The Harrad Experiment

by Robert H. Rimmer

  “I got so interested in listening I forgot about sex,” Harry grinned at me. “A man’s mind won’t always let him do two things at once.”

  “Are we talking too much,” I whispered.

  “No,” Harry said. “In our lifetime, let’s have billions of words probing our world and our lives. I believe it is the corner-stone of love.”

  I kissed him in fervent agreement. “One thing I didn’t mention: I enjoy the strong sense of family unity you, and many Jewish families, seem to have. You have grown up in a family where aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers are genuinely concerned and involved in each other’s lives. Even disparity in age and income doesn’t separate you. Your holidays cement what personal disruptions and conflicts the days in between may have wrought. And if Jewish families are small, they identify quickly and deeply with other Jews. Maybe it’s self-protection, or a feeling of being a minority. You are all . . . what does your father say? ... Landsmen. Nevertheless, I think even Jewish families are having a hard time holding out against a philosophy of marriage that believes each generation should live their own lives.”

  Since I was so talkative, Harry decided to listen to me as he kissed my belly. I let my fingers trickle over his penis and kissed it lightly. “I’m glad that you let me rant and rave, Harry. I love you.”

  “I’m enjoying it. Your fingers feel like feathers tickling me. Very exotic! Harry grinned. “I know what you are driving at, Beth. It’s a part of our mass culture. The economic wheels turn better when the younger generation creates their own little two-by-four nests. This way twice as many automobiles, television sets, refrigerators or what have you, can be sold. One night, a few months ago, I walked through a middle class suburbia, a few miles from Harrad. The houses are not like this old firetrap with fifteen rooms plus a huge basement and overflowing attic. These new suburban houses are all built to the pattern of families with two or three children. Possibly they have a bedroom for each child, and generally a family room where most of the leisure time of the wife and husband is spent viewing television with their children, when they are not all engaged in dreary little “do-it-yourself” projects. In the summer the man and wife manicure their little five thousand square feet of crab grass using all the latest mechanical gadgets from Sears Roebuck so that the job can be done in a half hour or less thus freeing them at last to join all the bored people travelling the highways with their broods where they finally purchase a Dairy Freeze or a Howard Johnson ice cream cone. A modern family’s Sunday adventure in togetherness. I don’t think I could live like that. On the other hand, I suppose there aren’t many families left who live like we do. My father and his brother Milt started in business together during the depression. The only way they could afford to get married was to move their wives in with their father and mother. My grandfather built this house with three floors and fifteen rooms because he liked a lot of people around him. Originally, my bobbe and zaide had so much room they took in boarders. As children were born and they needed the space, the boarders were pre-empted.

  “Finally the wheel came full turn. Two of their children moved back with them and filled the house with their own families. At times with Jake, Rachel, his brother Milt, his wife Annie, their three children, me, Grandma, Gramp and a great aunt who has since died, there have been eleven or twelve people living here at one time. Yet there has been surprisingly little conflict. Everyone managed to develop their own inviolate retreat within the house. A place to escape the general confusion whenever they desired. We have no grass, but Grandma has a garden in the back of the house, a space about twelve by fourteen that isn’t occupied by clotheslines and ash barrels. In the summer Grandma has something growing in every inch of it as well as growing up the walls surrounding it. On warm nights we sit on the back porch, and the neighbors next door sit on theirs. We watch Grandma who continues gardening with an extension light. All of us put in our two cents worth of advice on gardening, or we talk and discuss and argue late into the evening. Finally, we can’t even see each other’s faces. We are simply disembodied voices, and the words we are saying are like friends holding hands on a summer night.

  “Your kind of world, and this house is dying,” I said. “Man in the mass will have to find a new way to live. What will happen in the next fifty years when men will inevitably be forced by law to limit their offspring? We’ll all have to discover new ways to live closer together and search for values as groups not individuals. The human animal needs the constant stimulation of the never quite attainable, and I don’t mean things or possessions, I mean the never-ending lure of knowledge and understanding.”

  While I was talking, Harry had rejoined himself with me. “I think the Tenhausens are pointing the way to the future,” he said. With InSix, for example, you and I, Jack and Val, Sheila and Stanley; we’ve replaced the vanishing family. We can give it an even larger existence and strength. Our personal commitment to keep learning in the fields of our general interests, effectively breaks down specialization and hence lack of communication, and our love for each other both idealistic, sexual and practical creates a constant renewal of wonder and delight in our humanness and our place in the larger world.”

  I hugged Harry hard against me. “You know, making love this way, extending the delight, heightening our closeness to each other reminds me of when I was a little girl. I loved ice cream cones. I would eat one ever so slowly, making it last and last. I feel the same way now, blissfully ecstatic Your lips and mouth taste better than any ice cream cone,” I grinned at him. “You won’t melt will you?”

  Harry laughed. “Not so fast as an ice cream cone, anyway.”

  Last night at supper I thought Jake was rather preoccupied. He kept looking across the :able at me with a strange expression on his face. He answered Rachel’s and Annie’s conversation in a monotone, and he didn’t probe Alan and Sammy (Annie’s and Milt’s kids) about their school work or parry business conversation with his brother Milt concerning their day at their dress factory.

  “So quiet you are, Saul. Is the business failing again?” Grandma demanded sarcastically.

  “In the dress business always we are failing.” Jake said morosely. “Styles ... women ... phooey. Better women should go naked.” He looked at me speculatively.

  “Sometimes going naked is nice,” I said wondering what I had done that was obviously bugging him. “You don’t have to worry though. There will always be a woman’s clothing business. Women know they are sexier with clothes than without them. How else would women lure men and impress other women?”

  “Not naked!” Rachel snorted. “That’s for certain sure.”

  When we finished eating, Jake made a point of inviting me and Harry into his “hideaway,” a little room on the third floor that he maintained sacrosanct to escape the family and mess around with his fishing gear and a stamp collection. We sat on a studio couch facing his desk. From under a pile of albums he unearthed a copy of Cool Boy Magazine. As he silently flipped the pages to the center gate-fold, I suddenly knew what the trouble was.

  “Oh my God, Harry,” I yipped. “They must have finally published that picture of me.”

  Jake grimly held it up as silent testimony. A full length, full color, naked me stared at us with a decided come hither look on her face.

  Harry examined it excitedly. “You are the sexiest looking Cool Girl they ever published. I never thought with all the commotion and argument they would ever get one that good.”

  “They should have, they took enough poses.”

  Jake listened to our conversation with an incredulous expression on his face. “Harry, you knew about this? The girl you are going to marry ... naked for everybody to see. Beth, tell me it’s not you! When I opened this magazine suddenly my hands were burning. What if Rachel, or Annie, or Grandma saw it. What would your father and mother think, Beth? Their daughter a sex-object!”

  I held up my crossed fingers and grinned at Jake. “Let’s pray none of t
hem ever see it.”

  “You don’t have to worry about Grandma or Rachel,” Harry chuckled, “I can’t imagine they would ever spend a dollar to look at naked women. What puzzles me, Jake, is you. I’d never have imagined you spending good money for such a magazine.”

  Jake looked embarrassed. “I don’t buy it,” he mumbled. “I look at it down at the drugstore. Since when should a father have to explain to a son? I look to see what a mess the younger generation is in. Maybe I like to look at pretty girls too. But not my future daughter-in-law! Beth, why would you ever do such a thing?”

  I hugged Jake. “For a thousand dollars,” I said laughing. “And you don’t have to worry about my morals. I was well chaperoned. Harry was there, as well as Stanley Cole, Jack Dawes, Sheila Grove and Valerie Latrobe.”

  “A thousand dollars!” Jake repeated somewhat mollified. “You mean they paid you a thousand dollars. My God! Any girl in my factory would take her clothes off for fifty dollars.”

  “Most of them have eaten too many latkes.” Harry said. “Even for fifty dollars they would get no takers. Beth looks like every man’s idea of the woman he should have married.”

  “Oh shut up, Harry,” I said. “Honestly, Jake I think the whole thing is as silly as you do. The only reason that they sell that foolish magazine is that men don’t have the opportunity to see women naked, naturally, in their everyday living. If boys and girls grew up swimming together at public beaches, naked, took gym together naked, walked around their houses naked in warm weather, and simply wore clothes to keep warm, then all this voyeur, frustrated desires to see the naked human body of other human beings would vanish in smoke, and Cool Boy would go out of business.”

  While Jake listened, obviously wondering whether to continue to play the role of the horrified parent, we gave him a partially expurgated account of how I consented to pose for Cool Girl of the month.

  The whole business was crazy to say the least, but of course the thousand dollars gave it an air of practicality. One Friday, last fall when InSix had finished their act at the Grinning Eye, a hefty character, smoking a cigar invited us to his table and introduced himself as Otto Ogleby, publisher of Cool Boy. “We are scouting Boston for a prospective Cool Girl,” he told us looking at me with X-ray eyes. “Miss Hillyer has the face for it, and may be the type. Would you be interested?”

  “Not much,” I said staring back at him. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable hanging on college and barrack walls while sad little boys played with themselves and pretended that I was their girl friend.”

  “My God!” Otto marvelled. “That’s a whole new reaction. Most girls can’t wait to jump out of their clothes for the opportunity.”

  “How much would Beth get paid?” Stanley demanded, being eminently practical.

  When Otto mentioned the fee, and added that it would give InSix records a real publicity push since the average subscriber to Cool Boy was a heavy buyer of way-out records like ours, I knew from the expressions on all the faces that I was sunk. Immediately, Val, Sheila, Jack, Stanley and even Harry began to think the idea was worth considering.

  “These are my managers,” I said grinning at Otto. “If they vote in favor you’ve got yourself a new Cool Girl”

  “Take it easy,” Otto said when Jack and Stanley started to ply him for further details. “We have to see the merchandise before we buy.”

  “You mean that you want to see me naked?”

  “Naturally. You have a lovely face Miss Hillyer and you seem to stock up very well in clothes, but you may be wearing falsies, have a wooden leg, appendicitis scars, or other ailments the flesh is heir to. These would naturally eliminate you as a Cool Girl,” Otto guffawed. “Of course, in other respects you may be quite cool. Incidentally, I assume you are of age and free to dispose of your person in ways the law sees fit to allow.”

  “I’m of age,” I said. “Where is the auction block that the merchandise is displayed. And what happens if there is no bid.”

  “Nothing,” Otto grinned. “We give you back to your owners, shake hands and say goodbye. When you get old and droopy you can tell your friends and children, who won’t believe it anyway, that you were once almost chosen for a Cool Girl.”

  Otto handed me his business card. “There’s an address written on the back. It’s an apartment overlooking the Charles that belongs to an improper Bostonian. Ideal for display and photography. If you want to have us take a look and give you our decision, be there tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. If the decision is favorable you can sign the contract and we’ll shoot the pix right away.”

  “Who’s us?” I demanded.

  “Me and Hy and Sy Fleshman, our Cool Boy photographic team.” Otto leered at me. “They guide my thinking and save me from making erratic choices dictated by reasons other than photogenic. By the way I hope you are not having your period. We’ve got to get back to Los Angeles on the Monday plane.”

  “What did he mean by that?” I asked the kids. I was still somewhat in a fog, as Otto departed.

  Sheila giggled. “He’s afraid you’ll arrive wearing a sanitary belt and sanitary pad. Hardly a sex symbol, old girl, by Cool Boy standards. The very thought of such things freeze Cool Boys in their tracks.”

  We argued about Otto’s proposition all the way home to Harrad and into the small hours of the morning. “It’s great for all of you to be so damned agreeable.” I argued. “You are offering your best friend, like a fatted calf, to the wolves. None of you have to bare your blushing body to a lot of panting strangers.” Little did I know that in addition I was going to be poked and pushed and bent and curled into extraordinary positions, (to best reveal the exotic me) as well as stared at from every conceivable angle from floor to the ceiling.

  “You are going to do it for InSix” Jack grinned. “I can’t wait to see professional photographers at work. Just think, Beth, you will be able to contribute a thousand dollars to our education fund. I don’t see why you’re so scary about showing yourself naked. You’re bare-bottom every day in the gym, and right now all you are wearing is Harry’s shirt. So what’s different?”

  I found out the next morning. At the apartment overlooking the Charles, Otto greeted us at the door with a look of dismay. “We only want you, Kid,” he said, putting his arm around me.

  “These are my chaperones,” I said demurely. “They automatically save your reputation in case anything leaks out.”

  Paying no attention to Otto, Stanley, Sheila, Jack, Val and Harry invaded the apartment, admired the phallic drawings on the walls, tried the low-to-the-floor sofas, gasped over the view of the Charles from the picture window, and finally captured the stools in front of long well-stocked bar. “Cheer up Otto, old boy,” Jack said from behind the bar. “We have brought you the Cool Girl to end Cool Girls.”

  “My enthusiasm is ended.” Otto said somewhat disgruntled by this takeover. “Meet Sy and Hy Fleshman.” He pointed to two men who were watching us swarm over the place. “This is our pigeon. She brought all her little friends.”

  Sy smacked his lips. “Let’s see if the second and third acts are as good as the first.”

  “There’s a sense of drama in the disrobing,” Hy explained unnecessarily.

  “Let’s play it cool,” I said. “There are some ground rules. Harry tell him.”

  “It’s like this,” Harry said. “we’ve been looking over some previous pictures and stories on Cool Girls. In the case of Beth, beyond the fact that she goes to college in the Boston area and is a part of the InSix singing act, nothing must appear in Cool Boy concerning her personal life. You’ll have to make that a part of the contract.”

  “We couldn’t care less about Miss Hillyer’s brains,” Otto grinned. “One of our staff writers will explain that our Cool Girl isn’t married, that she likes Beethoven and Mozart quartets, revels in modem jazz, reads Immanuel Kant with her breakfast coffee, cooks a mean cheese fondue in the wee hours of the morning for tall dark men who drive X-KE Jaguars, but sleeps alone a
nd without night clothes. This will be cleared with Miss Hillyer before publication. For the fee, we reserve full rights in perpetuity for all the pictures we take of her.”

  They showed me the bedroom which obviously belonged to a bachelor. If he were married why would he need such a gargantuan bed? I poked around and discovered an extensive wardrobe of men’s clothing. The headboard of the bed however, was the cynosure of the room. It contained bookcases, a radio, a drawer with contraceptives, and numerous illustrated books of erotica, a small refrigerator, television controls to the picture tube which was embedded on the ceiling amidst mirrors. Evidently in case you got bored watching NBC, you could turn it off and watch yourself and companion cavorting; the idea had a certain charm. Since I now had my clothes off I lay on the bed and stared at myself, and forgetting the business I had come for I nearly yelled for Harry to join me. My reverie was interrupted by Otto pounding on the door.

  Cooly, the Cool-Girl, I walked into the living room, naked. Sy and Hy croaked their approval. Otto nodded his head savagely. The kids all banged on their champagne glasses. And me! Darned if I didn’t blush. I could feel the pink heat spread right from my toes. I clutched myself like September Mom and was about to run. I suddenly realized it’s one thing to be naked with other naked people, but it was something else again to be naked with six men and two women all staring at you. I felt like a cow hung on a meat hook while the butchers were deciding which slice would make the tastiest steak.