Selene’s decision to have a baby, made while scattering her mother’s ashes at home in Mispu, was only a question of conception. After all, the Coop made it easy to enjoy motherhood and the rights that came with it, even for someone in Selene’s position: thirty-nine, unemployed, and partnerless. CARE workers could be summoned at any hour to massage swollen ankles, perform housework, or help with heavy lifting. A fetus began receiving the monthly salary as soon as the pregnancy was registered, and, once parents were ready, their children moved to Youth Centers to be raised. But the remote village in which Selene lived contained an unstimulating supply of prime sperm-bearing-age men. Fortunately, her sister Ursula had been posted to the capital tenancy, Nova Alexandria, in a house with a comfortable, spacious guest room. A period of heated entreaties and flimsy excuses led to sororal compromise: Selene could visit for several months to find her spermulant.
Despite its size, Nova Alexandria felt lonelier than Selene had expected. The house was often empty, with Ursula at her job or out with friends; her sister’s two older children lived full-time at their Youth Center, and the baby stayed weekdays. Ursula’s husband, at least, worked nearby, and Selene began hanging around Tomas’s carpentry studio in hopes that one of his friends would drop in. She was willing to pay the right man handsomely (the Coop covered the expense): a third on signing the contract, a third on pregnancy, and a third on delivery.
Why not the spider, whose sac can collect sperm for a rainy day? Why not a kangaroo, with three vaginas, one of them exclusive to the birth canal?
While Tomas sawed and sanded, Selene would sit in a corner reading the personal ads in back of the Nova Alexandrian Ledger. Tomas mistook this for an interest in current events and would jabber on about things like womb implants for men and anti-arsinoek legislation. “On the surface,” he said to Selene one morning in May, while lacquering a set of drawers, “it sounds like a no-brainer. It’s barbaric to have a man-killing poison be part of our official governance.”
“Uh-huh,” Selene said. A red-streaked strand had broken free from Tomas’s ponytail and was dangling over his brow like a fishing line.
“On the other hand,” Tomas went on, “do you know how sick some of those men in the War Zone are? I vomited when I heard about that guy from Gaul last year—the one with the kids.”
Selene wanted to tell him that she felt something like sympathy for aggros and perverts, whom she viewed as addicts. It was honestly a bit thrilling that there were men—or wooms even, she supposed—who thirsted for extinguishing life rather than creating it. When you thought about it, both were acts of immense power over the right to exist.
“Sometimes I’ll be talking to a male friend, and he’ll say something weird, and I’m like, What the futata?” Tomas went on. “Then I’m like, well, maybe the fear of getting arsinoeked is the only thing keeping him in line. What do you think?”
“I’m pro-life, I guess. Men shouldn’t be cut down like trees. They’re too useful.”
Tomas picked up a piece of sandpaper and began to rub the bottom of the cabinet with great vigor.
“I’m registered as a conscientious objector, you know,” Selene went on. “I just can’t imagine myself arsinoeking any man, especially now, with my sperm search.”
“But isn’t that just a way of sidestepping your responsibility?”
Selene wasn’t listening. “Three kids,” she said, slowly. “You must have really strong sperm. Any diseases in your family tree?”
Tomas turned back to his workbench. “I have to finish this cabinet.”
Occasionally, Ursula and Tomas would ask if Selene wanted to hold their ten-month-old. Though the baby seemed tougher now, its neck had drooped and bobbled last year at her mother’s funeral. Selene tried to imagine herself birthing such an enormous creature, picturing a squished-up baby being inserted through her vagina, then inflated with a string pull, like a ship in a bottle.
The supreme goddess Neith had gotten pregnant by bathing in a sacred well, which sounded preferable to traditional methods, though Selene supposed it was just a metaphor for the unity of the womb and the universe. But why, she wondered, had Neith taken human shape, when so many animals have more impressive reproductive systems? Why not the spider, whose sac can collect sperm for a rainy day? Why not a kangaroo, with three vaginas, one of them exclusive to the birth canal? Why not the heroic male seahorse who keeps and nurtures the embryo? Any of those sounded more worthy of worship than human motherhood.
As the broadsheet’s personal ads grew predictably saccharine—“Retired Beekeeper seeks woom with two or more children for banquets on the beach”—Selene began reading the lifestyle section. In early June, a headline caught her attention: “Male Collective Conceal Almost All—But What Do They Really Want?” The photo showed a veiled preacher in a tight white robe, but what drew Selene’s gaze was the cutout. A hole had been snipped into his robe at crotch level, and through it blossomed his unerect reproductive tools. His “fish and eggs,” in the parlance. Selene stifled a laugh, as she had several times when confronted with this vulnerable spectacle in the bedroom. There was something ridiculous about male genitalia, shrunken and puckered as if an afterthought. Erect, she conceded, a “fish” was more impressive, while still evoking the dunce who brings a sewing needle to a knitter’s club. The story did little to contain its scorn.
On the white sands of Cherry Palm Beach in eastern Tequesta territory, a man who calls himself Gladius wants you to know that he is more than the most obvious features of his sex. To amplify his message, he has taken to wearing a veil and an ankle-length tunic with a hole cut out for his genitalia. Eyes up here, my good wooms. Whatever could you be looking at? How rude and objectifying you are!
It is your prurient interest in his dangling bits that Gladius hopes to combat with the group he founded five years ago, COMMAND (Cooperative of Modest Men Asking Nicely for Dominion). By forcing the viewer to engage with his junk—“nothing more, nothing less,” as he puts it—he confronts the extent to which woomkind sees men as means to a reproductive end. At the same time, his followers want new advancements in womb implantations to be available to the denser sex—in short, motherhood for men.
“When I first started wearing the veil, I felt invisible,” explained acolyte Dirk (most of Gladius’s followers have adopted “penis” names). “Appearance plays such a large role for men that I felt it was the only thing I had to offer society aside from my sperm. But Gladius has taught us our value as human beings.”
Another man chimed in: “The wind feels amazing on your bare eggs. You gotta try it.” Let the record show, dear reader, that this writer went native for a nippy post-dawn breakfast! As Gladius sat in his tent sipping tea, two feet (but never the third) tucked under his robe, I asked if the collective had received significant female interest.
“Wooms have visited or donated who are sympathetic to our philosophy,” he said, giving his veil a demure tug. “Anyone with an open mind is welcome. Wooms have treated men as beasts of burden for millennia—why not let us take on pregnancy, too?”
Wooms “sympathetic to our philosophy?” Who could be more sympathetic to men than Selene? She put the article into her bedside drawer. Gladius’s followers seemed sincere—why should they not bear children if that was what they wanted? It wasn’t physically impossible; many wooms without wombs had already gotten the surgery. Early the next morning, Ursula knocked on the guest room door. Summer break was approaching, and soon all three kids would be home. Perhaps she could help Selene find a room in the city? There was no need, Selene answered haughtily. She had discovered her sperm quest’s final destination. Three days later, with a pat on the head for the baby and a frosty nod for Ursula, she boarded an overnight train heading south—toward COMMAND.
Getting off the train in Tequesta felt like stepping into a steam room, each breath barely distinguishable from drowning. An elderly Coop man descended behind Selene, chipper and smiling. “Take off as many clothes as you can, dear, and put on your hat,” the man advised.
“I haven’t got a hat,” Selene gasped. The man shoved his own onto her head, tutting.
Selene understood that nudity was more common in the south but couldn’t help staring as a laidback station attendant, wearing only a hat and a thick layer of coconut oil, helped her find the right streetcar. The Tequesta and Muscogee territories didn’t have any Coop tenancies but were popular with tourists. The streetcar passed snorkel shops and billboards for dolphin swims and trippy black-drink rituals, stopping at several towns crowded with woven-walled, four-story hotels. Then, nothing but sand and sun for miles until Cherry Palm Beach.
“Wooms have treated men as beasts of burden for millennia—why not let us take on pregnancy too?”
Selene gathered her bags and disembarked. In desperate need of a toilet, she risked leaving the trail to squat behind a dune and was wiping with a big, hopefully not rash-inducing leaf when she noticed a person watching her. She hastily kicked sand over her expulsion.
The man was clearly from COMMAND, his gauzy white tunic backlit by the sun. As her eyes adjusted, she saw he was unveiled and not particularly handsome, though his hair was lovely: thick, reddish-brown waves that fell to middle-back. “You a journalist?”
She shook her head vigorously.
“Sex maniac?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, what are you doing here? You know you’re at COMMAND camp, right? We’ve been kind of inundated with gawkers since this article in the Nova Alexandrian Ledger.”
“I want to help,” Selene said, worried she might be expelled before she even got to enter. “What you’re doing is amazing! I want to hear more from Gladius.”
“All right, I’ll take you to him.” The man came toward her, winding his hair into a bun. His veil was attached to his robe at the neck, and he snapped the front closed over his face.
“What’s your name?” Selene asked as they began walking.
“Pubes Maximus.”
“Oh, yeah, the article said you use . . . special names. I’m Selene Hathornunu. Do you have any children?” It would be best if her donor didn’t have strong prior commitments.
“None I know of. Hold on a sec.” Pubes reached down and pulled his genitals through the cutout. “Ta-da! Ready to open hearts and change minds.”
The transformation made Selene somehow nervous. “How will I recognize you veiled?”
“I’m kind of purple here, see? You get pretty attuned to small differences after a while. Become almost like faces.”
They passed several greenhouses and a massive tool shed before reaching an open-walled hut where a man was squatting in the center, weaving palm leaves. A woom sat in a chair behind him, flipping through a magazine. “Greetings, Pubes,” the man called. “Whom have you brought us this fine day?”
“Selene Hathornunu. She’s here to join the cause.”
“Hail, fair Selene. May we offer you some refreshment?”
“I am pretty thirsty,” Selene admitted. “Are you Gladius?”
“Ita vero. Pubes, will you fetch some lemonade? Please, Selene, sit and rest your weary feet. I hope you don’t mind if I keep weaving. Idle hands, you know.” The woom coughed. “Oh yes, this is my dear friend Lydia. She, too, is a devotee of the cause.”
“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name already,” Lydia said, and Selene repeated it. “Charmed,” Lydia added. “And where are you from?”
“Well, Nova Alexandria just now, but . . .”
“I despise big cities, don’t you, Gladius? Very few pure hearts.”
Selene approached. “I don’t have any family. Kids or partner, I mean. I was thinking, with your permission, that I could stay here a while?” She studied the man’s silver lamb pendant. “Help with whatever’s needed?”
“The more the merrier, my dear. You and Lydia can share a hut—she has a bunk open.”
“It’s covered with my things,” Lydia protested.
“I’ll weave you some baskets for them,” Gladius said. “Baskets are great for everything! Now, Lydia, would you mind showing Selene where she’ll bunk?”
“My pleasure.” Lydia walked off without a backward glance. Selene rushed to follow.
The hut was small, crammed with a bunk bed—Lydia pulled her clothes off the top, sighing loudly—and a small table covered in dirty dishes. Pubes walked in carrying a glass of lemonade. “So you’re staying. I’m glad.”
Selene gulped down the drink then gathered the dishes from the table. “Could you show me where to get these washed?” As Pubes ran to hold the door open, Selene called goodbye to Lydia, but the woom ignored them.
His followers want new advancements in womb implantations to be available to the denser sex—in short, motherhood for men.
A row of larger huts behind the cabin, Pubes explained, served as dorms. “And that brick building is the broadcast station. Gladius and Lydia thought with all the publicity, we could record some kind of promotional program. Now you set those dishes down there”—he pointed to a wooden trough in front of the open kitchen hut—“and I’ll introduce you to our cook, Sopio.”
Sopio was stocky and unveiled. He offered Selene a piece of sea urchin, which tasted like briny custard. When Pubes explained that she was going to help with cleaning, Sopio grinned and poured three shots of orange liqueur; they clinked and downed them. “The men here are real slobs. As if because they’re hiding their faces they can’t be punished. And always wandering in at night and stealing food.”
“I’ll come back to help with dinner, but I need to clean my hut first.”
“She’s with Lydia,” Pubes added.
“What an egg poacher that woom is. And just as big a slob as the rest of ’em. Go on, then. But have some black drink first.” He handed Selene a glass of ebony liquid that tasted pleasantly of berries and bark.
On her walk back to the cabin, Selene couldn’t stop smiling. Being a spermulant probably wasn’t the most alluring proposition for a group lobbying for masculine motherhood, but COMMAND made her feel like she had options. Which of these specimens would father her child? Pubes, helpful with a luscious mane; Gladius, the wise leader; or earthy, Pan-like Sopio? Maybe she’d collect from all three and let Neith decide.
The black drink seemed to lend superhuman energy and speed to her cleaning. Lydia caught Selene outside the hut as she was beating the carpet and abruptly asked her age.
“Forty this year.”
“So you’re here for sperm?”
Were her motives so transparent? Selene tried to hide her embarrassment by returning the carpet to its place beside the bunk, but Lydia followed her inside.
“What if I were to help you find the perfect spermulant? I’d like to record your search.”
“Record me?”
“Can I be honest, woom to woom? I came here to make a program about COMMAND, but the men have been completely dull. A story like yours, though—people want to hear that.”
“Me? No one wants that.” Selene believed this, yet also suspected she gave off an invisible aura of attractiveness that certain people—the best people—recognized. “What would I get?”
“Like I said, top-quality sperm. I’ll tell Gladius that we’re going to make a program for COMMAND where you play a character who reduces his men to sperm suppliers so that we can show the public how wooms shouldn’t act around men.”
“Won’t I look foolish? And desperate?”
“Absolutely not. Think of the sarcastic asides and double entendres the men won’t get. It’ll be amazing!” Lydia picked up her mirror and began typing. Selene didn’t mind being dismissed; in fact, she liked it. More people should be as clear about their intentions.
Gladius agreed to the plan, and that evening after dinner, the men of COMMAND assembled in his hut. “This looks terrible,” Lydia said. “Line up by height—shorter men to the left, taller to the right.”
The men crowded to the left.
“Oh, come on.” Lydia dragged them into order and began to pin numbers onto their robes. “Gladius?” she called.
Gladius was weaving. “It would not be advantageous to COMMAND to have its leader involved in cheap stunts.”
Lydia went over and massaged his shoulders. “A good leader—a messiah—must be willing to sacrifice his pride.”
“I thought absolution was key. Didn’t we decide that?”
“Later. First comes sacrifice.”
“Fine.” Gladius entered the line several men to the left of where he should have been, but Lydia let him stay.
How was Selene supposed to choose from among veiled men? She didn’t think Sopio had even come, but as she paced the line, one man whispered “Lucky thirteen,” and she recognized his voice. Pubes she found using the hint he’d provided earlier; his fish under the plum-colored canopy did resemble a little eggplant. He was number twenty. After choosing Pubes, Sopio, and Gladius, Selene plucked three others at random. Lydia dismissed the remainder.
“Please don’t speak within range of the recorders,” she called as the men shuffled out. Gladius whispered in her ear, and she nodded. “All right, first question. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Number one?”
The first contender stepped forward. “People underestimate me because I work in a pencil factory. I’d finish university so I could be a nurse.”
“Number nine?”
“No question, bigger butt. Then I’d be comfier when I sat.”
“Can he try that again?” Gladius asked. “A more serious, scholarly answer?”
“Um, sure,” number nine said. “I would increase my buttocks’ protuberance and malleability so that my comfort would be greatly ameliorated?”
“We’re going to have to work on that one,” Lydia said. “Number ten?”
“I would have a louder speaking voice,” trilled Gladius, “so every person who heard me would harken to my cause.”
Lydia blew him a kiss. “Brief but profound. Thirteen?”
“Hmm,” Sopio began, making his voice deep and alluring. “I’d have the ability to know what any woom was hungry for. Then I’d lead her blindfolded to a table by the beach, feed her my food, and ask her to describe it before we lay down together and her whale swallowed me up.”
Selene focused on not looking aroused. “I thought we were supposed to be proving our nobility,” Gladius grumbled.
“Men can be noble and sexy,” Lydia growled. “We want to show that you have talents that equal any woom’s—and that you’re passionate about them. Twenty?”
Pubes clasped his hands like a pupil in recitation. “I have these nightmares where my mother comes into my bedroom and tries to make me drink arsinoek. I’d want to be able to push her away and throw the arsinoek to the ground. I think wooms really want a man who’ll stand up to them.”
“We’re probably going to have to cut some of that. Last contestant, twenty-one.”
Twenty-one sounded sheepish. “Sometimes I wish I weren’t so tall,” he said. “When I’m standing in a crowd of wooms, I just feel huge. It’s embarrassing.”
“I know what you mean,” nine said. “My boyfriend is six-foot-five. He’s always so awkward.”
“Excuse me,” Selene said. “Would your boyfriend approve of you donating sperm?”
“Totally,” said nine, “we’re very open. Plus, I could use the bonus from the government.”
“I don’t think he’s here for the right reasons,” Pubes called. “You want me to get rid of him?” He grabbed nine, causing the man to cry out as his fish popped back into his robe.
“If he’s willing to be a donor, he can stay,” Lydia said. “That’s enough for tonight.”
Pubes, Sopio, and contestant one, whose name was Clavis, escorted Selene to her hut.
“You don’t need all these other gals,” Pubes whispered, his breath hot and sticky against her ear. “I’d give you my sperm now, for free.”
There was no sign the next morning that Lydia had slept in her bunk. Starving, Selene took a scenic walk along the beach toward the kitchen. She managed to enjoy herself for several minutes before a familiar self-criticism reared its head: she wasn’t cut out for woomhood. Why couldn’t having a child be a straightforward, natural, ennobling part of life, as it was for wooms like her sister?
Which of these specimens would father her child?
Everything would be easier as a man, she thought, not for the first time. Men could lay down their days as repeating patterns, free from demands. No one tried to calculate the quality or scope of their lives. She sympathized with Gladius’s desire to bear a child, but part of her wanted to tell him he should be grateful nobody expected such a profound achievement from him.
Just above high tide, Selene nearly stumbled over Lydia lying beside an unveiled man, whom she recognized by his necklace as Gladius. They were asleep despite the sun and gulls shrieking overhead. Gladius was golden-haired, as she’d somehow anticipated, but where she’d pictured a thin Roman nose and mouth, both features were engorged and labial. Lydia looked different as well, the morning light exposing freckles and a faint downy mustache on her pale skin.
Lydia woke and stood up, casually brushing sand from her tunic. “Join me for a swim?”
At the water’s edge, Selene tried to keep on her underpants and breastband, but Lydia badgered her into removing them. The sea was murky and hot. They waded to shoulder depth, where Lydia began to rotate her arms in small circles. “So what’d you think of last night?”
“I hate being the center of attention.” This was both true and not—Selene was also annoyed when it wasn’t an option. “Are you sure you don’t mind Gladius competing?”
“Oh, because we’re futating? To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend him as a sex partner—he’s awfully lazy. Plus he’s one of those men who think religion should focus on Neith’s son, Horus. Imagine! I asked him, What did the son ever do that was so miraculous? Neith made him. Everything he ever did came from her. But he said, It’s not important where we come from, it’s what we accomplish and atone for on earth.”
They watched Gladius get up and snap on his veil. He flung his tunic over one shoulder and began scaling his fish.
“Every morning on waking,” Lydia said, rolling her eyes. “Medically necessary, he says.”
“Men can be real hypochondriacs.”
“It’s a manifestation of their feelings of powerlessness. I try to be understanding.” Onshore, Gladius climaxed and began a yogic salutation. “Why don’t you go to him?”
“But I’m naked! I’d look better with something to hide my scrawniness.”
“Go, like Aphrodite from the foam!” Lydia resumed her exercise.
Selene had hoped to emerge goddess-like from the sea, but a wave caught her, and she landed on her knees in the surf. Gladius hurried over and hauled her to her feet.
“Good morning, fair lady. How passed for you the night?”
Noticing that he had forgotten to pop his fish through, Selene felt ten times more naked. “Very well,” she stammered. “Um, Lydia said you want to start a cult of sons?”
Being a spermulant probably wasn’t the most alluring proposition for a group lobbying for masculine motherhood.
“Of sons and sins and suns!” Gladius cried, pointing upward. “Why should men be governed by the moon’s whimsy alone? The sun is bigger, stronger, brighter, and travels across the galaxy for thirteen months and a day. On the shortest one, every farmer who has sowed and reaped cries out for his resurrection.” Selene tried to interrupt and save him the embarrassment, but Gladius wasn’t finished. “In one grand arc, he rises, climaxes, and sacrifices his fish, which is also our suffering, so that we might live again. That’s why I must have a womb implant. Imagine a generation born not from wooms but from men! Think of the potential.”
“But the wrongs we’ve done live within us forever,” Selene said primly, channeling a lecture she’d heard her mother deliver. “At church, we speak them out loud to remember that guilt lessens over time. This is Neith’s gift and curse—the knowledge that there is no such thing as absolution, and that remorse isn’t everlasting. Men are inclined to forgetfulness. That’s why the goddess burdened them with the threat of arsinoek.”
“You are wise and eloquent, dear lady. But how can wooms live in peace knowing they may be required to use such a poison? Power is corrupting, no matter who wields it.”
Lydia emerged from the water with efficient grace. “Gladius, dear, I need about twenty bottles of wine and six wetsuits.”
“The men are supposed to be moderate in drink.”
“Today is a special occasion—the first sperm harvest of Mother Selene.”
Gladius grumbled but promised he would find the supplies.
“And now,” Lydia said, gripping Selene’s chin, “let’s see what we can do with you.”
“Lipstick makes me look like a chipmunk!”
“Don’t worry, I’m a professional.”
In their hut, Lydia covered Selene’s body in green goo. “The men swear by this. Extra-strength for coarse, stubborn hairs.” Whimpering as she burned, Selene tried to imagine that the resulting hairlessness would bring the same pleasure as, say, vacuuming a filthy floor. Once the goo had been rinsed away, Lydia tousled Selene’s ear-length hair and flicked kohl around the rim of her eyes until it looked in the mirror like she was peering out of a deep, dark cave.
Usually Selene was self-conscious about her lack of muscle or rounded belly, but the makeover made her feel cloaked in beauty. She thought of a line in the Arsinoeid about Arsinoe, celebrated daughter of Cleopatra, whose brilliant poison had unified Aegypt and Rome: “Her radiance cast a shadow across her enemies; they wandered ever after, lost in blackest night.” Selene imagined contestants falling at her feet, stunned or better yet blinded, so that her magnificence was their final memory.
She and Lydia downed shots of plum wine (“To sperm!”), then Lydia headed out to organize the next contest. Selene decided to find Sopio or Pubes. Or any man, really.
Sopio was in the kitchen, stirring something that smelled like adventure. “Turtle soup,” he said as Selene walked in. “May I woo you with a bowl?”
Selene had rarely eaten flesh before—a few bites on trips abroad or visits to Chumash cultural centers—but she let Sopio guide a spoon between her lips. It was like sipping from a rotting corpse, but she managed a swallow. “Are you sure you actually want to father a child?” she asked, pouring herself a glass of lemonade to erase the taste. “It’s not just pressure from Gladius?”
“From him? Pshaw. I turn thirty-five next month. It’s time I made my mark on society.”
“But do you like me?”
“Sure I do. You’re a woom, and wooms are great. You’re all sexy bosses, you know?”
Selene tried to imagine living in Tequesta. Though she’d grown up less than a mile from the ocean, she wasn’t much of a beach person. The last time she’d tried to swim in Mispu, she’d broken a toe on underwater rocks and was forced to confront its yellowing bulbosity for months.
Sopio lifted his veil. “Would you consider kissing me?”
“Oh, sure,” she said, caught off guard by his forwardness. Embracing him, she tried to ignore the taste of turtle soup.
“What’s going on, Selene?” It was Pubes, his voice high and tight. “I showed you around yesterday. I thought we had a special connection. My sperm should be the first harvest!”
“We did connect!” Selene said. “But Sopio is special too.”
“Don’t count it against me that I’m three inches taller than him, I’m much more intelligent!”
“And three inches shorter,” Sopio said, wiggling his eyebrows.
Pubes shoved him. “Take that back!”
“What’s all this racket?” Lydia called from outside. “Dance contest starts in half an hour. Selene, come with me.”
Feeling like she’d been caught in some transgression, Selene followed Lydia out. “Pubes was getting kind of aggressive. Did you say something to make him jealous?”
“Don’t be naive, you know how this works. Anyway, your outfit is ready.” When they got to the beach, Lydia handed Selene a palm-leaf skirt.
Selene squirmed into it behind a bush. “Can’t I just wear my own clothes?”
“Definitely not. I want every viewer staring at your nipples, imagining you breastfeeding. We’ll have two guys fanning you with palm fronds and two rubbing your feet.”
“I’m pretty ticklish.”
“Then they can be flexing or something. We need four for symmetry. Oh, I almost forgot. The holes!” Lydia took a pair of scissors from her bag and began to jab at the wetsuits’ crotches. It reminded Selene of the Hibernian folktale about seals who shed their skins to assume human form and lie with wooms. If a crafty woom found the man’s seal skin, she could hide it and keep him as her slave. When men told this story, it focused on the ingenious means the seal used to escape. Woomish versions tended to dwell on the erotic delights of captivity.
“Everything’s ready,” Lydia said. “Let’s have another drink.”
By the time the men arrived, Selene was feeling blurry and relaxed. She wasn’t even nervous when Lydia prompted her to make a speech. “Hail, potential spermulants! I’m pleased you could join me on this beautiful sunny day.”
The men had been given large cups of wine. “A toast to the sacred mother,” Lydia cried. “Repeat after me. To Selene, a queen among wooms.”
“To Selene, a queen among wooms!” the men shouted.
“We will try to be worthy of the honor of making you pregnant. We hope you can learn to love us for our hearts and our minds. And not just for our fish or taut, muscular bodies.”
They stumbled, and Lydia broke the line into pieces. “Now drink!” she screamed, and refilled the glasses when they were emptied. “Change into your wetsuits, and we’ll begin the dance-off.” The men with the palm fronds tried to block Selene’s view, but she was able to glimpse naked flesh of all hues, writhing and jumbled. “Reattach your numbers,” Lydia called. “And make sure your fish are visible.”
Something in her belly swirled and for the first time, she felt a future growing inside.
The competition kicked off with an unassuming but cheerful Rainbow Slither from Clavis. Number nine had clearly been a professional; his steps were drawn-out and showy as he played to the crowd. Gladius revealed himself as an excellent, acrobatic dancer; the height of his stag leaps inspired cheers. The three others were disappointing: Sopio made little effort, wandering around playing air guitar and thrusting his hips at random intervals, while Pubes performed a Bear Dance with rigid correctness. Twenty-one simply twirled in circles. Selene decided to take the diplomatic route and declared nine the winner.
Lydia announced a refreshment break, and the men lay on the sand, panting and cramming their mouths full of avocado sandwiches. Pubes came to kneel at Selene’s feet, reaching out to pick crumbs off her stomach. “I understand that you had to pick the professional,” he said, with a slight slur. “But you must agree that my performance had the most heart.”
Pubes was no longer a frontrunner, but Selene wanted to remain open. She thought of the way she ate a bowl of blueberries, starting with the largest and firmest. As the options grew fewer, she became less picky. The mushier ones tasted just as good as the big, firm ones, though obviously a few were rotten. But near the end of every bowl, there was usually one big guy that had been hiding. Was Pubes more of a sweet-tasting, shriveled berry or an overlooked, juicy one? She decided to test his reaction to criticism. “Well, you’re a bit stiff when you dance.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t make any mistakes, but you looked inflexible. Like—” Selene got up to demonstrate. She had never done a Bear Dance but felt the fluency of body and tongue that comes with the perfect amount of drink. “You should lunge like this.” Her hand slipped and struck Pubes’s nose through his veil.
“Ow!” He sprang up. “Don’t use your position of authority to assault my confidence.”
She giggled. His fish, coated with sand, resembled something breaded and fried.
Pubes slapped her hard across the face.
Selene gaped in shock. As the other contestants muttered nervously, Gladius knelt beside her. “Dear lady, I beg you not to report this to the Coop. Pubes was certainly in the wrong, but remember that a man who has erred is the loftiest of humans, for he has the greatest potential for self-improvement. In fact, even better than a former sinner is one in current transgression because he has the furthest to journey for forgiveness.”
Selene put a hand to her cheek, measuring the heat. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I thought you believed in our cause. Equal rights for men, since we are further from grace.”
“I’m not sure I can forgive this. Unless,” she said, a plan coming to her, “every man in camp were to give me a sperm sample, right now.”
“But we haven’t finished today’s contests,” Lydia sputtered.
“That’s my condition for continuing, or I’ll go home.”
“Don’t worry about Pubes,” Gladius said. “We’ll ask him to leave camp immediately.”
“I’d like Pubes to stay and submit a sample too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Selene’s the boss, right?” Lydia said, warming to the idea. “Anyway, a wild-card round could shake things up. Someone bring me twenty glass vials and a cooler.” Clavis ran off to carry out the order.
“I’m going to nap in my cabin,” Selene said. “Come get me when the samples are ready.”
The nap produced a pleasant and restorative dream. Selene and her mother flew on mops into the night sky and cleaned the celestial bodies until they shone. From far below, Ursula and Lydia marveled at their goddess-like size and talents. “I love you,” Selene told her mother while polishing a star, “but I think I’ve found home again.”
Here was the true masculine womb.
Gladius woke Selene an hour later and helped her down from the bunk with solicitous care. On their way back to the beach, he lingered, pointing out various COMMAND projects. “There’s crucial work happening. Truly innovative initiatives.” He began talking about the soil’s pH, and Selene tuned him out.
Lydia brandished the cooler as they stepped onto the beach. “Every man in camp accounted for, divine mother. So what’s next—ovulation check?” Selene wasn’t insulted by her tone, half sarcastic, half indulgent.
The men had lined up to wait, except Pubes, who was stewing on a distant boulder with his arms crossed, facing the ocean. “Many thanks for absolving us, dear lady,” Gladius said. “Once you’ve chosen a vial, may I have the honor of wielding the insemination wand?”
Selene opened the cooler; the vials began to steam as droplets ran down the icy glass. “If you recall your own philosophy, dear Gladius, before absolution comes sacrifice. This outbreak of violence shows that no one from COMMAND is worthy of being my spermulant . . . yet. Someday, maybe months from now, I may choose one of you to father my child, but today, I reject your emissions. Lydia, please give the men back their sperm.”
Lydia raised her eyebrows but distributed the vials without comment.
“Let the full implication of what you’ve all enabled wash over you,” Selene lectured. “Think about the rights and responsibilities that having a womb would entail. What you’ve produced is inutile and excessive, and I want you to reabsorb it. Take off your veils and drink.”
“How does this prove men are more than ‘mere suppliers’?” Gladius grumbled. “This isn’t even my vial.”
“Selene, may I speak with you?” Lydia asked. “In private?”
They walked a ways down the beach. “What is it?”
“Pubes hit you! No one would blame you for considering arsinoek.”
“Arsinoek! But I’m a conscientious objector.”
“Well, I have my supply. It’s a little extreme, maybe, but Coop law is kind of iffy outside the tenancies. Plus, it would add a compelling angle to our program. You, torn between creating life or bestowing death, the two poles turning on one axis.”
Selene imagined slipping arsinoek into Pubes’s vial—or into every vial. From what she’d been told, the resulting death was painful, and a man’s fish cycled through all the colors of the rainbow. Cleopatra, history claimed, had enjoyed filling her orifices with the poison and going to bed with her enemies. But the longer Selene fantasized, the more she knew that she had no wish to inflict this kind of punishment. “No arsinoek. But I’ll think about what to do with Pubes.”
Lydia shrugged. “It’s your choice.” On her signal, the men removed their veils and downed their vials. A few gagged, but most were unbothered; Sopio even looked enthusiastic. Selene studied the row of bright, sweaty faces blooming above tunics and wetsuits. Several men were handsome—she would have to ask Lydia to expand the contestant pool. “Not quite turtle soup,” Sopio said, licking his lips. “But not bad.”
“Better than arsinoek,” added number nine.
Lydia clapped her hands. “One last round of apologies.”
The men surrounded Selene. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” they whispered. She pictured a protective halo taking shape around the group and muscular compassion shooting strength into her belly. Here was the true masculine womb, she wanted to tell Gladius, searching for his face among the throng. Abandon your ambitions of motherhood and embrace collective empathy.
Lydia was already opening more wine. “If the divine mother is satisfied, the joke-telling contest can begin.”
Selene finally spotted Gladius. Pubes had stomped on his vial rather than drink it, and Gladius was kneeling beside him, picking shards of glass from his feet. Anger filled Selene, and for a second she thought, What if? But then something in her belly swirled, and for the first time, she felt a future growing inside. She would be the center of COMMAND’s orbit, a rare solar mother goddess. “Thank you very much, Lydia, I’m ready to begin again. I do love a good joke.”