The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“Not now, son,” Tyler told his dick. “You keep quiet for a minute, and let me explain to the people, okay?”

“Sure. I’m here whenever you need me.”

“I’m aware of that.” Durden addressed the audience again. “Remember what Mama says, folks: Keep your son close, let your semen go.” He recited the slogan with exaggerated rhythm, wagging his finger at them, sober as a scolding grandmother. The audience loved it. Some of them chanted along with the catchphrase.

Durden was warming up. “But is screwing all there is to a dick? I say no!

“A dick is a sign of power. It’s a tower of strength. It’s the tree of life. It’s a weapon. It’s an incisive tool of logic. It’s the seeker of truth.

“Mama says that being male is nothing more than a performance. You know what I say to that? Perform this, baby!” He grabbed his imaginary cock with both of his hands, made a stupid face.

Cheers.

“But of course, they can’t perform this! I don’t care how you plank the genes, Mama don’t have the machinery. Not only that, she don’t have the programming. But mama wants to program us with her half-baked scheme of what women want a man to be. This whole place is about fucking up our hardware with their software.”

He was laughing himself, now. Beads of sweat stood out on his scalp in the bright light.

“Mama says, ‘Don’t confuse your penis with a phallus.’ ” He assumed a female sway of his hips, lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes: just like that, he was an archetypal matron, his voice transmuted into a fruity contralto. “ ‘Yes, you boys do have those nice little dicks, but we’re living in a post-phallic society. A penis is merely a biological appendage.’”

Now he was her son, responding. “ ‘Like a foot, Mom?’”

Mama: “ ‘Yes, son. Exactly like a foot.’”

Quick as a spark, back to his own voice: “How many of you in the audience here have named your foot?”

Laughter, a show of hands.

“Okay, so much for the foot theory of the penis.

“But Mama says the penis is designed solely for the propagation of the species. Sex gives pleasure in order to encourage procreation. A phallus, on the other hand-whichever hand you like-I prefer the left-”

More laughter.

“-a phallus is an idea, a cultural creation of the dead patriarchy, a symbolic sheath applied over the penis to give it meanings that have nothing to do with biology…”

Durden seized his invisible dick again. “Apply my symbolic sheath, baby… oohhh, yes, I like it…”

Erno had heard Tyler talk about his symbolic sheath before. Though there were variations, he watched the audience instead. Did they get it? Most of the men seemed to be engaged and laughing. A drunk in the first row leaned forward, hands on his knees, howling at Tyler’s every word. Queers leaned their heads together and smirked. Faces gleamed in the close air. But a lot of the men’s laughter was nervous, and some did not laugh at all.

A few of the women, mostly the younger ones, were laughing. Some of them seemed mildly amused. Puzzled. Some looked bored. Others sat stonily with expressions that could only indicate anger.

Erno did not know how he felt about the women who were laughing. He felt hostility toward those who looked bored: why did you come here, he wanted to ask them. Who do you think you are? He preferred those who looked angry. That was what he wanted from them.

Then he noticed those who looked calm, interested, alert yet unamused. These women scared him.

In the back of the room stood some green-uniformed constables, male and female, carrying batons, red lights gleaming in the corner of their mirror spex, recording. Looking around the room, Erno located at least a half dozen of them. One, he saw with a start; was his mother.

He ducked behind a tall man beside him. She might not have seen him yet, but she would see him sooner or later. For a moment he considered confronting her, but then he sidled behind a row of watchers toward the back rooms. Another constable, her slender lunar physique distorted by the bulging muscles of a genetically engineered testosterone girl, stood beside the doorway. She did not look at Erno: she was watching Tyler, who was back to conversing with his dick.

“I’m tired of being confined,” Tyler’s dick was saying.

“You feel constricted?” Tyler asked.

He looked up in dumb appeal. “I’m stuck in your pants all day!”

Looking down: “I can let you out, but first tell me, are you a penis or a phallus?”

“That’s a distinction without a difference.”

“ Au contraire, little man! You haven’t been listening.”

“I’m not noted for my listening ability.”

“Sounds like you’re a phallus to me,” Tyler told his dick. “We have lots of room for penises, but Mama don’t allow no phalluses ’round here.”

“Let my people go!”

“Nice try, but wrong color. Look, son. It’s risky when you come out. You could get damaged. The phallic liberation movement is in its infancy.”

“I thought you cousins were all about freedom.”

“In theory. In practice, free phalluses are dangerous.”

“Who says?”