call yesterday, just after you left, from some guy. He wanted to know where your dinner meeting was. You met up with him okay, right? Because I forgot to tell you about the call.â
âYes. Benny Winter. We met up. Has he called this morning?â
âNo, but Jack Jackson called,â said Liz, her voice laden with innuendo.
âAny other calls?â
âA guy named Jason called a couple of times already this morning.â
âJason? Doesnât ring a bell.â
âWouldnât leave a number.â She lowered her voice to parody Jasonâs conspiratorial tone. ââPhones might not be safe.â Is he a loony?â
âProbably.â
âAnd a Dr. Karen Keyes called. Sheâs presenting at the womenâs conference â¦â
âNot interested. We have two feminists for our series. If you count that file clip of Gloria Steinem, thatâs plenty. Iâm more interested in what men have to say about their future. Anything else?â
âHereâs your fan mail, all of it from that village in India.â
âBalandapur.â I didnât get much fan mail anymore, and what I did get came mostly from this little village in south India, where villagers had been watching ANN by satellite in their teahouses. Most of my fan mail talked about my carrot-red hair, which was evidently a great topic of conversation in Balandapur. My fan base used to be comprised mainly of masochists who wanted me to hurt them, but the masochists had all deserted me for meaner and/or more powerful goddesses like Xena, Courtney Love, and, inexplicably, Kathie Lee Gifford.
First thing I did was call back Jack Jackson, Our Fearless Leader, aka Daddy Warbucks due to a more than passing resemblance. Jack was working on a speech he was to give at the end of the womenâs conference and he was looking for âsome feedback from some of my women.â
âWhat was the thing you told me the night we went barhopping about urinating standing up?â Jack asked.
âOh, a trick I learned from an old Girl Scout named Julie,â I said. âThatâs a thing feminists say a lot, the only thing a man can do that a woman canât do is pee standing up. But a little technologyâa simple funnelâand youâve solved that problem.â
âA little technology,â Jack repeated. âAnd didnât we discuss how many names men have for masturbation, while women have none?â
Christ, I must have been really drunk that night. I didnât remember discussing masturbation with the Great Man.
âPossibly,â I said.
âWhat were some of the names men had for it? Iâve got spanking the monkey, polishing the pipe, stretching the leather, and there was something about Bubba.â
âShucking Bubba,â I provided.
âShucking Bubba. Haw haw.â
âWhat does this have to do with feminism?â
âYouâll see, when I give my speech,â he said.
He hung up without saying good-bye, as usual, and I turned my attention back to the administrative crap I had to look after before I went to my first interview of the day. While doing an isometric butt-tightening exercise, I speed-wrote memos to maintenance and accounting; then I gulped down my coffee and ran to meet the crew for the first of our Man of the Future interviews.
CHAPTER FOUR
âWho are we shooting?â Sven the sound tech asked when I climbed into the back of the crew car.
âAlana DeWitt, the mother of modern feminism,â I said. âFollowed by Dr. Budd Nukker, and Gill Morton, CEO of Morton Industries.â
âGill Morton?â Jim the cameraman repeated after me, visibly thrilled. âNo shit. My dad was a Morton Man for years. Did they have Morton Men in Sweden, Sven?â
âYeah, my uncle was one.â
When you hear the words Morton Company, you too probably think of the Morton Man, a guy with a sample case flogging cleaning