The Last Manly Man by Sparkle Hayter Read Free Book Online

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€œYes. Benny Winter. We met up. Has he called this morning?”
    â€œNo, but Jack Jackson called,” said Liz, her voice laden with innuendo.
    â€œAny other calls?”
    â€œA guy named Jason called a couple of times already this morning.”
    â€œJason? Doesn’t ring a bell.”
    â€œWouldn’t leave a number.” She lowered her voice to parody Jason’s conspiratorial tone. “‘Phones might not be safe.’ Is he a loony?”
    â€œProbably.”
    â€œAnd a Dr. Karen Keyes called. She’s presenting at the women’s conference …”
    â€œNot interested. We have two feminists for our series. If you count that file clip of Gloria Steinem, that’s plenty. I’m more interested in what men have to say about their future. Anything else?”
    â€œHere’s your fan mail, all of it from that village in India.”
    â€œBalandapur.” I didn’t 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 women’s conference and he was looking for “some feedback from some of my women.”
    â€œWhat was the thing you told me the night we went barhopping about urinating standing up?” Jack asked.
    â€œOh, a trick I learned from an old Girl Scout named Julie,” I said. “That’s a thing feminists say a lot, the only thing a man can do that a woman can’t do is pee standing up. But a little technology—a simple funnel—and you’ve solved that problem.”
    â€œA little technology,” Jack repeated. “And didn’t we discuss how many names men have for masturbation, while women have none?”
    Christ, I must have been really drunk that night. I didn’t remember discussing masturbation with the Great Man.
    â€œPossibly,” I said.
    â€œWhat were some of the names men had for it? I’ve got spanking the monkey, polishing the pipe, stretching the leather, and there was something about Bubba.”
    â€œShucking Bubba,” I provided.
    â€œShucking Bubba. Haw haw.”
    â€œWhat does this have to do with feminism?”
    â€œYou’ll see, when I give my speech,” 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
    â€œWho are we shooting?” Sven the sound tech asked when I climbed into the back of the crew car.
    â€œAlana DeWitt, the mother of modern feminism,” I said. “Followed by Dr. Budd Nukker, and Gill Morton, CEO of Morton Industries.”
    â€œGill Morton?” Jim the cameraman repeated after me, visibly thrilled. “No shit. My dad was a Morton Man for years. Did they have Morton Men in Sweden, Sven?”
    â€œYeah, my uncle was one.”
    When you hear the words Morton Company, you too probably think of the Morton Man, a guy with a sample case flogging cleaning