"William Tenn - The Masculinist Revolt" - читать интересную книгу автора (William Tenn)

That ad pulled. It pulled beyond Pollyglow's wildest expectations.
Thousands upon thousands of queries rolled in from all over the country, from abroad, even from the Soviet Union and Red China, Where can I get a Pollyglow Men's Jumper with the Special Pollyglow Codpiece? How do I join the masculinist club? What are the rules and regulations of masculinism? How much are the dues?
Wholesalers, besieged by customers yearning for a jumper with a codpiece in contrasting color, turned to Pollyglow's astonished salesmen and shrieked out huge orders. Ten gross, fifty gross, a hundred gross. And immediatelyЧif at all possible!
P. Edward Pollyglow was back in business. He produced and produced and proнduced, he sold and sold and sold. He shrugged off all the queries about the masculinist club as an amusing sidelight on the advertising business. It had only been mentioned as a fashion inducementЧthat there was some sort of in-group which you joined upon donning a codpiece.
Two factors conspired to make him think more closely about it: the competition and Shepherd L. Mibs.
After one startled glance at Pollyglow's new clothing empire, every other manuнfacturer began making jumpers equipped with codpieces. They admitted that Pollyнglow had single-handedly reversed a fundamental trend in the men's wear field, that the codpiece was back with a vengeance and back to stayЧbut why did it have to be only the Pollyglow Codpiece? Why not the Ramsbottom Codpiece or the Hercules Codpiece or the Bangaclang Codpiece?
And since many of them had larger production facilities and bigger advertising budgets, the answer to their question made Pollyglow reflect sadly on the woeful reнwards of a Columbus. His one chance was to emphasize the unique nature of the Pollyglow Codpiece.
It was at this crucial period that he met Shepherd Leonidas Mibs.
MibsЧ"Old Shep" he was called by those who came to follow his philosophical leadershipЧwas the second of the great triumvirs of Masculinism. He was a pecuнliar, restless man who had wandered about the country and from occupation to ocнcupation, searching for a place in society. All-around college athlete, sometime unsuccessful prizefighter and starving hobo, big-game hunter and coffee-shop poet, occasional short-order cook, occasional gigoloЧhe had been everything but a photographer's model. And that he became when his fierce, crooked faceЧknocked permanently out of line by the nightstick of a Pittsburgh policemanЧattracted the attention of Pollyglow's advertising agency.
His picture was used in one of the ads. It was not any more conspicuously successful than the others; and he was dropped at the request of the photographer who had been annoyed by Mibs's insistence that a sword should be added to the costume of derby, codpiece, and cigar.
Mibs knew he was right. He became a pest, returning to the agency day after day and attempting to persuade anyone at all that a sword should be worn in the Pollyglow ads, a long, long sword, the bigger and heavier the better. "Sword man is here," the receptionist would flash inside, and "My God, tell him I'm not back from lunch yet," the Art Director would whisper over the intercom.
Having nothing else to do, Mibs spent long hours on the heavily upholstered couch in the outer office. He studied the ads in the Pollyglow campaign, examining each one over and over again. He scribbled pages of comments in a little black notebook. He came to be accepted and ignored as so much reception-room furniture.
But Pollyglow gave him full attention. Arriving one day to discuss a new camнpaign with his account executiveЧa campaign to stress the very special qualities of the Pollyglow Codpiece, for which, under no circumstances, should a substitute ever be acceptedЧhe began a conversation with the strange, ugly, earnest young man. "You can tell that account executive to go to hell," Pollyglow told the receptionist as they went off to a restaurant. "I've found what I've been looking for."
The sword was a good idea, he felt, a damn good idea. Put it in the ad. But he was much more interested in certain of the thoughts developed at such elaborate length in Mibs's little black notebook.
If one phrase about a masculinist club had made the ad so effective, Mibs asked, why not exploit that phrase? A great and crying need had evidently been touched. "It's like this. When the old-time saloon disappeared, men had no place to get away from women but the barber shop. Now, with the goddamn Interchangeable Haircut, even that out's been taken away. All a guy's got left is the men's room, and they're working on that, I'll bet they're working on that!"
Pollyglow sipped at his glass of hot milk and nodded. "You think a masculinist club would fill a gap in their lives? An element of exclusiveness, say, like the English private club for gentlemen?"
"Hell, no! They want something exclusive, all rightЧsomething that will exclude womenЧbut not like a private club one damn bit. Everything these days is telling them that they're nobody special, they're just people. There are men people and women peopleЧand what's the difference anyway? They want something that does what the codpiece does, that tells them they're not people, they're men! Straight down-the-line, two-fisted, let's-stand-up-and-be-counted men! A place where they can get away from the crap that's being thrown at them all the time: the women-maybe-are-the-superior-sex crap, the women-outlive-them-and-outown-them crap, the a-real-man-has-no-need-to-act-masculine crapЧall that crap."
His eloquence was so impressive and compelling that Pollyglow had let his hot milk grow cold. He ordered a refill and another cup of coffee for Mibs. "A club," he mused, "where the only requirement for membership would be manhood."
"You still don't get it." Mibs picked up the steaming coffee and drank it down in one tremendous swallow. He leaned forward, his eyes glittering. "Not just a clubЧa movement. A movement righting for men's rights, carrying on propaganda against the way our divorce laws are set up, publishing books that build up all the good things about being a man. A movement with newspapers and songs and slogans. Slogans like 'The Only Fatherland for a Man is Masculinity.' And 'Male Men of the World UniteЧYou Have Nothing to Gain but Your Balls!' See? A movement."
"Yes, a movement!" Pollyglow babbled, seeing indeed. "A movement with an official uniformЧthe Pollyglow Codpiece! And perhaps different codpieces for differentЧfor different, wellЧ"
"For different ranks in the movement," Mibs finished. "That's a hell of a good idea! Say green for Initiate. Red for Full-Blooded Male. Blue for First-Class Man. And white, we'd keep white for the highest rank of allЧSuperman. And, listen, here's anнother idea."
But Pollyglow listened no longer. He sat back in his chair, a pure and pious light suffusing his gray, sunken face. "None genuine unless it's official," he whispered. "None official unless stamped Genuine Pollyglow Codpiece, copyright and pat. pending."
Masculinist annals were to describe this luncheon as the Longchamps Entente. Later that historic day, Pollyglow's lawyer drew up a contract making Shepherd L. Mibs Director of Public Relations for the Pollyglow Enterprises.
A clip-out coupon was featured in all the new ads:

WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MASCULINISM?
WANT TO JOIN THE MASCULINIST CLUB?

Just fill out this coupon and mail it to the address below. Absolutely no charge and no obligationЧjust lots of free literature and information on this exciting new movement!

FOR MEN ONLY!

The coupons poured in and business boomed. Mibs became head of a large staff. The little two-page newsletter that early applicants received quickly became a twenty-page weekly, the Masculinist News. In turn, it spawned a monthly full-color magaнzine, the Hairy Chest, and a wildly popular television program, "The Bull Session."
In every issue of the Masculinist News, Pollyglow's slogan, "Men Are Different from Women," shared the top of the front page with Mibs's "Men Are as Good as Women." The upper left-hand corner displayed a cut of Pollyglow, "Our Founding FatherЧOld Pep," and under that ran the front-page editorial, "Straight Talk from Old Shep."
A cartoon might accompany the editorial. A truculent man wearing a rooster comb marched into cowering masses of hippy, busty women. Caption: "The Cock of the Walk." Or, more didactically, hundreds of tiny children around a man who was naнked except for a huge codpiece. Across the codpiece, in execrable but highly patriotic Latin, the words E Unus PluribumЧand a translation for those who needed it, "Out of the one, many."
Frequently, a contemporary note was struck. A man executed for murdering his sweetheart would be depicted, a bloody axe in his hands, between drawings of Nathan Hale being hanged and Lincoln striking off the chains of slavery. There was a true tabloid's contempt for the rights or wrongs of a case. If a man was involved, the motto ran, he was automatically on the side of the angels.
"Straight Talk from Old Shep" exhorted and called to action in a style reminiscent of a football dressing room between halves. "Men are a lost sex in America," it would intone, "because men are being lost, lost and mislaid, in the country as a whole. Everything nowadays is designed to sap their confidence and lessen their stature. Who wouldn't rather be strong than limp, hard than soft? Stand up for yourselves, men of America, stand up high!"
There was a ready audience for this sort of thing, as the constantly rising circulaнtion of the Masculinist News attested. From shower to washstand to wall urinal, the word sped that the problems of manhood were at last being recognized, that virility might become a positive term once more. Lodges of the Masculinist Society were established in every state; most large cities soon boasted fifteen or more chapters.
Rank and file enthusiasm shaped the organization from the beginning. A Cleveнland chapter originated the secret grip; Houston gave the movement its set of unнprintable passwords. The Montana Lodge's Declaration of Principles became the preamble to the national Masculinist constitution:"...all men are created equal with women...that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of the opposite sex...from each according to his sperm, to each according to her ova..."
The subgroup known as the Shepherd L. Mibs League first appeared in Albany. Those who took the Albany Pledge swore to marry only women who would announce during the ceremony, "I promise to love, to honor and to obey"Чwith exactly that emphasis. There were many such Masculinst subgroups: The Cigar and Cuspidor Club, the Ancient Order of Love 'Em and Leave 'Em, The I-Owe-None-Of-It-to-the-Little-Woman Society.
Both leaders shared equally in the revenues from the movement, and both grew rich. Mibs alone made a small fortune out of his book, Man: The First Sex, considнered the bible of Masculinism. But Pollyglow, Pollyglow's wealth was heaped up beнyond the wildest dreams of his avariceЧand his avarice had been no small-time dreamer.
He was no longer in the men's wear line; he was now in the label-manufacturing business. He made labels to be sewed on to the collars of men's jumpers and inside the crowns of brown derbies, cigar bands for cigars, and little metal nameplates for swords. One item alone did he continue to manufacture himself. He felt an endurнing and warm affection for the little fabric container bearing the legend Genuine Pollyglow Codpiece; it seemed to involve him in the activities of his fellow men everyнwhere, to give him a share in their successes and their failures.
But everything else was franchised.
His imprimatur came to be needed, needed and paid for, on a vast variety of arнticles. No manufacturer in his right business mind would dream of coming out with a new model of a sports car, a new office swivel chair or, for that matter, a new type of truss, without having Official EquipmentЧMasculinist Movement of America printed prominently on his product. The pull of fashion has always been that of the stampedнing herd: many men who were not card-carrying Masculinists refused to buy anyнthing that did not bear the magic phrase in the familiar blue isosceles triangle. Deнspite its regional connotations, all over the world, in Ceylon, in Ecuador, in Sydney, Australia, and Ibadan, Nigeria, men demanded that label and paid premium prices for it.
The much-neglected, often-dreamed-of men's market had come of age. And P. Edward Pollyglow was its world-wide tax collector.
He ran the business and built wealth. Mibs ran the organization and built power. It took three full years for a clash to develop.
Mibs had spent his early manhood at a banquet of failure: he had learned to munch on suppressed rage, to drink goblets of thwarted fury. The swords he now strapped back on to men's bodies were always intended for more than decorative purposes.
Swords, he wrote in the Hairy Chest, were as alien to women as beards and musнtaches. A full beard, therefore, and a sweeping handlebar mustache, belonged to the guise of Masculinism. And if a man were bearded like the pard and sworded like a bravo, should he still talk in the subdued tones of the eunuch? Should he still walk in the hesitant fashion of a mere family-supporter? He should not! An armed male should act like an armed male, he should walk cockily, he should bellow, he should brawl, he should swagger.
He should also be ready to back up the swagger.
Boxing matches settled disputes at first. Then came fencing lessons and a pistol range in every Masculinist lodge. And inevitably, almost imperceptibly, the full Code Duello was revived.