Happyland

by J. Robert Lennon

  Behind her, the curtain lurched, and parted, and the stage opened up to reveal a long, low table covered with jars, bottles, boxes, and devices of diverse and unusual design. To the right there was a clothing rack, where garments hung from metal hangers, and to the left was a simple wooden chair upon which a small black woman sat, placid and expressionless, her dark clothes barely distinguishable from her skin. Sally Streit’s arm rose in presentation, and she turned upstage and began to walk—and then she stopped.

  She turned around again, to face the audience. On her face was a devilish grin. “By the way—I changed one other thing, too,” she said. “I got rid of my costume.” And with one fluid motion, she grabbed her Laura Ashley dress and tore it open, and buttons flew in every direction (girls in the front row, like groupies, fell over themselves to scoop them from the floor), and beneath the dress was revealed a black leather brassiere and black leather panties, and garters, and a second tattoo, etched directly into Sally Streit’s smooth, flat belly, depicting an arrow-pierced heart with the word MOM in the middle.

  Some getup, Ruth thought—but the woman’s body itself was more of a costume than the clothes were, all its feminine attributes ballooned to cartoon size, the hips and breasts, the watermelon thighs, the narrow waist which nonetheless was probably several sizes larger than Ruth’s. But as Sally Streit stood at center stage, her fists in the air, Ruth had to admire the chutzpah of this whole operation, the way she had given these girls exactly what they wanted, confirmation that something as prosaic as their sexual orientation—or even their support of the expression of people’s sexual orientation—was in fact a kind of rebellion, a way of distancing themselves from their parents, their teachers, their problematic innermost selves. It was this that they applauded now, madly, as Sally Streit waved her fists in the air—their differentness, their separateness from the world. Their rejection of it.

  Yes, it was what they wanted. But it wasn’t what they needed. What they needed was to get the hell out of here, to go home and read a book and look in the mirror and think. Instead, the very fears and anxieties—entirely justified ones—that they ought to have been addressing were being washed away in this deluge of positive reinforcement and carnal pleasure. Ruth crossed her skinny arms over her own meager bosom and shook her head—just like a mean old woman! Well, so be it. The world needed mean old women.

  Sally Streit moved around to the back of her table, pressed her palms to its surface, and waited for the furor to die down. Her shoulders heaved as she inhaled and exhaled, and she nodded, never losing that wide, self-satisfied grin. And when the room had at last grown quiet, she slapped the table with both hands, held them out, palms-up, and said, “Who in this room can tell me the difference between a dildo and a vibrator?”

  * * *

  While the student population of Equinox was gathered inside the Furman auditorium, the village of Equinox stood quiet and colorless in the November air. Evening had come; it was past eight, and the snow that had been drifting in flurries all day had begun to fall in earnest, and the patches of grass that had remained visible over the past week were soon covered over. Smoke emerged from chimneys, lights came on in windows, and traffic dwindled until only a car or two passed by every now and then.

  On campus, the quiet seemed eerie, as if the college had closed for good. Only if you happened to pass by the auditorium would you discover where everyone had gone: by eight-thirty or so the hoots, grunts, and chants of the student body had reached a stunning pitch, and a passerby might have been forgiven for imagining that they’d been replaced by an entirely different set of young women, so striking was their transformation. This same passerby would also be very curious about what, exactly, had effected this transformation, but because the lowest-reaching windows were more than eight feet off the ground, and because these windows were curtained, any such discovery was, unfortunately, impossible.

  Unless of course the passerby happened to be standing in a certain spot, where the curtains were slightly parted, and happened to look up and toward the rear of the auditorium, where a mezzanine-mounted spotlight, its bulb burned out, reflected, wavily upon its red-filtered gel, a tiny crimson reflection of what was happening on stage. And if this passerby should have had upon his person a pair of binoculars, or opera glasses, or extraordinarily acute vision, he might have made out in this reflection a peculiar tableau: a naked woman, bent over a rather clinical, examination-style table, her face twisted in what might, at this distance, appear to be pain, and might appear to be pleasure; and behind this woman a younger woman, short-haired, blond, dressed rather mannishly in jeans and a flannel shirt, and more importantly some sort of harness around her hips, which appeared to support a, frankly, penis-shaped object that the younger woman was thrusting repeatedly into the naked woman’s nether regions; and finally (and perhaps most peculiarly) a third woman, small and wizened and dressed in black, who stood beside the naked woman, pouring her small paper cups of water for her to snatch and empty into her mouth, much in the manner of a long-distance runner in his final, dehydrated miles.

  Of course this passerby, if he existed, would shake his head in puzzlement and dismay, dismissing this bizarre scene out of hand, for surely no such activity could be taking place at this august institute of higher learning. He might, in fact, decide upon a brisk walk to clear his head, and his snowbound wanderings might take him all the way to the northern edge of town, where he might observe two women in shorts—one wearing a tank-top as well, and the other only a bra—emerge, obviously drunk, from the back door of the octagonal kiosk that in summertime served as a popular ice-cream shop. He would also notice that these women were both covered in blood—on their faces and shoulders and half-bare chests—and that, despite obviously having recently beaten the living crap out of one another, they seemed to be getting on like the best of friends, their arms draped around one another, their voices loud and effervescent with laughter. If this were a local passerby, he might even notice that these women were Jennifer Triesman and Happy Masters, and if he happened to know them personally, this union would seem to him almost as unlikely as the sexually deviant bit of theater he’d come here to clear his mind of.

  We can only hope, then, that our passerby, seeking to disinfect his troubled mind with drink, wouldn’t happen to drop by the Goodbye Goose, Dave Dryer’s now-defunct bar, and throw open the door. No—we would encourage him to leave Equinox immediately for an extended vacation, or perhaps forever. Because we would not want him to see poor Dave lying shirtless on a floor now cleared of tables and chairs. We wouldn’t want him to look into Dave’s red, sleep-deprived eyes, or smell the horrible pain-killing poultice, discovered by chance in one of Kevin’s father’s mildewed survivalist magazines, that he has made himself out of ingredients he found in the woods, and applied liberally to his jaw. And we certainly wouldn’t want our passerby to see the deer rifle that lay in pieces upon a stained bedsheet upon that same floor, nor the speed with which Dave was now, after days of incessant practice, able to reassemble, load, and arm the gun. For if our passerby were to have this particular experience, he might never recover, believing himself to have gone mad.

  Go, passerby, go: leave Equinox and don’t come back.

  26. Rampant liberalism, radical feminism, and intellectual torpor

  A few days later, two documents were drawn up in the village of Equinox, and delivered to two different audiences, each to a different purpose.

  * * *

  My Dear Equinoxians:

  Let me first extend to you my apologies for the lateness of this month’s newsletter. Though I daren’t presume that I’ve significantly disrupted your lives, I like to think that this publication helps, in its modest way, to prepare Equinoxians for the month ahead. If I am right, then I have forced you to endure the first two weeks of November without the benefit of its guidance. For this I am sorry.

  That said, it’s a good thing that I’m late, for there have been several unexpected changes to the layo
ut of the advertising section of the newsletter. For one thing, the Equinox Inn’s Thursday evening drink special, which had been going to consist of a free glass of house wine, red or white, with any entrée over $10, is now defunct, owing to the nonexistence of the historically significant, 1831 building that housed it. Sorry about that. Second, Tuesday is no longer going to be two-for-one night at the Goodbye Goose, because, alas, the Goodbye Goose has closed as well. We have not been given any direct information about the closing, but it seems safe to assume that the Happyland Bistro, Happy Masters’s new restaurant and bar across the street, which has been operating at an apparently intentional loss for several weeks, is to blame. And finally, I had been expecting to run an ad for the new Happy Girls Outlet Store (though, oddly, I’d received no ad copy as of the initial editorial deadline for this newsletter), but it appears to have burned down before it had a chance to open.

  Does it seem to you, Equinoxians, that life in our fair town is getting a bit…peculiar? Has there been a little bit too much “change” for your taste, in the past month? Don’t you sometimes wish that the controversy, the construction, the destruction, could all just go away? Last night I attended a strange presentation in E.C.’s Furman Hall (built, if I am not mistaken, in the same year as our former Inn). This newsletter’s style and content guide prevents me from revealing here all the details of this amazing theatrical performance, but allow me to offer you the phrase “live participatory lesbian anal penetration” as a subtle hint as to what went on.

  These days, Equinoxians, everything seems to remind me of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). “In the sphere of thought,” he once wrote, “absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is superseded only for brief periods.” Could it be, my friends, that such a brief period has just ended here in our village? Could it be that deception, destruction, and perversion have overwhelmed us? Or can we return to the way things were? Our Inn is gone, our bar is gone, our innocence is gone—but now we know what it is we have lost, citizens, and can try to get it back. Help me try, Equinoxians, or I shall grow inconsolably sad.

  Your faithful servant,

  Ruth.

  * * *

  The other document, printed on heavy, cream-colored ragstock, was sent (from a post office in Syracuse, New York) to four hundred addresses throughout America and the world, and was accompanied, in a flat rectangular cardboard box, by an unmarked DVD in a plastic case. The text read:

  DEAR EQUINOX COLLEGE PARENTS:

  ARE YOU AWARE THAT YOUR DAUGHTERS ARE ATTENDING A PERVERTED, DEVIANT, AND DEGENERATE INSTITUTION?

  DO YOU KNOW THAT MORE THAN 85 PERCENT OF EQUINOX COLLEGE STUDENTS, IN A RECENT POLL, CONFESSED TO “AT LEAST SOME” LESBIAN EXPERIMENTATION?

  HAS YOUR DAUGHTER TOLD YOU THAT LIFE IN EQUINOX IS CHARACTERIZED BY UNDERAGE DRINKING, SEXUAL PERMISSIVENESS, AND ACADEMIC LAXITY?

  THE ENCLOSED DVD WAS MADE FROM A FILM TAKEN JUST LAST WEEK AT EQUINOX COLLEGE. THE EVENTS DEPICTED UPON IT WERE PERFORMED AT THE EXPRESS REQUEST OF THE COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION, AND THE WOMAN SEEN PERFORMING THEM WAS PAID FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. IF YOU DOUBT THE VERACITY OF THIS VIDEO, LOOK CLOSELY, MANY OF YOU WILL FIND YOUR DAUGHTERS PRESENT. NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE STUDENT BODY IS KNOWN TO HAVE ATTENDED.

  IF ACTS SUCH AS THESE ARE PERFORMED IN PUBLIC, WITH THE FULL CONSENT OF THE ADMINISTRATION, THEN IMAGINE WHAT MUST BE HAPPENING IN YOUR DAUGHTER’S BED.

  EQUINOX COLLEGE IS BEING TORN APART BY RAMPANT LIBERALISM, RADICAL FEMINISM, AND INTELLECTUAL TORPOR. REMOVE YOUR DAUGHTER NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.

  —A CONCERNED CITIZEN.

  Part Three

  27. Happy Thanksgiving and good riddance

  November soldiered on. More snow fell, a lot of it. Students retreated to their rooms, some to try out what they’d learned at the sex lecture, most to get cracking on the papers that were due before Thanksgiving break. The library filled once again with bowed heads, scratching pencils, and turning pages. Citizens new and old appeared on the sidewalks with their shovels and cleared a path through town that the plow soon obscured beneath a filthy berm. Groceries were bought, nails were done, beers were drunk, and life looked simple and quaint, the way life in a small town is supposed to look.

  In Glenda’s Market (a name that everyone used freely now, the newcomers never having known any other, the students enunciating it like a rallying cry, and the locals simply going with the flow), the bulletin board filled up with note cards, inscribed in a variety of cheerful looping handwritings, soliciting participants for a host of indoor activities, including a book group, a doll dressmaking group, a dieting group, and a movie discussion group. About a week later, small crowds of retirement-age women (and a few adventurous men) could be spied between lace curtains, gathering in the parlors of several newly-renovated properties. These women and men did indeed seem, to those whose curiosity led them to peek in the windows, to be having a fine time—drinking wine out of fluted glasses, eating cookies plucked from a doily-lined tray, and laughing and chattering like a bunch of monkeys—but it was all a little annoying, and certainly not the sort of thing you expected Equinoxians to be doing at night, in their houses, with other people. At least it wasn’t the kind of thing that had used to be done. There were perhaps a few native Equinoxians who read the note cards, and called the numbers written on them, and attended one or more of the meetings. But, by and large, the newcomers seemed faintly put off by the presence of townies, who tended to dress too casually or not casually enough, or spoke with an accent, or hadn’t had the same kind of experiences in life. And, to be honest, the townies didn’t feel terribly comfortable around the newcomers, who by and large had never fired a gun, or swum in muddy water, or owned a motor vehicle more than five years old. In fact it felt a little like there were two towns, the old and the new, occupying the same space. And though one of them—the old—was larger, and stronger, and more entrenched, the other had the advantage of affluence, and enthusiasm, and novelty. The new thing has a way of looking like the next thing, and the townies began to sense that they were on the verge of being the previous thing, and disappearing.

  And it was true. They were, slowly, disappearing. People minded their own business in Equinox—the old one—and so few departing residents bothered to say goodbye. But it began to dawn on certain citizens that they hadn’t seen certain faces lately, or hadn’t heard certain voices, and it got into their heads that perhaps they too ought to leave. And then an offer would come in the mail, and no matter how much they liked life in Equinox, they would be forced to consider giving it up. And so people could be seen walking bent over along the snowy sidewalks, their hands in their pockets, their chins buried in their scarves, thinking, and when two people so occupied passed one another they tended not to say hello or how-ya-like-that-weather, but merely to continue on their unmerry way. And the village seemed just a little less friendly, a little less…genuine. And the number, the really quite impressive number they had received from Happy Masters, turned over and over in their minds.

  The outward result of all this thinking, however, was calm, and Reeve Tennyson welcomed it, having had more than his fill of excitement in the previous few weeks. Indeed, the calm went on for days, and it seemed to Reeve, as he ran out the clock before the impending five-day Thanksgiving break, that he might actually get out of town before the next disaster unfolded. And then, on Wednesday afternoon, with only a few more hours to go, the office telephone rang. He leaned forward, dangled his hand above the handset, waited for Ellen’s “One moment please.” But it never came. Instead he heard this through the half-open door:

  “President Tennyson’s office. Yes, do you—”

  A silence.

  “If you’ll just—”

  Again a silence, though now Reeve seemed to detect a gentle scratching sound, as if from a distant radio. It took a moment to identify it as the caller’s voice, blaring through the earpiece of Ellen’s phone in the next room.

&nb
sp; “There’s no reason to—” she said, and a few moments later. “Sir, if I could just—”

  And then a final burst of static, and the sound of the phone being placed on the receiver.

  The two of them sat for a moment in quiet contemplation. Then Reeve heard his assistant get up from her chair, pick up her coffee mug (for she was incapable of leaving her desk without it), and knock gently on the door.

  “Yes?” he offered, weakly.

  Her face was furrowed with irritation. She was biting her lower lip. She sipped her coffee, leaned against the doorframe, and said, “That was an angry man.”

  Reeve felt himself shrinking in his chair. He said, “Oh?”

  “He said that he was withdrawing his daughter from Equinox College.”

  “How come?”

  She scowled. “He said, and forgive me if I don’t have this exactly right, ‘What sort of pornographic horseshit are you people doing up there?’”

  “Oh,” Reeve said again.

  “And then he said that he wasn’t going to have his daughter turned into some kind of…I think it was ‘homo slut whore’?”

  “Um…”

  “And then—and this is the weird part—he said, ‘This video is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.’”

  Reeve said, “Video?”

  “Video.”

  He looked out the window at the snow that persisted in falling. He wasn’t looking forward to digging out his car, which he would have to drive to the airport. He was supposed to spend Thanksgiving with his parents, sister, brother-in-law, and nephews in Florida. That was going to be bad enough, even without having to shovel snow. He said, “Maybe he saw…a video…of Sally Streit…on the internet?”