'll drop me off at the
arena," I explained.
"Makes sense to me," Kuiko nodded. "If I had
a car, I'd give him a ride."
"Kuiko, for once I agree with you," Venus
muttered.
"I'm not as dumb as I look," Kuiko turned that
1000 watt smile on Venus.
"Of course you are not," Roni chortled.
"Otherwise you couldn't walk and talk at the same time."
I went around and kissed each one of them, on the lips.
Normally that should have made them happy, but they kept looking at me like
they'd never see me again. Clever girls. I left the complex and scanned the
streets. There was the car, at the edge of a car park down the street. It
wasn't as if there were many car owners in this part of town.
I hurried across the street and I was whistling. Special
Agent Sosa lowered the window as I approached. Across from her was S A Saris,
also with Dimple's team.
"Yes?" Sosa sighed. "When staking out a place
it sort of blows our cover if you walk right up to us, by the way."
"That's cool," I grinned. "We aren't staying
here anyway. I need a ride to the Arena."
"Do we look like a taxi service?" Sosa smirked.
"I'm going, you are following. We might as well make it
easy on us, save a few volts," I reasoned.
"Get in," Saris grumbled. I gladly did so and off
we went.
"Planning to get arrested?" Saris asked.
"Planning? No. Expecting it to be a possibility,
yes," I admitted. "Any news?"
"Dr. Fremont is still missing, but her company hired a
GlobeMaster to haul a whole lot of something to Bolivia," Sosa answered.
Seeing my confusion, Saris added.
"A GlobeMaster is a really big aircraft, used for
hauling freight, not passengers."
My impulse was to say 'can you shoot it down,' but the
illegality of the action was stunning.
"Anything on your front?" Sosa inquired.
"Let me see, my Capri's Mom wants her to be a
cum-dumpster, seven girls stopped by my place today to drag me out of my home
and make me their bitch. My tribe made them back down, this time. Now my ladies
are camped out at my place, murdering my AC unit and praying I make it back
home in some sort of working order," I outlined.
"Why did they let you go? Are they some kind of
pansies?" Sosa mocked.
"I'd hit you upside your head for that comment, but you
are driving, armed and most likely a much better fighter than me," I
replied. "They are not pansies. They risked harm for me today."
"What happened at the firefight today, anyway?"
Saris asked.
"Not really sure," I lied. "Bullets were
flying and I was running for my life."
"You didn't see anything?" she persisted. Damn her
interrogation abilities.
"Wait, with guns going off I thought you would be happy
I was running away," I evaded.
"Why didn't you wait for Agents Vabishi and Fraklos to
get there?"
"Capri and I got across the street so we ran for
it," I shrugged.
"Next time, lay flat and we'll come get you,"
Saris told me.
"Thanks, G I Jane," was my snarky comeback.
"Maybe if you let me have some sort of combat training I'd know what to do
next time." I was making light of things, but in the back of my mind, like
a cornered badger in the dark, I knew I was in a vehicle with two women I
didn't know.
It wasn't like I could tell myself they were law enforcement
agents and feel better. Kwan, Riga, Seger and Somerset had all be cruel to me in
some way. Dimples' crew had tackled me on the ground, intimidated me, deceived
me, torn away my rights and played upon my feeble psyche. Trust hadn't placed
me in this car, expediency had.
The FBI was the best chance I had to get to the Arena
intact. I doubted they would have appreciated me defining their actions as our
evolving tribalism. I was their investment, so it behooved them to take me
safely to my destination. I didn't believe they yet understood that they had
stopped working for the Director of the FBI, or the Attorney General and had
become self-employed.
They may have had this delusion that this would end up with
criminal indictments against the people behind the Big Lie and Carabolix-37,
but that was an unsustainable fantasy. Once the system betrayed them, as it had
betrayed me so often, Dimples' crew would know that escape was the only option
left. It was obvious to me the moment I saw Dimples.
She would never let them win. She was the only one allowed
to win. I didn't count the freebie she threw my way. That was a draw at best.
The ride to the Arena turned out to be nothing much. I was dropped off. Men,
and cops, were all around. I dutifully showed my I D to Arena Security, they
triple checked it and then brought a coordinator to check it one more time.
They realized I was in the front third of the arena floor
seating. I had a nice folding chair on the outer aisle. The coordinator decided
that was a bad idea so she had me exchange seats with a guy in the middle of my
row. I knew why this was, though I only had theoretical knowledge how a rally
would work.
When the authorities left, having neutralized me, I politely
went to the man I had exchanged seats with and asked him to switch back. He
seemed dubious, but when I explained that all the blame would be foisted on me,
he relented. See, here is how it worked. First your Talking Heads would get up
and make their speeches.
Then would come the long question and answer portion of this
farce. Women would walk up and down the aisles, men would raise their hands,
wave and asked if they could present a question. In a totally democratic
process, these women on the aisles would provide a sound system for the men to
ask the speaker their question.
The speaker answers, on to the next man. As you might guess,
men sitting on the aisle seats had the best chances of being heard. Men stuck
in the middle were out of luck, men like me and my 'new' assigned seat. Men
like me in my original seat, were potentially dangerous. Still, things went
along very smoothly until the tenth question.
Up to that point, the speakers had done their thing with the
basic theme being 'all you men are appreciated, doing your part, and we love
you.’ Not that they were going to do a damn thing to help us beyond patting us
on the head, but they loved us. They loved us because we were doing what we
were told. The men in the audience ate it up. It was what they wanted to hear.
I imagined that handing us all 'little lamb' outfits to wear
would have been counter-productive to their agenda, though it certainly would
have been more appropriate to how these women viewed the situation. It was
clear to me that all the questions the men in the audience were asking were
scripted. Some had to actually look down at their phones when reading off their
instructions.
Most adults don't like being treated like six-year olds, so
they ignored this mounting stupidity until Man 10 stood up, was recognized and
read off his question. He was around fifty and clearly in a prosperous
profession, positive he was a member of the winning (female) team.
"Is it true that at this very moment Congress is voting
on increasing the cycle from 28 days to 14, and abolishing marriage?" he
asked.
There was a hush. By the dumbstruck expression of the woman
on stage, this was not the prepared question. The problem wasn't moving the
cycle to 14 days. Men were prepared to knuckle under and do their part for the
Human species. But marriage? Men loved marriage. They didn't love the idea of
finding love, getting married and living happily ever after.
That was idiotic. No, men loved marriage as our last refuge
from a women's world. Gaining 'attachments' was a warning flag we could wave at
other women, telling them 'hey, we are doing our part, so please, leave us
alone.' Marriage was your shield and armor. It was 'Don't touch. I'm with
somebody!'
The hope was that if someone did do something to you, your
wife would scream bloody murder and things would get done. She was a woman
after all. Marriage had been preserved in the Gender Inequality Act because
most of the signers were either married or had been recently married and lost a
loved one to the Plague.
I imagine they thought it was a quaint institution that
would gradually fall to the wayside as society progressed. At the start, it
looked that way. The number of marriages did slowly decline for thirty years,
but about ten years ago, the trend began reversing. When a man is in his late
teens, early and mid-twenties, going out with lots of girls sounds nice.
Women pay for everything, they take you to nice places and
if you end up in the three- or four-way occasionally, well, you've got the
stamina for it. When you hit your late twenties and early thirties, men start
slowing down. Pulling a train on a Saturday night, all night, becomes a burden
you could do without.
About that time, marriage starts looking good. You've
probably been in a few attachments. You pick the one you can live the best with
and who has the best financial status and you keep dropping hints until she
realizes what you really want and she pops the question. Congratulations, you
only have to screw one women for the rest of your life.
Okay, maybe her sisters, your mother-in-law and her boss,
but still, that's not too bad. Ten years ago, that generation of men who grew
up after the plague were hitting their thirties and they were taking a renewed
interest in the dying institution of marriage. Men got interested, women got
real interested. For women, it meant no more desperate hunting every weekend.
You wanted cock? Call your husband, tell him to be home by
six and wear something sexy and it got done. Best of all, you could make that
call, look around your office and see all your female co-workers dripping with
jealousy. If you truly wanted to turn the screws, during that call, you told your
hubby to take some enhancement drugs because you wanted it deep and hard all
night long.
By this time in our social evolution, men didn't mind being
treated like that too much. We had safety. As married men started to bask in
their safe status, their unmarried brethren began wondering if marriage would
be a good idea for them, too. More took the plunge and most of them were
marrying up social and financially.
As I keep repeating, women aren't stupid. When rich,
successful bankers began marrying sales clerks and custodians, the social
stigma of marrying beneath your station evaporated in the burning reality that
they had their genetic future waiting at home, willing to do his duty. The
floodgates were open.
More married men meant fewer men in the fishing pool. That
meant greater pressure on the remaining men, who were now opting into marriage
to relieve that pressure. That meant even greater pressure on the fewer and
fewer remaining men. Last year the marriage rate began its climb toward 30%.
From the gender quota point of view, this was a disaster.
To put that in perspective, that's thirty percent of all
men. Then you have to drop out every male below the age of 16. Then you have to
consider that once men are over 59, they need a yearly physical. If something
is wrong, you get a limited deferment. That means you don't have to have sex as
often.
You never get to 'not have sex' unless you are on life
support, or a rape victim. There are waiting lists for kidneys, livers and
hearts, if you are a woman. If you are a man, they'll slap an artificial heart
in you if they have to. Men must perform for the general female population,
unless they are married.
Back to the question at the Arena. Men had been quietly
bleating, nodding our heads, and smiling without real passion until that point.
Sudden, like scenting a wolf for the first time, they were very attentive. If
you were a twenty-something guy, this wasn't 'good.’ If you were a forty-two
year old husband, with a wife, three kids and twelve years of marital bliss,
this was disastrous.
The government was about to shove you back into the deep end
were packs of starving women were going to devour you because your avoidance
skills were rusty. You were about to be waking up wondering if the pain coming
from your groin was worse than the headache you had from whatever the hell
those women drugged you with.
Oh, and by the way, you were about to lose your parental
rights to your offspring and most of your shared property. Effectively you were
being forced to divorce. The magnitude of this was amplified by the speaker. If
she had a pat lie handy, she could have defused things because men wanted
comforting words more than unforgiving reality.
But she stammered. She could have said yes, and that might
have been better. By stammering, she told the men that 'Yes, you are boned, but
we are going to lie to you about it.’ In my opinion, she did the worst possible
thing.
"Next question?"
That was the equivalent of 'Yes, but you don't deserve to be
told about your fates.’ There was no riot over that. No, it was something far,
far worse. Before that moment, the 20,000 men in the arena thought they were
part of this society. They were deluded into thinking they were equals. They
thought I was a lunatic. Now?
As a group they came to a consensus and it wasn't a pleasant
one. 'They think we are sheep, Mother-fuckers!'
This wasn't the crowd that carried dowels this morning but they were starting
to wish they had some now. The shift was subtle. Men had been sitting back in
their seats. Now they were leaning forward.
There had been polite whispered banter. Now there were grim
faces and quiet. I jumped up and waved my hands around. The communications girl
came my way, was offering me her microphone when she suddenly realized who I
was, I wasn't the man they had reassigned to that seat. She back-pedaled and
another questioner was immediately tapped to speak.
"Let him speak," the man pointed my way. There was
a hush. His comm girl backed up as well. Another man was found. He started
asking his state-sanctioned question but then the hissing and boos began. The
speaker's response was barely audible over the racket. I jumped up again. The
next man repeated the plea, though it was more insistent now.
"Let him speak!"
I wasn't sure what they expected me to say. I wanted some
sort of redress to our legal plight, something to defend us against the G E D
and the most egregious insults to our dignity. An arena security guard, neat
and prim in her freshly pressed uniform, moved from the wall nearby and was clearly
coming for me.
The world cracked a little more.
Five men jumped up around me and they looked angry.
"Don't," one of them menaced the guard. Cops would
have kept coming. It is what they do, but this was a security guard. She wasn't
armed and she certainly didn't like the mood presented to her.
She suddenly realized she was down on the floor of the
arena, back to a wall with a sea of angry faces looking her way. She stepped
back then ran, calling for back-up. It was the most horrible thing she could
have done. Two cops were already advancing my way from the front of the arena.
The ripple of the men's successful defiance moved through the crowd.
The majority of men kept their seats. They had not come to
get in a fight. They were not rowdy. In fact, they were becoming afraid as most
sane people do when violence approaches. Two patrolwomen came my way. Men rose
as they passed by, but they held firm. Courage was the important thing. The
belief was if they held firm, the men would back down because they always backed
down.
I saw Officer Passey and her partner as they closed. They
didn't have weapons drawn because they didn't want to spook us. There must have
been sixty men standing around me. I was still standing at my aisle seat and no
men had left their seats to pour into the aisle so the cops had unimpeded
access to me.
"Come with us," Passey beckoned.
"I haven't done anything wrong," I begged. She
grabbed my arm, and then two men hit her. Passe