by Alex McElroy
“The questionnaire isn’t perfect and it isn’t meant to be,” he said. “But it should bring us attention—and that’s what we need more than anything else. Even bad attention. The worst thing you can be is boring when you’re starting out.”
“Bad attention won’t get us investors,” I told him.
“Not right away. But the most important thing is to get people interested, to join us on the journey, for better or worse. Because it’s not success that makes money, Sasha; it’s attention. All we need is attention. Then we get the investors. Then we begin the real work of reforming more and more men.” He appeared to have no understanding of how investment worked. I had seen enough brands flourish and flounder to know that attention was not the only thing driving success, but I had no interest in proving my point to him so late in the night.
He started the news stream.
“Tonight,” said a wooden-looking anchor on the ten o’clock news, “we bring you an update to our ongoing coverage of The Atmospherians: Who are they? What do they want? Today, Channel Eight News intercepted a secret document composed by disgraced self-help guru and current cult leader Sasha Marcus—or Dyson, as she now calls herself. The document, which appears to be some kind of questionnaire, outlines Marcus’s recruiting practices and larger intentions, which include the castration of all unemployed males. Called The Atmosphere, Marcus’s cult is intent on the eradication of men from society. To expand on this developing story, we will hold a roundtable discussion on the threat of The Atmosphere to men across America. Please be warned: excerpts from Marcus’s document will be read on the air.”
I stared at Dyson, who was staring at the screen, his mouth pried open in dismay.
“Good job clearing my name,” I said.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he muttered, face still trained on the screen.
“Men are naturally vulnerable,” said a man on the screen. “Especially to the charms of womanly wiles. That’s not sexist. That’s just the truth.”
“Amen,” said another speaker.
“Mm-hmm,” grunted a third.
“Our oldest human stories warn us about women like Sasha,” said the first.
“She goes by Dyson now,” said the host.
“Why would you write that I’m castrating men?” I asked. I was less angry than confused. It did us no good to lie to such an extreme. “Is this the attention you wanted?”
“I didn’t even mention you,” he said. “I didn’t mention you once. The document made it abundantly clear that you had nothing to do with The Atmosphere.”
“So you’re cutting me out of the story?”
“I’m taking what’s rightfully mine,” he said. He covered his mouth and screamed into his hands for what felt like a full minute. He cautiously removed his hands. “This is a good thing,” he said pleasantly. He was trying to convince himself. “This is what I wanted.”
“It’s not what I wanted.”
“It didn’t work out perfectly. But now they’re talking about us again.”
“Men already deal with enough,” said one of the speakers. “Now they have to be on the lookout for a cult leader luring them into a castration camp? With all the things men have to put up with already? This is too much. This is going too far.”
“This is exactly what we needed,” said Dyson. He gritted his teeth—though he seemed to think he was smiling.
I look back at this moment—at his envy, repressed rage—as the seed of the recklessness that would undermine The Atmosphere. Dyson was incapable of controlling himself but trying nonetheless. I wish I would have recognized what was brewing inside him at the time, because I might have been able to deter his thinking, to show him the value in being forgotten.
what the men needed to know
Women can tell when you’re staring.
No one cares about your beer opinions.
Drink water.
Your father’s generation did not do it correctly.
Your father’s generation was not great.
Even more than war and muggers and illness and death, your father was scared of words. Simple little words, scared of speaking them, hearing them, writing them down on paper—and because of that you’re scared of words.
Your mother cheated on your father.
Your mother wasn’t a saint.
Your mother left you in the tub for too long, far too long.
That celebrity you met didn’t wish you two could hang out alone.
If there is a secret to grilling, you do not know it.
Over 98 percent of those arrested for forcible rape are men.
Men make up nearly 60 percent of those arrested for fraud.
Your new jokes are even less funny.
twenty-one
THE MEN LEANED deeply over their crossed arms, sighing and rapping their fingertips on the table in impatient rhythms. Their stomachs grumbled lionishly. They were, we feared, bored of the Family Dinners. Six weeks of feasting and Emptying Out had hardened their excitement into workmanlike tolerance. Few men seemed to have come any closer to reaching their completion point in the program, and I was losing hope in any of them ever moving on. They continued building the sheds—six were now finished—but their effort was beginning to slow. The mix of purging, low-calorie meals, and the exercise sessions had taken a toll on their bodies. Collectively, the men lost 198 pounds, an average of 16.5 pounds for every man. Their faces had begun to disintegrate into their skulls, their cheekbones prominent. Bags darkened their eyes. Their skin became flaked and waxy, due to—or maybe despite—all the time they spent in the sun. The exercises stressed their joints; bruises pooled at their ankles, elbows, and knees. Their bones made sounds like splintering wood when they sat down or stood, loud enough to disturb me, though they never registered the noises. Their uniforms fluttered in the wind as they worked. A handful of men lost a handful of teeth. Everyone lost at least one—including Dyson, who was purging most nights, loudly enough to shock me out of my melatonin sleep-stupors. I never went downstairs to stop him. Instead, I let my guilt fester and swell; I muffled my ears with a pillow.
Peter, however, appeared to benefit from the intensity of the workout regimen. Running shaved the baby fat from his face and revealed a stark, marble-hard jaw. In the afternoons, as the men built sheds, he tended to a small vegetable garden on the east side of the barn. The work of hoeing and troweling packed muscle on his shoulders and arms. His softness continued to appeal to me, especially compared to the other men’s brutish simplicity. I took to bothering him as he weeded and watered. “What’s that?” I would ask while strolling past, pointing at zucchini or carrots.
Peter always answered me kindly, even though I asked the same questions every day. “Zucchini,” he would answer, or, “Carrots,” and never make me feel foolish for asking—a habit of Blake’s. I couldn’t ask Blake anything without upsetting him. Peter’s acquiescence was not sexy in its own right, though I found it an attractive corrective to Blake’s selfish exasperation. I felt validated when I spoke to Peter. He listened to me; he answered me. Perhaps what I felt around him was powerful. Important. The same way I once did to my subscribers.
Dyson placed a roasted ham in the center of the picnic table. The men applauded, as was their custom, but it was feeble applause, the way someone might clap when an enemy wins an award. Despite their lack of enthusiasm, Dyson refused to cut Family Dinners from The Atmosphere. The questionnaire fiasco deepened his commitment to his vision. He needed to ensure his ideas continued to shape the culture. Outside The Atmosphere, word of “Sasha’s Castration Cult” spread across newspapers and podcasts. Online petitions encouraged shutting us down; however, no one ever acted on the demands the petitions made. It was as if our detractors liked protesting us more than they liked putting an end to us.
Dyson wanted to protect every aspect of Family Dinners, in particular Emptying Out. These meals were the reward for the work the men put in through the week. Emptying Out might not h
ave seemed like a reward, he assured them, but it taught them the fragile nature of progress and to never take their gains for granted, because at any moment what they considered they believed they deserved might be taken away from them. He feared the men might treat Family Dinners like regular meals—the canned veggies and rice they received Sunday through Friday—dismissing the planning (and emotional baggage) undergirding those dinners. Over the past weeks, he introduced new initiatives aimed at pleasing the men. Junk food was added to the menu—chips and cheese crackers and tiny bagel pizzas and sandwich cookies and salted peanuts—so the Family Dinners came to resemble the binges we once shared at my house. The men slobbered down the junk even as their commitment to Emptying Out continued to wane, even with the aid of ipecac wine. Last week, Dyson had knelt with them at the trough, against my wishes, to inspire them through solidarity. Instead, his participation disturbed them. He was supposed to be above them, not of them, and all week they treated him with tepid civility verging on indifference.
So I proposed we try something different.
As Dyson sliced cuts of ham off the bone, I hammered a sheet of construction paper to the door. On it were this week’s rankings.
“The last six weeks,” Dyson said, “Sasha and I have ranked you based on undisclosed criteria. Now that the sample is large enough, we will share our findings.”
I took a spot beside Dyson. “G.E.M.,” I said, “or the Gustatory Enthusiasm Marker, measures your commitment to Family Dinners and Emptying Out. The interest you show in both activities is recorded, multiplied, and averaged to decide each Atmospherian’s G.E.M. score. Over the past five weeks, only one of you consistently earned a perfect score.” I paused.
Each man leaned back on the bench, prematurely proud of himself.
“The only perfect score,” Dyson said, “belongs to Peter Minston.”
Dyson and I were the only ones clapping now.
Peter raised his arm, bashfully accepting the praise.
“Peter, as a reward for your efforts, you are exempt from tonight’s Family Dinner.”
The news cratered the men.
“I can’t possibly accept that,” said Peter.
“You’re not accepting anything, Peter,” I said. “The honor is being bestowed upon you.”
“This is a kick in the dick to the rest of us,” Randy said.
“You all had every chance to improve your rankings,” said Dyson.
“I’m not sure this is fair,” Peter said.
“My G.E.M. was really that low?” asked Gerry.
“This type of rigged bullshit would never fly in the corps,” said Leon. “Hoo-rah.”
“Peter: Sasha will accompany you on a walk as the others partake in tonight’s activities.”
“But what will I eat?” he asked.
“You’ll eat with Sasha and I later tonight,” said Dyson. “You earned it, champ.”
The others stared hotly at Peter and me.
Outside, he asked me if the others would be mad at him.
“They probably already are,” I said.
The grisly sound of the binge bled through the barn. Hearing them eat sickened me. Peter felt the same way I did, or he said he did because he wanted to be alone with me—more alone than he already was—and we agreed to hike through the forest.
Past the bony frame of the sixth shed was the newest addition to camp: The Crucible. It was the latest addition to Dyson’s ongoing attempt to transform The Atmosphere into a funhouse replica of his childhood. He had collapsed his basement into the size of an outhouse. Mirrors covered the interior walls, including the ceiling. Every day, before dinner, each man spent ten minutes alone in The Crucible, naked, reflecting on what had led him here.
The men assured Dyson they had never known themselves so intimately.
Peter, however, found his daily ten minutes excruciating. “It makes me paranoid,” he said. “I don’t reflect on anything, and I leave feeling worse about myself and my body and with no desire to eat. Is that the point of it? To make us hate ourselves? To make us eat less?”
It wasn’t not the point. “Is that what you think the point is?”
“I shouldn’t complain,” he said. “I’m lucky I’m here. I’m a new person thanks to you.” Peter was precise with his words. By you he meant me, only me, and his confessed preference pleased and surprised me.
“You mean thanks to Dyson and me,” I said, toying with him.
“You’ve done way more than he has. For me, at least.” He blushed. Beneath the hesitant flirting huddled the boy Peter had been. I imagined that child, wearing outfits picked by his mother, eating the eggs she prepared, her licked thumb wiping muck from his cheek. These helpless qualities intrigued me. It was helplessness without calculation. Again, I saw in Peter what Blake wasn’t, though I wish I looked deeper than the superficial differences between them, because I never saw Peter, only the inverse of Blake—or what I believed was the inverse of Blake. My interest in Peter, I’ve come to realize, was not about Peter but about what he might grant me: the chance to empower myself in ways I hadn’t with Blake. Blake reduced me. And perhaps the most accurate way to describe my attraction to Peter is that he made me feel the way Blake felt around me. Here was a chance to be more than the person I was with.
“Peter,” I said. “Why are you here? The other men, they’re vulgar and bitter. But you’re so prudent. You planted a garden—it’s charming. No one here is charming.”
“You’re charming,” he said. It was the most brazen I’d ever seen him.
“You shouldn’t flirt with me,” I said.
He apologized.
“I didn’t tell you to stop.” I liked teasing him. And I felt a charge inside me, the same charge I often felt at my restaurant, or out at bars, that tingling thrill of someone wanting me.
We crossed into the forest. He stopped. “You can’t judge me if I tell you why I’m here.”
“I’m not a judgmental person,” I said, and continued to walk.
Peter didn’t move. “You have to promise or I’m turning around.”
I chuckled at his seriousness. “Okay,” I said. I lifted my right hand. “I promise.”
He said nothing for some time but shifted his lips as we walked, tallying thoughts and working up the courage to speak.
“Just say it,” I said.
“Man horde,” he mumbled.
“What about them?”
“I was in one.”
I said nothing for a long time. If he were anyone else, I would’ve thought he was joking. But Peter was too sincere of a person to joke. “Oh,” I eventually said.
He cupped his hands over his face and muttered into his palms: “I knew you’d judge me. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.”
“I’m surprised,” I said. “Dyson told me your greatest regret was something about avocados—eating too many?”
“I didn’t want them to think I was evil,” he said. “And I really did give up avocados, because I don’t know how anyone eats them—the waste that goes into producing just one. Twenty-five gallons of water. For what? Some guac?”
“Stick to the man horde,” I said.
He let out a trembling sigh and began.
After his mother died, he had no one to share his grief. His father had left decades earlier. He and his brother didn’t talk. He lived alone in the house where he’d watched his mother die over the course of six months, increasingly isolated, embracing the isolation—eating delivery every night, wearing headphones in public—until one day, while shopping for double-A batteries, Peter blacked out. He woke on his couch to the sound of police pounding on his front door. He and five other men had trespassed on an elderly woman’s property and weeded her vegetable garden, added fertilizer to the soil, picked a basketful of lettuce—all as the woman shouted in terror, demanding they leave. Peter was found guilty of criminal trespassing and sentenced to community service. It was recommended that he enroll in therapy. WHY was the cheapest available option. �
�I know how horders are talked about. You end up in a horde, it’s because you’re a freak, you’re evil. The others needed a story about me, so I gave them a story.”
Peter had always seemed so unintentionally forthcoming; like a sieve, things poured out of him through design. His duplicity shocked me even more than the horde.
“Dyson asked everybody, point-blank before we got here, whether we’d been in a horde,” he said. “I lied to him, Sasha. I had to lie to them all.”
Even more than I liked the idea of keeping a secret for Peter, I liked keeping one from Dyson. It was time I had something he didn’t. “It’ll stay between us,” I assured Peter.
He wrapped me in a hug but sprung back, apologized.
“Don’t apologize, Peter.” I laced my fingers with his, clutched and released.
On the walk, Peter nervously crunched through a bag of cough drops. He stayed ahead of me out of an impulse to protect. He pulled aside low-hanging branches, warned me against divots where I might turn an ankle. “Look out for rocks,” he said, dozens of times. At any other point in my life, I would’ve found this treatment condescending and obedient. But the deference he showed reminded me of hiking with Blake during our stay at the cabin, back when he pretended to care about me. Peter was Blake stripped of the vanity and middling music career. Peter was the Blake who never performed. He was a gift from the universe: a chance to correct all that went wrong.
During my exile, every spark of public hostility seemed directed toward me, until the man hordes offered the world new people to hate, other news to dissect. They gave me hope for a future of anonymity. They helped me lose track of myself. And knowing Peter had been in a horde filled me with a peculiar gratitude that veered close to attraction. I liked, too, that he had lied to Dyson and the other men about being in a horde. This complicated Peter, made him less ordinary—we both had secrets to hide. Sturdier intimacies have been founded on less.