Gynophagia Chronicles: Samantha
Monday, August 24, 2218, 6:15am
The Wells Home, 1110 Beagle St. San Ramon CA.
From Samantha Marie Wells’ Memoirs
It was going to be a tedious and gut wrenching day facing the Gauntlet. That’s what the first day of school is called by Teachers and Parents. We girls call it the Meat Grinder.
The alarm went off at 6:15a.m. Naturally, Gracie, bubbly, bouncy, blonde Gracie was out of bed a few minutes before it did so. She snapped off the alarm and hit the lights.
She stood there in the pink silk T she always slept in, her cherub face and bright eyes resembling those of a Disney woodland creature and serving to augment her impossibly cheerful smile and manner.
“C’mon!” She half sang.
Jenna put her pillow over her red head. “Nooo!”
“C’mon, Jenna!” Gracie hit Jenna’s rump with a pillow.
I lifted myself up lazily, yawning as my own dark mop fell over my face.
“I’d forgot how much I hate Mondays,” I said.
“C’mon, Jenna!” Gracie was tugging Jenna’s covers off her.
I ignored the vaguely familiar scene that would repeat throughout the year (assuming Gracie made it home tonight). Instead, I made my way downstairs to the bathroom. Save for our mother, I was the first downstairs. Seniors had to be at school no later than eight a.m. I was a senior this year. It gave us a little time before the two juniors and three sophomores invaded the downstairs bathroom. It seemed so large when empty, not so much with eight girls vying for position at the mirror.
My teeth and mouth were clean by the time Jenna finally made it to the shower, and I’d set about taming my hair.
A note about hair: Jenna’s is thick and wiry the way only red hair is. Gracie’s is silky and fine as you’d expect a blonde’s to be. Mine: somewhere in the middle. Theirs is always perfect. Mine, not so much. I’m cursed with bad hair days.
“Mom strode in wearing her standard grey maid’s dress with the white collar. That’s what Miki always calls it, anyway. Mom had never been a maid save for picking up after eight girls and two boys… that stopped abruptly when we were five, by the way. She was very pragmatic about her attire, however. She’d doff it to clean the bathroom after everyone was gone, having the house immaculate, and her face made up like a fantasy girlfriend’s for Daddy’s homecoming. She always wore that same dress, and he would… well, they’d often need privacy for an hour or so before dinner.
Privacy, of course, was hard to come by with ten children, we’d all learned that when the master bedroom door was closed, someone better be dying if it was opened from the outside. But I digress, sorry.
Jessica Jane Wells, that’s Mom, hugged Gracie from behind and faced her via the mirror.
“Are we good?”
“Yes, Mommy,” Gracie cooed with her usual genuine sweetness.
“You are coming home tonight, right?”
“I promise,” nodded Gracie, sweetly, kissing Mom's cheek.
“Mom,” Jenna said. Neither she nor I ever said “Mommy.” Only Gracie did that. “Between Eric’s math, Sam’s English and my history, she’s fine. I swear. I’d be ecstatic with her essays.”
“She’ll get good grades, Mom,” I confirmed.
Mom never took her eyes off Gracie’s mirrored eyes.
“I’m so proud of you,” Mom said. “Hurry up. Breakfast is ready. I got us apples and bananas.”
“There better be coffee left,” Jenna said. “Or did Daddy drink it all?”
“Daddy’s still in the shower,” Mom said as she went to leave, then turned to see the three of us staring, knowing. She blushed all the way down to her ankles. “What?”
Just as we began filtering out, the oddballs, Miki and Patti were staggering in, yawning incessantly.
“Stop that!” Jenna smacked Patti’s rear.
Oddballs they were because neither resembled anyone else in the family. Both were blonde (Miki a dark sort of blonde and Patti almost a platinum blonde). Both stood 5'7” with leggy tallness and gorgeous, svelte, athletic figures. The rest of the family were willowy save for Eric, who could be called wiry. Miki had a pointed nose, pointed chin and a high forehead, while Patti had softer features, a pug nose and round cheeks. Maybe my description is lacking, I suppose. As I said, they’re both gorgeous; they just don’t look like anyone in the family.
They’re also both brilliant A+ students, into sports and cheer-leading. I was B+ in all but English, in which I excelled. Jenna; the same except with History. Gracie and Celine were at the bottom, always needing help with homework to keep their grades up. The boys don’t count. They don’t face culling. But both Eric and Jimmy are good students.
In the kitchen Mom had coffee and bowls of fruit sliced artistically waiting for us. We, in our blue and white uniforms sat while she poured the Java.
“Oh, Sam!” Mom said and turned to my sisters. “You two really need to tutor Sam in hair care.”
“We tried!” Miki protested.
“Lost cause,” Jenna said sardonically.
“C’mere,” Mom dragged me by the arm to the full length mirror on the broom closet. With one of two brushes she always kept on hand for just this daily disaster, she teased my hair with the relaxed and focused look of a professional.
Save for my hair and our outfits we might have been identical twins. It was only at times like this, when she was working on me in front of a mirror that I truly felt beautiful. You see, my mother is by far the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, even in a magazine. Being near her like this filled me with a bliss I cannot describe. Maybe my hair troubles were a blessing to get me through the rest of the day.
“Sam,” Patty said. “You always do this. I think you mess up your hair on purpose just for the attention.”
“I do not!” I protested, just noticing Mom’s half smile.
“Of course you don't,” Jenna said.
Jimmy, pretty green eyes, dark hair stood at the counter. If Mom had a male version, he was it. Unlike absent minded Eric, Jim was the sharp dresser in the family. He made his uniform blazer and grey slacks look like a fine suit just because of how he carried himself.
“Again?” he said, snorting. He raised his prized Nikon D11X and snapped three pictures before my face expressed anything approaching outrage or even surprise. He’d done that every morning before school since acquiring the thing last March. He’d mowed lawns for a year and a half for the €5,000 to buy it.
“Jerk!” I said, as I always did, to which he smiled prettily as he always did.
Mom finished with my hair, kissed my crown and went back to the task of breakfast for the younger siblings, and I took my place at the table as Daddy made his appearance.
He’s a solid man. 6’1”, not quite 200lbs with sandy brown hair over golden brown eyes. Not one of us girls got his looks, which is a shame, really. We all had to settle for Mom’s ethereal beauty over Daddy’s earthiness.
Eric, who stood an inch taller than Daddy was, however, very much his father’s son. Mom’s first-born strode in as if there was no one else in the room, kissed her on the cheek, grabbed his coffee and fruit bowl, sat down and began to eat as if the slices of apple and banana would run away if he did not inhale them fast enough. Like Daddy, Eric was blessed with the ability to focus. If he couldn’t, he’d get nothing done, and when he did, he did whatever he was focused upon as fast and efficiently as possible. The ability to multi task would have crippled Eric, I’m sure.
“Dah,” Eric said after one minute, twenty seconds of sitting behind his now empty bowl. “Dih ooo weeplagh ah ohl ay hehs et?”
“No,” Daddy said. “Not till next week.”
“Uh ay eed heng!” Eric protested.
“Sorry, can’t be helped.”
“Huher ih heahp!”
“You’re lucky Jake is letting you have them at all, so quit your whining!” Daddy sipped his coffee. “Besides, lumber’s arriving today. We’re building the deck this week, remember?”
“Oh,” Eric said after swallowing. “Shoot, I forgot.”
“I expect you here at five!”
“Yeah,” Eric said. “I’ll be here.”
“And Tuckers are NOT cheap!” Dad exclaimed suddenly. “They feed your pie hole!” Daddy’s Nebraska logic, nobody dares argue with it.
The rest were arriving as Gracie, Jenna and I were finishing. Patti and Miki had dressed and were out of the bathroom as Mara, Celine and Danielle sauntered in, each wrapped in their colour coded towel. Unlike Miki and Patti, the three youngest were like miniature versions of Mom. Celine looked the most like her, with blue eyes and dark hair. Danielle had green eyes and Blonde hair and Mara had Light brown hair and Gray eyes.
They might seem slothful lugs at the moment, but give it fifteen minutes, especially if the hot water runs out in the middle of their showers, and you’ll see very typical thirteen year old behaviour.
Now, when my entire family is together, it’s an odd sort of ballet that must appear to be complete chaos to outsiders. Daddy will be focused on his PDA, reading news or emails or both with an ear on Mom as she runs the show and the rest of us dance to her tune.
“Jenna! Sam! Gracie!” Mom snapped. “It’s half past!”
Everyone hugged Gracie as we collected our gear to leave. Mom was trying hard not to be emotional, but she held Gracie for a long time. It might very well be the last time. It was basically a repeat of the previous Thursday when the sophomores started school. That day it was Celine we were all worried about. But home she came, and Mom, who had waited by the door all afternoon, rushed out in tears to welcome her home.
It was a fifteen minute walk to the Franklin High School main gate from our door. Summer was supposedly waning, but you wouldn’t know it on this day. 7:30 AM and 85°F. It never got cold in this area till late October.
We always walked in this order: Jenna at the curb, Gracie in the middle, me on the inside. Not that Gracie needed our protection, more that we, Jenna and I, needed hers, from each other.
“I think Mom’s a lesbian,” Jenna blurted half a block from home.
“She is not!” I instantly protested.
“Did you know she has a whole collection of Playpens in her room?”
“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact I did. So what?”
“I saw her touching herself reading one!”
“Jenna! I swear you are such an idiot!” I snorted. “You did not!”
“Hi guys!” Sloan Harding called out from across the street as she led her sister Michaela and Rebecca Golding toward us.
The Harding girls had that sultry Anglo-Hispanic allure only found in girls whose parents were of different heritage. Dark hair, nearly white, but brown skin in a curvy package. Boys drooled around them. Rebecca was another story. She stood 5’9” and was one of those Jewish girls who’s Jewishness was instantly apparent. If it was possible, Becca’s hair was even more unruly than mine had been. It flared out in thick curls sloping over and camouflaging her shoulders.
“Becca,” Jenna said. “Have you been trading hair secrets with Sam again?”’
“Oh stop!” I said.
“Sam’s hair looks fine!” Becca protested.
“Yeah, only after she conned our mother into fixing it for her.”
“Hi guys!” Gracie said to the newcomers, trying to sound cheerful.
The three new arrivals formed around Gracie and started the gossip train going. Solange Becker stole Fiona Dixon’s boyfriend. Did you know Sylvia Manning’s mom reads Playpen?
“So does…” Gracie started.
“That doesn’t mean she’s gay!” Jenna interrupted. I rolled my eyes.
As we filtered through the main gate at the high school, we had to show our I.D.s to the scanner, I ended up next to Rebecca.
“So, how was your summer?” I asked.
“Busy,” she said. “We went to Israel to visit family, and my dad got married again.”
“To an Israeli?”
“Oh no. Israelis have big restrictions on exporting women. He married a girl from New York. He held off because she and I hate each other...”
“Okay!” came The Voice. The Voice belonged to Miss Bauer. The strong, stocky, thirty fivish,school athletics director. She stood 5’6”, which isn’t that tall, but to us she might as well have stood 7’. The woman had all the personality of a Royal Mastiff.
“Line up you little Trollops!” Miss Bauer hollared. “Get your butts in gear. We've got a lot of work to do and none of you are leaving here today till we’re done!” She bellowed the last so loud, girls near her had to cover their ears. “Do you get me?”
“Yes Ma’am!” we hollared back as the scramble to queue up went from chaos to some semblance of organization.
The first task was to march the lot of us, one hundred thirty eight seniors, to the main hallway to turn in our summer projects.
******
My projects were three fold: An economics 101 research piece on the social practices of each of the G-9 nations plus the British Greater Commonwealth concerning culling of women and, in some cases, boys. It was two hundred and fifty pages. I was relieved when I slid that into the proper slot. The second was a bit more frivolous, for my history class. It was an analysis of political scandals in the last decade of the last century (2191 to 2200). That was fluff, for me. The third, and my proudest was an interview with Congresswoman Carmen Sanchez (D) NJ 2nd District.
The assignment was “interview and elected official” for my Journalism 201 class. Carmen Sanchez happened to be in San Francisco last July. So I jumped on BART, and waited at the Fairmont Hotel Lobby till I saw her. She had been speaking with someone she was apparently trying to get away from when I approached. She was appreciative enough to give me thirty minutes, which I managed to stretch into an hour.
“You’re a tough little thing, aren’t you!” was what she said on my last question. I sent her a copy of it soon as it was done as promised, and received a nice “thank you note” from her office. Now the school English Dept. would get a crack at it.
From the main hall we were marched toward the locker room. That meant the Gymnasium.
The entire basement of the school, which was a couple of stories deep, was the gymnasium. The girls’ locker room/showers hung like an enormous box above it over one of two Olympic sized swimming pools.
By itself, the girl’s locker room was enormous inside, with its fifteen hundred or so lockers and thirty shower heads. The showers we were already used to. Cold water came out of them and we had to use them both before and after phys-ed, often with three girls sharing one head.
I unloaded my gear into my assigned locker, 1805. A three month supply of tampons, aspirin, band-aids, four pairs of clean panties, a towel, two extra white blouses, my pencils, ruler, printer paper, pens, note pads, that stupid school bathing suit and my prized Steno-PDA (which I worked just as hard for as Jimmy did for his camera).
Every item was required, even the PDA (not a Steno-PDA, mind you, just a wireless e-mail compliant reader).
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Miss Bauer was shouting. “Shower’s better be on NOW!” she snapped the swat she carried always when dealing with more than two girls. That swat was never far from her reach, even when she wasn’t carrying it. I’ve since found out it’s an S&M toy. It’s a thin strip of rubber as long as my arm and as wide at the end as my extended hand. I had only ever seen it used once. That was last year on Carla Gianini’s bare bottom. I’d heard stories about its use, but one strike and Carla’s terrified and pain filled squeal, coupled with the huge angry welt on her rump was enough to convince most of us not to risk Miss Bauer’s wrath.
So I stripped off quickly. We all did.
Even so, I stood in line for twelve minutes waiting for a shower. The process was to get wet, soap up, rinse and put on the stupid bathing suit and cap after you were wet. You did this as fast as possible so not to suffer the ice cold water too long, then out to the track.
Down, again, we streamed into the cavernous echo chamber and began our warm up. On the track, it was three laps. The track was made of squishy rubber designed for bare feet, which would have made it a pleasure to run on if we weren’t running in wet bathing suits. This ran completely around both pools. That’s about a hundred and seventy feet on each side… well, plus whatever, ten feet I think between pools. I had to look this up, the plans are on the net, that's how I know...
This we’d do every single day, the point being that we’d be grateful to sit down and learn after. It was also why the start times were staggered. Could you imagine twelve hundred girls crammed in here? I can. I’ve seen it! Not pretty.
After ten minutes of stretching (every one of us could put palms flat on the floor standing straight legged), then we’d swim ten laps.
“Okay! Pool time, ladies. We get to justify those stupid wet suits, finally,” Miss Bauer snapped the swat so that it echoed up and down the massive room. “Groups are as follows! Remember your group! Group one: Abrams –Marie and Naomi, Adams – Blair, Brooks – Candy, Shelly and Frances, Carlton –Vivian, Leah, Monica…”
“Group two: Christiansen – Mary, Juniper…”
And so it went till Group fourteen.
“Vickers – Debra, Lee Anne, Vanderholt – Amy, Wells – Grace, Jenna, Samantha, Wozniak – Rachel, Yates – Andrea, Zimmer – Ruth!”
It was just my luck. Last year she’d grouped us by first name, not surname. Lee Anne Vickers and Ruth Zimmer were the only two in the class of 2219 that exceeded my English grades. Ruth was an aspiring creative writer: probably both destined for advertising. Lee Anne was even better at it than was Ruth, though she favoured journalism as I did. Both, of course, were taking advantage of the legendary Franklin High Journalism program. If one of them were penning these pages, you’d be able to feel every sensation, smell every smell, taste every flavour and hear a symphony playing mood music to boot. I’m just a journalist, sorry.
Miss Bauer snapped the swat again. “Group one and two – Gather there!” She pointed toward the curtained off Basket Ball Courts. “The rest of you, queue up in the numbered lanes as per your group number and start your laps!”
I knew the entire rest of our group as well. Amy and Rachel were cheerleaders who hated each other. They were a big reason Gracie quit cheer-leading last year. Other than them, the rest of the cheer-leading squad was sociable and nice.
“So who did you get in your interview, Lee Anne?” Ruth asked as we lined up for laps. Like Rebecca, Ruth was of obvious Hebrew extraction, but her 5’5” frame and silky black hair that reached midway down her back, coupled with her aire of high fashion sense (she’d make Jimmy a good girlfriend) made any comparison with Becca a bit ludicrous. Ruth wore make-up that looked like natural skin tones and, while more hansom than beautiful, she had no trouble getting the few boys available to pay attention to her.
“I got Mayor Leslie,” said Lee Anne proudly with her slight drawl. The girl from Alabama was quite proud of the way she spoke almost to the point of arrogance. She often said she’d love a radio job. “How ‘bout y’all?”
“Mayor Isaacs of Oakland,” said Ruth, just as proudly.
“Wow!” Lee Anne sounded genuinely impressed. “How’d you score that?”
“I called and asked,” Ruth said matter of factly. “You know how black politicians all think Jews are either sympathetic or Nazis.”
“That’s racist!” Lee Anne snorted.
“But true…”
“So,” I interrupted. “How hard did you hammer him?”
“I framed my questions sympathetically. No need to be rude,” Ruth had a sardonic smile. “But I got some amazing answers!” She said earnestly.
“And you, Sam?” Lee Anne turned to me.
“I’m really impressed you got him,” I said to Ruth.
“Who’d you get, Sam?” Lee Anne persisted.
“Me next!” I got into position as Jenna returned on her first lap.
“C’mon, Sam! Spill!”
“It’s not about who it was, but the form and content,” I quoted Miss Masters, who was our combined Journalism/Creative Writing teacher last semester.
“You got the Mayor of San Francisco, didn’t you?” Lee Anne accused.
“Nope!” I bent down, ready to dive into the water.
“She got Carmen Sanchez,” Gracie spilled my secret.
“No Way!” went a chorus.
“Yep!” I said triumphantly as I leapt into the pool.
It was true, of course, that content was everything. If the questions asked were poorly composed and had little relevance to one another or the subject, it was not going to get a good grade. But scoring an interview with a subject that was not only controversial, but nationally known and quite current did count for something. It showed some level of competence, or that was my thinking, to get that interview in the first place. But the stakes were higher, and as I swam my first lap, I was intimately aware of it. Any questions the teacher thought were not novel, or ones she was familiar with from other journalists would come across as mediocre. Yes, the stakes were higher.
It was eleven before our group was called out to the basket ball courts. We stripped naked and, one by one, went to each station where medical technicians would weigh us, and take samples from us, poke and prod us till… well… they got their jollies doing these annoying things, I think. Retina Scans and finger prints updated and confirmed, on the scales each of us went. Our bodies were scanned and the computer calculated our body mass with resulting yield. Just so you know, I’m 5’3”, 103lbs, 32B-22-33(Triangular). Breast total volume: 322 ml Right, 318 ml Left, Estimated yield: 33lbs. At €10 a pound, I was worth €330.00 at the meat counter.
I’m about average size for my boobs. The two cheerleaders were both at about 425 ml per breast, which is big! Grace, however, was 675 ml each, and she’s only 5’5”. Jenna’s slightly smaller than me at 280 ml each. Lots of B-Cup girls at our school.
The report also had estimated blood volume, heart rate, blood pressure, lung capacity. There would be blood, urine and stool tests, with a pap smear to boot. All this is paid for by the school since they basically own us if our grades fall too low or we get “unfit.” Today’s culls would bring more than enough money to pay for this and about a month of our education.
The technicians, who were mostly female with a few males, maintained a cold professionalism that gave insight into the gravity of the task. Any error would mean culling for the females and loss of a job for the males. Falsification of any test was a criminal offence that could bring ten years in prison. The firm contracted to do this job was approved by the California State Butcher’s Association and licensed by the FDA.
Not one of my eight companions uttered anything more than a muffled whimpers if they could help it.
I’ve said the techs were cold… well, verbally yes. Efficiency wise yes. But nipples don’t remain erect very long in the heat, even after swimming. I notice these things, so sue me!
Of course, it could also have been fear. Were we all afraid? Probably. It would explain everyone’s “deer in the headlights” look. Every single face was flushed (and I’m positive mine was). The ever so light touch of the techs made things that much worse. They were very gentle in their efficiency, and it made every touch seem like a caress.
This was all punctuated when poor Debra Vickers (Lee Anne’s sister), had a gushing orgasm as the tech extracted a vaginal probe whose purpose was God knows what… Amy Vanderholt was the only one that appeared amused.
Lee Anne was on the table herself when all this occurred, so she couldn’t help her weeping sister. It was Gracie, bless her, who held Debra till she regained composure.
Sweet justice came when the same thing happened to Amy. Debra was the one, probably oblivious to Amy’s earlier reaction, to comfort the crying girl.
Showering after was the reverse of showering before. We’d strip off under the freezing cold shower, rinse our suits out, then soap up and rinse ourselves.
At this point it was lunch time. I always ate outside so I could read whatever needed to be read in relative peace, but today Rebecca Golding found me. She appeared with a milkshake and a bowl of macaroni salad looking at me with puppy dog eyes, the mop on her head pulled back into a wet pony tail.
“Is it true Amy Vanderholt gushed?” she asked sheepishly with a slight smile.
I nodded.
She sat down straddling the bench with her long, long legs.
“Michaela said Amy’s a lesbian,” Rebecca said as she began sucking her milkshake through a straw.
“How would she know?” I asked a bit annoyed.
“She said the tech was a woman. So was the one I bent over for…”
“Maybe it just felt good when they pulled out the probe?” I said. “Anyway, it’s really mean to talk like this…”
“It’s retarded,” Becca said. “I just…”
“Just what?” I asked.
“They live close, Michaela and Sloan do, and I get all the gossip. It’s all they want to talk about. It’s mean, true, just like you said. But they say things about everyone. Even me.”
I shrugged. I sipped my coffee, strong, to keep me going the rest of the day.
“They’re my only friends,” Becca confessed.
I looked up at her. “Why?”
Becca shrugged. “Nobody likes me.”
“Hey!” Danielle rushed up and sat behind me, grabbing my shoulders. “This is my sister!” She said to her companions.
Following her was a senior named Mark… something and a very petite but voluptuous black girl with dark, dark skin and a luminous smile.
“Sam, this is Mark and my friend April!”
“Hi,” I smiled.
“Hey,” Mark said coolly. “Hi, uh, Rebecca, right?”
“Hi,” Rebecca said, her long back hunched over the bench she straddled.
“So,” April said. “Is the meat grinder over?”
“It is for us, I hope…” I said. “That is, assuming we make it home.”
Rebecca’s tears came.
“Awe!” April sat down behind Rebecca and put her hand around the taller girl’s shoulders.
“I think they’re going to cull me,” Becca said.
“What makes you think that?” Mark said with a sideways look.
“Cuz I’m not pretty enough. It’s why I don’t have any real friends.”
Mark rolled his eyes and gave me a look as if to say; “How do you put up with this?”
“The only bus already left, Becca. If they’re going to cull you, they’re not going to do it today.”
“Besides, I think you’re very pretty,” April said.
I laughed, reminded of how my sisters would sometimes lie to me about how good my hair looked on a particularly bad hair day.
“What’s so funny?” April said with an annoyed tone.
“It’s funny that Becca and I have the same problem,” I giggled, unable to stop. “If they culled for bad hair, I’d be gone.”
April and Mark laughed nervously. Danielle wasn’t so kind.
“That’s not fair!” protested Danielle. “Becca’s is super thick, almost like Jenna’s! You’re just lazy!”
“Am not!”
“Mom says so!”
“She does NOT!”
“Does so!” Danielle stuck her tongue out.
“Maybe we could go bald,” Becca said, a hint of a mischievous smile on her lips.
Danielle laughed hysterically at that with April joining her mirthfully.
“We could start a trend,” Becca said. “Then the drapes really will match the carpet!”
That got Mark’s laughing as well. By the time lunch was over, I was a little more comfortable with Becca…