The Harrad Experiment

by Robert H. Rimmer

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Shelia said. “No woman would ever bare her fanny to the public.”

  “These styles are kind of intriguing,” Stanley mused. Imagine walking along Fifth Avenue judging and comparing women’s behinds.”

  “The wheels of industry would stop turning,” I chuckled. “All traffic would stop, the male population would develop permanent priapism, the girdle and brassiere industry would languish.... Maybe we should call the movie, The Day the World Ended. I waited for applause but no one got the pun.

  “I’ve got a better title,” Beth chuckled, flipping her behind. “Since the style would only appeal to men, it is obvious that drama should climax with the women castrating the designers. Why not call it The Short Saga of the Fat Asses.” Beth bent over to see what else was in Jack’s trunk.

  “My God, Beth,” Val warned her. “In that dress you should stoop not bend! We just saw your tonsils!”

  “I think the style will catch on,” I laughed. “It reveals entirely new areas of the female anatomy.”

  “How about Cheeks of Delight for a title?” Val asked. She was immediately bombarded with pillows.

  For two days we swam, sang, wrote a script for the movie and as the mood seized us, hysterically rehearsed our parts. Stanley and I were given the name Apeneé Brothers. I suggested the addition of meshugana. We finally agreed that the title “Meshugana Freres Apeneé” had a nice esthetic sound that should entrance the critics. By the fourth day, Stanley and I, nearly asphixated by the odor of naphthalene, had abandoned the size 40 striped pants. Dressed in tailcoats, ape masks and nothing else. We horsed through the mysterious motions of designing women’s clothes.

  Exasperated, Jack insisted that our costumes were too pornographic. The production came to a halt until Shelia and Beth got the idea of designing cod-pieces for us with grinning faces stitched onto them. Their masterpieces were a concoction of brassiere cups, padded, embroidered and sewn onto our jockey shorts. They insisted on sewing on the cups while we were still in our shorts and poked their needles at us with scary abandon!

  “A much more intriguing style,” Val insisted, “than bare female buttocks.”

  Since this was to be a silent film with eventual appropriate sound track furnished by InSix, we had to act our parts with broad hammy facial expressions. We finally concluded that the Les Freres Apeneé shouldn’t wear the ape masks until the last scene! The masks would be the faces the public naturally expected on the first fateful showing of the new fashions.

  Jack, amazingly serious, in his role of director kept shooting miles of film, and even filmed all our insane rehearsals. “This movie will finally be the product of my expert editing and cutting,” he said pompously. “I visualize it opening with a whirling montage of breasts, behinds, legs and unshaved deltas. These will gradually dissolve into the interior of the famous Apeneé House of Fashion. It will end with Les Freres Apeneé being pursued right out of their salon into the street by slobbering, hysterical, adoring women. To escape the howling mob Les Freres will discover a convenient ladder and climb to the roof of the establishment. Below the women ecstatic, happily swooning are ready to literally eat their heroes.”

  Jack spent considerable effort and ingenuity to transform Syke’s cottage into a passible version of a French fashion salon. Though we were dubious as to the effect, he was undaunted, insisting that the comic elements would sustain the somewhat garbled backgrounds.

  Shelia, Val, and Beth played the parts of fashion models wearing wigs that Jack had brought. They swayed their hips and behinds modishly as they modeled the gowns. Wearing rhinestone sun glasses, no wigs, but with suitable admiring and haughty expressions they also played the parts of the female audience.

  Although Jack kept insisting that somehow he would end up with a serious experimental movie, and he spent half his time either lying on the floor shooting scenes or hanging from the rafters of the cottage to get interesting camera angles, each rehearsal for a particular scene became more horsed up and insane than the previous one. Most of the time we were helpless with laughter at our own antics. Jack’s pained expression of frustration reduced Shelia and Beth to hysterical laughter and finally they got hiccoughs from drinking too much champagne. This morning the whole meshugana project finally came to an abrupt end. Jack set his tripod up outside the cottage. Stanley and I (wearing the ape masks, Henri and Cecil Apeneé) were to run past his camera pursued by Val, Sheila and Beth. Our coat tails flying, wearing our jockey shorts with the grinning cod-pieces, we scrambled up the ladder to the roof. Below us the girls were begging us to come down. They adored our Fanny and Titty Fashions. In a happy inspiration the girls took off their dresses and tossed them up at us. We responded by tossing our jockey shorts back at them. And that’s the way our world ended. Not with a whimper but with a literal bang!

  Ebeneezer Schnook emerged from the bushes, actually shooting a revolver over our heads. He was followed by his deputy, both screaming hoarsely. We were a disgrace to the human race. Like Doukhiboors, naked but unbowed, Sheila, Val and Beth stared at them contemptuously angry at their invasion of privacy. Stanley and I tried unsuccessfully to make our exit over the opposite side of the roof. Jack, a model of propriety, in his bathing trunks excoriated Ebeneezer and his deputy, who paid no attention to him. Triumphantly they corralled Stanley and me, their guns levelled at us in a very determined, no nonsense manner.

  With horror and pure shock on their faces at their discovery of us, our heroes herded us into the cottage, searched the place for loot, impounded all of Jack’s exposed film, denounced our lack of morals, and then with their siren blasting drove us hell bent to the pokey.

  Sunday, Phil and Margaret rescued us. They arrived with a lawyer who knew somebody who knew Schnook. Mr. Big, (whoever he was) the lawyer’s friend, never put in an appearance. Ebeneezer finally tossed in the towel and accepted the oneupmanship with grim reluctance. He even returned the movie equipment and all the exposed film to Jack.

  “Just like a gangster movie on television,” Beth said admiringly to Phil, “Even the fuzz don’t fool around when the Big Man speaks. Sometimes, Phil it is obviously true that power speaks louder than love in this best of all possible worlds.”

  But Phil didn’t feel philosophical. “Damn it,” he exploded when we were out of Ebeneezer’s hearing. “I expect more maturity from Harrad students. You’ve been acting just like typical college brats. An escapade like this could land Harrad and all of us in the newspapers.”

  I defended us. “There is considerable difference, Phil. Who were we harming? Were we destroying property or making a general nuisance of ourselves? On the contrary, Schnook invaded our privacy. On the opposite side of the fence, my father, for example, feels that all of us at Harrad are going to end up a grim, humorless lot, exposed to sex too early, tied down to marriage, and generally sour from having assumed too much responsibility at an immature age. We disagree. We, InSix, are all in love. We have discovered the fun and laughter and sheer joy of each other as mortal, sexual human beings. We all have Phi Beta Kappa level marks and we’re far from being dull. You have no right to be angry with us. If you are angry, you have lost the key to Harrad.”

  “What’s the key to Harrad?” Phil demanded, interested in spite of himself.

  “The ability to slide out of your skin, be your own “doppelganger.” At a moment’s notice to be able to step aside and laugh happily at your own serious, concerned, frustrated, conforming other-self.”

  Phil sighed. “Okay, I asked for it. All of you pack up your junk. Any further movie making will be done in the confines of Harrad. It’s obvious that the world and Old Cape Cod, aren’t quite ready for you!”

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BETH HILLYER

  March, the Third Year

  Because Mom and Pops decided they had earned a Caribbean vacation, I am spending Spring vacation in New York with Jake and Rachel. Actually, this took some doing. Rather than have their daughter exposed to Passover, they would have gladl
y planned their Easter vacation to coincide with my Spring vacation. I received several letters from them extolling the merits of Jamaica, and the value of exposure to other influences than Harrad and Harry Schacht. I owed it to myself to compare and examine all the pebbles on the beach. It is patently impossible to explain to them that having already experienced the delights of the bed with three boys, and being able to continue this joy with great regularity, I scarcely need to extend myself by lying down with other pebbles. They finally grew impatient at my malingering and departed for Jamaica without their ungrateful daughter.

  I love New York, and I love Harry’s big house filled with uncles and aunts and kids and a grandmother all living under one roof. I really believe they’re no longer afraid of me. Still, Rachel worries about her boy.

  “Saul and I wanted a big family,” she told me yesterday when I was helping her make supper. “I had four brothers and three sisters. Saul had two sisters and a brother. Then after Harry was born I had female troubles, and finally, after an operation, there were to be no more children. So maybe we worry too much about Harry. Being an only child is not good.”

  “You’ve done very well with Harry,” I smiled at her. “I love him, too.”

  “Are you going to get married soon,” Rachel asked. She looked hopefully at me.

  “Next year. Harry and I think that is soon enough. Are you afraid of having a Gentile daughter-in-law?”

  Rachel sighed and hugged me. I like her quick affectionate nature. “Saul and I are confused. Our friends, the rabbi ... our religion, you see, Beth we love you, but I guess we wonder why you love Harry. You are so very pretty ... and so Goyish. Your father and mother ... they’ve met Harry. They can’t possibly approve. And then there’s Harrad. Oi-vey, I’m afraid this can only end in great unhappiness.”

  I kissed her cheek. “Rachel, I love Harry. When I first knew him I was afraid, too. He was Jewish, the way he thought, the expressions he used, they all seemed foreign and insular to me. When we first made love, I didn’t think I liked his deep concern for me. I thought somehow it wasn’t virile ... that a man should dominate a woman. And then suddenly I saw Harry for the person he really is, dynamic, kind, gentle, affectionate ... I visualized him as the doctor he will be and I knew that somehow he was my real ideal of a man. I actually feel like socking people who say to me; but “Beth you are so pretty!” meaning that Harry is homely. Harry will be lean, craggy and quite impressive when all the pretty boys have gone to seed, and have developed pot-bellies. After three years, Harry and I have learned we’re opposite sides of the same coin. Separated we don’t function. Together we are a perfectly adjusted, reasoning, emoting whole person. We deeply understand each other’s foibles, and love each other for then.”

  Rachel listened to me while she rolled out and thinned her blintz dough. “These are very nice things you say about my son, Beth. I am glad. But I will feel better when you are married. When you come to our house you both sleep alone in a separate room. I hope you understand. I know you room together ... go to bed together at that college ... but here in my home, unmarried ... well, somehow it doesn’t seem right.”

  I wanted to hug Rachel. She looked so concerned and worried. “Really,” I laughed “It’s not so much different. If Harry and I were going to a regular college, we’d probably be sleeping together in motels, or what have you. But I do understand. When I come to visit in your house both Harry and I respect your feelings.” I didn’t tell her about late last night, Harry sneaked up to the third floor where the guest room is and we snuggled together until dawn.

  Of course, I realize that Rachel’s worries have some basis in reality. Altogether over the past two years, Harry has spent a month with my family in Columbus. Mother and Pops have been cordial with him but it still is a distant cordiality. Harry may be the finest boy in the world but, inescapably, to them, he is Jewish first and a man second. There is no overt anti-semitism in anything my family have said to me. It is indirect. They point out that the Jewish doctors stick together. The Jewish families maintain their own solidarity. They have their own functions, their own groups, their own organizations. It is useless to point out to them that the gentiles have similar walls to hide behind.

  Mother and Pops belong to a country club that seeks new memberships very carefully. Thus they avoid a “Jewish takeover.” “You can’t fight it,” Pops told me. “It’s the basis of their religion. They don’t want us either. From early history the Jew has insisted on his uniqueness in relation to God and non-Jews.” When I countered that this was the only basis of Jewish survival in a hostile world, Pops insisted that was beside the point. The past couldn’t be changed. Now it was too late. The Jews did not want to be assimilated by any nation; not even Israel if it came to that. Their religious indoctrination, in a larger sense, simply placed them in their own minds above the mainstream of any particular culture. “And you Beth, you will be neither flesh nor fowL” Pops sighed. “The Jews will never fully accept you, and you will be shut off from your own kind.”

  It is a sad commentary on the world, but Jake and Rachel could agree with Mother and Pops on one thing, if nothing else. Harry and I shouldn’t marry. It bewilders me. If you accept their philosophy to its ultimate, the world would be a collection of inbred cultural islands. Possibly there would be an exchange of goods and some superficial contact between the tribes, but deep interchange of cultural values and of course inter-marriage would be avoided. Years ago I discovered a book in Pops library by a man named Wendell Willkie. He ran for president. Several wars. ago, Willkie was campaigning for One World. Do we make progress ten steps backward to one forward? Poor Mr. Wilkie. There are now twice as many nations in this one world and all of them grind their axes in New York. They must have named it with grim humor . . . United Nations.

  Last night, with Harry deep inside me, my face snuggled against his neck and shoulder, I was in a blissful, talkative mood. “It is incredible to me, that I lived nearly twenty years and never tasted Jewish food until I knew you. Life would be very dull without potato latkes, bagels, lox, sweet and sour meat balls, stuffed cabbage, kishke, knishes, kreplach, chopped liver, gefilte fish, all the wonderfully crazy pareve food, all the enchanting desserts without leavening that have been invented for Passover ... even borscht . . . which took some doing.”

  Harry interrupted my breathless recital by kissing my breasts and gently probing them with his tongue. “I like the taste of your breasts better than any food. What’s more this diet is not fattening!” Harry stopped kissing for a minute. “You know what Jake says, Beth? “Good food killed more Jews than Hitler.” When we are married I’m going to have to watch your diet. You may have a tendency to get too plump. I like skinny women.”

  “Skinny women with big tits,” I said offering him one.

  “And firm behinds.”

  “And a warm vagina,” I said oscillating slightly.

  “Amen,” he affirmed rather loudly.

  “Talf softly,” I whispered. “If your father walked in here right now he would go into a state of shock. Anyway, you interrupted me. Jewish food is only one of the things I have discovered. I have inherited a whole new group of holidays. Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, Passover to mention a few, and with them a whole new understanding of the origins of Christianity. And, I’m learning a whole new Yiddish vocabulary. Hundreds and hundreds of useful onomatopoeic words. Schlecht, pisk, metziah, plotz, schemiel, fresser, shicker, shmendrick, bobbe, kvetch . . .”

  “Hocken a cheinik,” Harry interrupted me.

  I bit him. “I am not banging on a tea kettle, or however you translate it. In fact, I’m so entranced and there are such useful words for cursing, too, that I am compiling a dictionary of them. Your father is helping me. And words are not all I’ve learned, Harry. I’ve discovered a new Jewish way of looking at life. A new way to worry humorously. Jews have a way of laughing at themselves that is particularly appealing and psychologically healthy. And I like the intensity of Jews, and their keen de
sire to learn and study. It strikes a keynote in my own philosophy of living.” I kissed Harry. “There’s a hundred other things. I’m so happy. Thank you for loving me, too.”

  Harry hugged me. I kissed the tears in his eyes. “Did you ever stop to think Beth, that the basic idea of Harrad is ultimately against a world within a world like the Jews have made. These are the cultural differences from one religion, or one race, or one nation that set us all apart. All the things you admire about the Jewish culture would have disappeared long ago if the world had been able to assimilate the Jews. If you want to consider it from the standpoint of national or racial differences the same thing applies to the Italians, Greeks, Scandinavians, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, or any nation or culture you can name. In a few centuries these ethnic differences will have mostly vanished. Maybe it is necessary for peace in the world that the foreign aspects of humanity are eliminated, but when you look at Japan, for example, as a product of American influence, it is a little terrifying. In a few centuries the Japanese will be as minus a cultural heritage ... and hence a sense of past and identity in the world ... as are the Americans.

  “I don’t believe that the Harrad idea is to obliterate cultural differences,” I said. “It seems to me we’re being taught to be citizens of the world. We’re building our own bridges between cultures. That’s the whole educative process, if you really analyze it. Everything that makes a particular culture unique should be preserved. But anything in the folklore of a culture or group that denigrates man or destroys the love of man for all men should disappear from the world. In my world I don’t need your Scroll of Laws. I don’t need your Moses or the prophets who proclaim Jews are the favored children of God. I don’t need Christ on the Cross, or the Virgin Mary, but I do need the idea of Christmas and Hanukkah. Just as in the larger sense of love and awakening of the world to Spring, and rebirth, I need Easter and Passover.” I kissed Harry and he responded eagerly. “You’ve come out of me.” I said a little disappointed. I helped him find his way back.