The Harrad Experiment

by Robert H. Rimmer

  The first ten hours seemed to last an eternity, but I wasn’t lonesome. Since all parents make a fetish of taking pictures of their offspring Jack decided that Harry and I should do it right and start from scratch. Yes ... you guessed it! Thanks to Jack, the frustrated movie mogul, and over my howling protests and later Sheila’s, we have the nicest movies you ever saw of the birth of our babies. I’ve watched the film of my stardom, my finest performance, over and over again with awe and pride that I, Beth, accomplished this miracle.

  I won’t bore you with details. We will bring our movies up to Harrad soon and show them to you. You’ll see me with the most amazing grimaces, and Val and Sheila flitting over me like mother hens, wiping my face or rubbing my back while Stanley watches in amazement, and Harry with our good doctor friend (he arrived about nine o’clock with plenty of scowls for all concerned). They finally stopped arguing over recumbent me and counselled each other.

  Harry insisted that I would have an easy birth. He should try it! About noon they propped me into a semi-sitting position. Since I had been measured and studied thoroughly day by day for the past four months and also given endless advice by Harry, I was contracting and relaxing on schedule with much happy cheering from the sidelines. Finally it was over. If I was the heroine, Jack deserves the cameraman’s Oscar. He condensed the long hours into about forty-five minutes of dramatic deep feeling. He captured my tears and pure joy, and Harry’s proud grin when he held Abraham up and slapped him on his fanny. He interspersed this with all the faces of our friends, showing unconstrained, amazed, happy wonder. Of course, Jack doesn’t need compliments. He now envisions a new age of home movies, with him as the precursor and founder of a new kind of movie studio devoted to the business. Imagine, newly-marrieds would be able not only to show you movies of their honeymoon (omitting of course the hours of implantation) but would then proudly pass onto the next reel and show junior being hatched.

  Now, we are back to normal! I missed two and a half weeks of lectures and classes, but, since we are taking identical courses, Harry kept me up to date. Sheila took three weeks off, but her schedules are more fiexible than med school. Sheila and I nursed our babies for a few weeks. We even exchanged the little rascals, who didn’t seem to care from which teats they got their sustenance. Before Abraham went on a bottle, Harry tried a taste or two, but wouldn’t recommend it for a diet. Now that both babies are on bottles and we have developed an easy schedule, most of Sheila’s classes are in the afternoon, so she is morning boss. I take over maternal duties about two-thirty on most days. We have about two hours a day when the boys or Val, or a nice motherly neighbor who lives next door takes the daily watch. Mostly there are no problems since the kids are sleeping.

  Do you wonder how our communal life works out in practice? Believe me, it is never dull. First, money. Jack and Valerie, our President and Treasurer, pay the bills. As you know for the past three years we have pooled all our resources into our corporation, InSix. The purpose of InSix is to provide the education and all expenses for the six of us for the next four years. When we started in September, InSix had about twelve thousand dollars from our total summer earnings over the past three years. We also had the income from our record royalties of seventy-six hundred dollars, and one thousand Beth got for posing for the famous Cool Girl picture. After the down payment on our dilapidated mansion, we had about eighteen thousand, so we ought to have enough money to last all of us for at least two years.

  We had a stormy family conference here early in October, and the only point of agreement was, that even though Sheila was more than willing and enthusiastic to subsidize all of us, that we would make it on our own. You should have seen us showing the house to Val’s, Jack’s, Harry’s and my father and mother. Such wailing and consternation and fears of perdition for their brood! I can’t make up my mind whether Sheila and Stanley were better off; they had no explaining to do. Anyway, Jack made a sporting proposition to the three fathers who were present. If we got into financial difficulty, they would loan InSix a maximum of four thousand dollars each, while Sheila would match with four thousand. So much for finances. We are confident that within four years the world will be blessed with two doctors, one lawyer, and three sundry Ph.d’s.

  As for day in, day out living, our home is our castle and fortress. Sheila, Val and I do the shopping and plan dinner, the only meal we all manage to eat together. We have one downstairs room strictly for study, with desks, chairs, lamps etc. purchased from various junk shops. Very comfortable. Only one rule in this room, absolutely no conversation. If you don’t want to study, but feel unconversational, you can sit and stare and no one would even dare ask what you are thinking. We made one room a music room and here we have a piano (Sheila’s donation) and record player. Here we sing, play music, write kooky stuff for records we hope to make and generally horse around. The dining room and living room off it are for eating, discussion and guests. God, do we have guests! Some never want to go home, and on weekends some don’t. We find them Sunday morning sleeping on the floor, and the discussions that started Saturday night are still going strong Sunday noon. Naturally, we attract all the screw-balls and curiousity seekers from here to New York City. Discussions range from sex to Zen, communism to existentialism. You name it and some one is available for a “pro” and someone for a “con”.

  Upstairs is the sacrosanct headquarters for InSix. There are five bedrooms but only one damn bathroom. Fortunately this house was built in the days that bathrooms were big. It measures nearly twenty by twenty feet. Since the boys are rather uninhibited about not only their, but our excretory functions, Sheila, Val and I (who are definitely inhibited) made them enclose the toilet with a four wall partition, and that, at least has a door and lock on it! However, anything can happen ... and since the partition doesn’t reach the œiling, which is at least twelve feet high, I discovered one night that all the giggling on the outside was caused by reflection of Beth sitting on the pot and being stared at in a mirror Jack had ingeniously propped on an appropriate angle.

  Bathing, showering etc. is strictly public. None of us, including the boys has any trouble getting his or her back scrubbed ... or any other part of our anatomy, if we show the slightest interest.

  Naturally, sex is somewhat uninhibited. Now that Sheila and I are back in circulation, and after Val has her baby, we’ve decided not to attempt any more progeny until we’ve finished our education.

  A few weeks ago, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, we were all sprawled across Sheila and Stanley’s bed, and Sheila plunged into the discussion of whether we were going to continue monogamous or return to the more or less informal sex life of our Harrad days, and if the latter, how? She suggested that if the mood seized us, we might occasionally want to switch bed mates, but only on the basis of prior non-alcoholic discussion and one hundred percent agreement.

  Harry disagreed on the method. “What I can’t figure out,” he said laughing “is that if I asked you to sleep with me, Sheila, and if you didn’t want to, or Stanley didn’t want you to, or if Beth didn’t want me to, how in the devil would you solve it? All I’d have done is create tension with the three of you. It’s really an impossible thing to discuss.”

  But we did discuss it ... for nearly three hours. We concluded how impossible it would be to avoid exchanging partners. We were bound to be attracted physically to each other, living as we did. We were married as a matter of direct responsibility to each other, but marriage didn’t preclude the feeling of love, and just plain sexual attraction we had for each other. I suggested it would eliminate tension to sleep with our “proper” mates Saturday through Tuesday, and our “improper” mates Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Stanley protested that this didn’t include Val and Jack, and once Val was “back in the lists as a combattant” it would change the sequence. Harry’s argument was more fundamental. As much as he enjoyed sex, he wasn’t about to make it a “duty” to make love to three different girls in one week. Not that he wouldn’t try o
ccasionally, but if he felt sleepy on a particular night he didn’t want to arrive on the sacrificial couch with an engraved guarantee.

  We finally solved it by agreeing to exchange our spouses for one week at a time with Valerie and Jack included. This is working beautifully. Sheila, Val and I were discussing it last night. If you dig back into the history of marriage, particularly in Briffault’s famous study The Mothers you’ll find that originally most marriages were group marriages. Isn’t it possible within the framework of modern society that some of the beneficial aspects of such marriages might be retained? What have we gained in our little society? Whether I am sleeping with Harry, Jack or Stanley, it is not a lustful experience or orgiastic It is very definitely not casual. We are deeply good friends, and we do not take each other for granted. Each of us brings something a little different to the other, and it “sparks our lives with a real joie de vivre and a deep commitment.

  Val summed it up. “Every Sunday when my new husband for the week joins me in my room, I feel like a new bride all over again. Sometimes I wake up in the night and for a sleepy moment I may forget whether I am with Stanley, Jack or Harry, and then I feel warm and bubbly. Me ... Valerie ... too tall and with big feet and sometimes too bossy ... three men love me and care for me . . . and I . . . I love us all!”

  Really sex with all of us is warm laughter and deep mystery existing almost simultaneously. What will happen when we finish our education? We talk about it once in a while. We know that inevitably economics and the problem of making a living will separate us and we will pursue our monogamous lives and have our children in a more conventional pattern. But we know, too, that we will plan our holidays and vacations together with the sure knowledge that the pressure of society to conform will never break the bond that we have formed, not only because of sex and the desire for variety within our monogamous lives, but even more because all of us will continue to respond to the challenges of living. And when we meet in the future we will not be dull suburbanites passing an evening of alcoholic boredom, and repressing our sexual feelings. We will be alive, vital, inter-acting, intensely curious and wondering human beings who care deeply for each other.

  A couple of things sum us up pretty well. A week ago, we all went up to New York to visit with Bad Max and some of Jack’s friends in the Village. Here is a vignette of those who think they are challenging the conservatism and conformity of society. First, we watched a Flashlight Parade and Rally to protest the harrassment of the Arts in New York City. A motley crowd of students, artists, beardos, and what not, all wearing black as a token mourning for the Death of Freedom in the city, were protesting the Licensing of Movie Films, the Censorship of Books, Seizure of Art Works as Obscenity, Harrassment of Coffee Houses by the police etc. Later we watched another group sponsored by the New York League for Sexual Freedom who were picketing the Women’s House of Detention carrying placards which read: “Free the Prostitutes”. “If it weren’t for Sex you wouldn’t be here”. “32-69 come and join our Picket Line”. “Whoop-de-doo, I want to screw, how about you?” “Ballin is good for the Soul” etc. etc....

  I’m afraid the six of us felt like visitors from another planet. What these people thought was rebellious and provocative seemed to us pitiful and foolish. For if men and women want to change society, the effective way is the Harrad way. Not sticking your tongue out, or spending your time wailing at the superficial manifestations of man’s stupidities or making a greater ass of yourself than those you are protesting against. No, far better to live your life as a totality . . . slowly and methodically with a sure knowledge of what you wish to accomplish. The kind of personal rebellion that will change the world is summed up by John Gardner in his concept of the “self-renewing man” “What is he? Who is he? Here is how Gardner describes him in the Carnegie Corporation Annual Report;

  “The self-renewing man is versatile and adaptive. He is not trapped in techniques, procedures, or routines of the moment. He is not the victim of fixed habits and attitudes. He is not imprisoned by extreme specialization ... In a rapidly changing world versatility is a priceless asset, and the self renewing man has not lost that vitally important attribute. He may be a specialist but he has also retained the capacity to function as a generalist. The self-renewing man is highly motivated and respects the sources of his own energy and motivation. He knows how important it is to believe in what he is doing. He knows how important it is to pursue the things about which he has a deep conviction. Enthusiasm for the task to be accomplished lifts him out of the ruts of habit and customary procedure. Drive and conviction give him the courage to risk failure. (One of the reasons mature persons stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure) And not only does he respond to challenge, but he also sees the challenge where others fail to see it . . . For the self renewing man the development of his own potentialities and the process of self discovery never end. It is a sad but unarguable fact that most human beings go through life only partially aware of the full range of their abilities. In our own society we could do much more than we do now to encourage self development. We could, for example, drop the increasingly silly fiction that education is for youngsters and devise many more arrangements for lifelong learning . . . But the development of one’s talent is only part, perhaps the easiest part, of self-development. The maximum “Know thyself” so ancient, so deceptively simple, so difficult to follow has gained in richness of meaning as we learn more about man’s nature . . . as Josh Billings said “It is not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient.” It is a life-long process . . . that brings us to the recognition that the ever renewing society will be a free society. It will understand that the only stability possible today is stability in motion. It will foster a climate in which the seedlings of new ideas can survive and the deadwood of obsolete ideas be hacked out. Above all it will recognize that its capacity for renewal depends on the individuals who make it up. It will foster innovative, versatile, and self-renewing men and women and give them room to breathe.”

  That’s it, Margaret and Phil ... that’s Harrad ... that’s us! We hold the key to the future. The door is unlocked and open. Those who pass through are going into a new era, a new age. Not a Golden Age. My God ... how dull that would be! No ... rather an Age of Continuous Wonder ... an Age of Creative Insecurity.”

  Love from all of us,

  Beth

  THE HARRAD/PREMAR SOLUTION

  I hope you have enjoyed The Harrad Experiment. Over a lifetime, I have come to believe more strongly than anything else that all of us can learn to love each other and care for each other far more than we do now. I believe we can make a world in which people stop creating tragedies in their daily lives where no tragedies need exist.

  Before the 21st century is over, possibly within your lifetime, I believe that religious leaders, educators, and government leaders1 will unite in a shared belief that continuing education of the younger generation is the only way to provide a sense of national purpose for the United States—or, for any democratic nation.

  This new approach to education will include a new sexual morality, which unlike most current Judeo-Christian teachings, moves with the grain of human sexual drives and not against it. Encouraged by their churches or synagogues, by parents and teachers, and by the media, young people will refrain from sexual intercourse until they are 17 years old. A young man’s or woman’s 17th birthday, coinciding with graduation from high school, would become a celebrated rite-of-passage, after which responsible sexual mating—with or without a marriage commitment—would become a natural part of life.

  Prior to this, through their secondary schooling, young people would be socially indoctrinated to limit all sexual expression to kissing, fondling, genital play, as well as masturbation to climax for those who were too excited to forego orgasm. During their growing years—indeed from birth—young people would have had the opportunity not only to see men and women naked on beaches and in other areas
where it is practical to be naked but also to watch, in movies and on television, people of all ages over 17 making love. By their 17th year they would be well-acquainted with the details of human loving and the sexual expression of it.

  In essence, we will have grown up as a society and would no longer exclude young people from complete sexual knowledge. The only activities that would be censored from view would be child sex, violent and victimized sex, and explicit portraits of homosexual congress. (I will give the reason for censoring explicit depictions of “gay” sexuality later.)

  The factor that would make this approach to human sexuality work would be a new approach to undergraduate education, which would be made available to all secondary-school graduates. I call it the Harrdd/Premar Solution. This is the only sensible approach to education in the 21st century, and it would give American democracy a new sense of national purpose. By what name it is called is unimportant. You may have already guessed that Harrad is a contraction of the names Harvard and Radcliffe, and Premar is a shortening of premarital. Every person would have to graduate from high school to be eligible to vote,2 and all high-school graduates would be guaranteed an additional four years of undergraduate education.

  If you have just read The Harrad Experiment for the second time, you are probably in your middle forties, one of the “baby boomers” who grew up during the 1960s and settled down in the 1980s to become a “yuppie” or “dink” (double-income couple with no kids). When you first read Harrad, you may have thought it was a nice daydream and might appeal to the “flower children” but that it would never work in real life.

  On the other hand, if you have just read Harrad for the first time, you are probably between the ages of 16 and 35 and were playing in a sandbox when Harrad was first published. As offspring of the “baby-boom” generation, you are known as the “baby-bust” generation because there are 6 percent fewer of you (quite a few million less) than there were of your fathers and mothers. This worries your parents, who are living much longer than their parents did, because your generation will be paying less to the Social Security fund to support them in their old age.