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Chapter 9: More About Sex

This place is sprawling out. There are hundreds of construction workers now. Building is going on further and further away from our offices. It takes an hour-long bicycle ride to get to the outskirts of it where the ranching begins, and I don’t know how far the ranching areas stretch.

The buildings aren’t even buildings, they are just overhead shelters. I guess they figure on putting on walls and some kind of heating arrangements before winter. Every train brings more “clients” than we can handle. They finally have some professional counselors and nurses on site, but their quarters aren’t much better than the shelters where the addicts lie around. My own quarters haven’t improved at all. The office, with the windows open all the time, isn’t much more than a shelter.

Everywhere I go, it’s too hot. When I first arrived, I used to walk around a little bit at night just to remind myself that “cool” isn’t just a word. Now, with dope addicts everywhere, I’m afraid of the dark. I think they’re going to put bars on the windows for all of the staff. The newer staff members lock themselves up tight every night, including closing all the windows, so they must be nearly suffocating. Funny thing is, the counselors, who one would think would be more sympathetic than anybody toward the dopers, seem to be the most scared. That tells me something.

Town people don’t seem to come over here at all, except to complain.
The male population around here is way way higher than the female. That leads me to what I really want to talk about. First, here’s what Commissioner Torres told me. I wish he’d said something else.

“Do I want to make love to you? Of course. I think you’d find, if you asked around, that virtually every man here, and a lot of the women, would drop their pants for you at the slightest hint that they were going to get away with it. It’s a biological necessity that is barely curbed by centuries of civilization and a few restrictive laws. The target of most of our urges is young women of child-bearing age just like you.

‘So yes, the answer is yes, I do want to make love to you. Almost everybody does. Not so long ago, young women like you were my playthings. I barely even knew the women I had sex with. They thought I was famous or important, and I thought they were available. That was all it took.

‘Now, this is going to sound patronizing and I guess it is patronizing, but I don’t plan to do anything about my urges concerning you, July Eason. It would complicate my life when I don’t think I could stand any more complications. I told you this before. I don’t expect you to understand it and if you want to think I’m a cruel bastard it will just have to be that way.

‘I already told you that my so-called revolutionary heroism is completely phony, so you shouldn’t consider me any more interesting than any of these randy bucks around here, and just about any of them would jump your bones if they could. So look around, but look somewhere else.”

So the data is now in about Commissioner Leo Torres. He really is a cruel bastard.

I’ve been wondering, though, if he was right when he said a lot of people would have sex with me if they could. I decided to find out.

It was kind of like designing an on-line survey. I worked on my question until I thought I had it just about right to find out just what I wanted to know. I ask, “This is a question and not an invitation. Do you want to have sex with me?”

I’m amazed at the emotions I generate from people. They sputter and guffaw, they chortle and wheeze, they cough and look around, but, so far, Commissioner Torres is the only one to actually answer me straight out.

But none of them said no. They said everything else, but not “no.” Every male respondent, invariably, tried to drag out the conversation and take it in a more intimate direction.

“What do you mean?” “Do you mean now?” “Let’s talk about it.” Etc etc etc. I guess a more traditional approach would have brought them out, but then I never wanted to bring them out. I just wanted to know the answer to my question, and I think I know what it is. I think Commissioner Torres was right. They might not know how to say it when I confront them outright, but the men I’ve asked, Board Directors, male counselors, construction workers, farmers and dope addicts, they want to fuck me.

The women I’ve asked aren’t really, deep down, much different. In the interest of scientific reliability, I ask them the exact same question that I asked the men. They generally start with a negative response, but they don’t close off the topic with a simple “no.” Like the men, they try to find out a little bit more, and they try to move the conversation in an intimate direction. They’re just more subtle about it.

--July Eason, Project Archivist

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