Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Part Thirty-Two, Chapter Six - This Chapter is Part of the Reason Why People Try to Ban This Book

This chapter is twelve pages long.  It feels much longer.

The room's other door opens, admitting a thirty-something women with frizzy blonde hair who "wasn't very pretty but she certainly was making the most of what she had."  She coos and claps her hands excitedly upon seeing Gris (who is, need I remind you, still naked and chained to the bed), thanks Miss Pinch profusely for this gift, and starts making out with the other woman.

"A lesbian and her 'wife!'" Gris dubs them.  So wait, Miss Pinch is the lesbian, but Candy isn't?  And why would a homosexual couple necessarily adopt traditional heterosexual gender roles, with one being "butch" and the other girlie?  I'll just put this comment down to the 80's or something.

The newcomer Candy takes a closer look at him, before declaring that Gris "isn't very big, is he?"  And God help us all, but this is actually a plot point.  This will co... pop up... this will be addressed again later.  "This" being Gris' genitals.

Gris shouts for someone to take those rattraps off his hands, Miss Pinch asks if Candy wants to do it but her partner insists she could never be so "unfaithful" to her as to touch a man, so it's Miss Pinch who starts to take the trap off Gris' left hand "in the most painful way possible."  Gris screams, much to the girls' delight.

"Ah," said Candy.  "Ah, dear Pinchy.  Kiss me!"  Her eyes were shining.

Miss Pinch kissed her.  Then she came back and finished the left hand with maximum agony.  I screamed myself hoarse!

Candy had sat down on a sofa.  She was panting.  Her mouth was wet.  Her knees were wide apart.  She was beckoning urgently to Miss Pinch.

Miss Pinch grabbed her, crushed her to her flat chest and then carried her to the other room and slammed the door shut with her heel.

Through the red haze of agony from my right hand, I could hear urgent beggings in the next room.  Then little moans.  Then groans of ecstasy.  Minutes.  And then a gasping shriek!

What was going on in there?

Good question, Gris.  What could those lesbians, i.e. females who are sexually attracted to other females, possibly be doing in the next room that involves groans of ecstasy?  What could they have left to do after panting with excitement and making out with each other?  Are they skipping rope?  Making cupcakes?  Reading comic books?  Knitting?  Planning their next vacation?  Doing taxes?  It's a frickin' mystery!

The two eventually return, Candy down to her nightdress, Pinchy still in her coat and shirt but sans pants, both panting and red-faced.  Miss Pinch gets a beer out of an iron maiden serving as a fridge (where do you buy those these days?), and Gris demands that she take the other trap off.  At Candy's urging, Miss Pinch tells the Story.

It is about to get very, very stupid.

Indulgently, Miss Pinch said "All Rockecenter's companies have classes in Psychiatric Birth Control.  It's vital, you understand, to reduce the world's population.  They breed like rats.  And they're all riffraff.  They outstrip the world's food supply which has to be reduced so food prices will stay up and Rockecenter's friends can make a profit.  And, of course, that is the name of the game."

I guess "they" here is "everyone on the planet," not a specific ethnic minority or anything.  And the best way to keep food prices high isn't to pad them with "transportation costs" incorporating the high price of fuel (which Rockecenter can set), or to just set the prices high and expect people to pay them because you and all the other suppliers are in cahoots, or to simply sabotage your own efforts to produce food to keep supply low, or even to encourage overpopulation so there's more demand for a limited supply of food.  No, the best way to keep food prices high is to reduce demand by reducing the population.

She took a thirsty guzzle of her beer and, without bothering to wipe off the mustache, continued learnedly.  "Birth control requires more than pills and besides, I.G. Barben has no monopoly on them and there are competitors.  So the answer to controlling world population is homosexuality.  Now if everyone were a homosexual--the men gays and the women lesbians--then there's no more population problem at all.  The great work begun by the Rockecenters decades ago is just now coming into its own.  Birth control training is now being introduced even into kindergartens.  The competitors of Barben will go broke, as who will need the pills?  There will be no mass meetings against abortion and even abortion is going out of use.  The trend is overwhelmingly towards universal homosexuality."

Yes, rather than work to expand I.G. Barben's business and attain a monopoly on birth control pills, or rather than simply being happy with its market share, the most sensible thing to do is to retire birth control products altogether and turn everyone gay, an undertaking that will certainly require a monumental investment of time and money and constant maintenance to keep the program going, an investment that could very well outstrip any profits to be made from higher food prices resulting from reducing the number of customers trying to buy your produce which, as I said before, doesn't make any sense. 

"The Psychiatric Birth Control classes are wonderful.  They were developed by Dr. Frybrain, the head of the International Psychiatric Association, on a special Rockecenter grant.  And the Rockecenters, as you know, have always controlled psychiatry and psychology.  What used to be called 'normal' sex is the real sex crime.  And what used to be called 'sex crimes' are now normal.  So if every student becomes dedicated, as psychiatrists are, to making all the perverts and sadists and homosexuals they can, then the long-term Rockecenter goal of shrinking world population will become a fact.  

And once again we run into Hubbard's greatest... one of Hubbard's great flaws as a writer: the incoherence of his setting and the lack of verisimilitude.

An energy monopoly's plan to turn the world gay, starting at kindergarten, is kind of a big deal.  It would have a huge impact on society - even assuming that somehow all resistance to the program gets cowed, you'd have the shockwaves of such a sudden drastic change in the planet's sexual orientation.  It would be visible, there would be new gay couples everywhere, straight couples feeling somewhat out of place, a whole shift in marketing as gender values were thrown through the blender, a media campaign to introduce and reinforce the new "gay is good" message... the world would be changing before our eyes.

Except it hasn't.  This is the first we've heard of Psychiatric Birth Control, and we've been on this planet for three books!  Nobody else has so much as mentioned this plan, much less a sudden surge in the gay community.  Heller hasn't been ordered to attend Gay Seminar 1010 for his freshman year.  Bang-Bang isn't hounded by the Rockecenter Gay Police for liking boobies.  Nobody's tried to shut down the Gracious Palms for practicing sexual deviancy, i.e. heterosexual relations.  Mr. Bury, Rockecenter's right-hand man, is still married to a woman.  Gris hasn't had to attend Psychiatric Birth Control classes as part of his employee orientation.  The closest thing to it was Mary's mention of psychiatrists turning women into prostitutes at the beginning of book two, a claim that also has not been reflected in the story since then.

In short, there is no indication that the Great Gay Conspiracy being described in this chapter is anything more than Miss Pinch and Candy's shared delusion.  It does not exist outside this chapter.  Its presence cannot be felt in the greater story.

Also, let me point out a fatal flaw in this crackpot plan - just because people are gay doesn't mean they don't want to have children.  Lesbians find sperm donors.  Gay couples adopt or get surrogate mothers.  I guess Rockecenter is going to have to outlaw pregnancy period, a hugely controversial move which would probably be aided by the same birth control practices he's abandoning in favor of Psychiatric Birth Control good god this is a mobius strip of stupidity.

But there you have it.  Homosexuality isn't the result of being born a certain way, or a lifestyle choice, it's something psychiatry does to you.  Rockecenter is not only crazy, but stupid enough to want to wipe out all his potential customers with a badly-thought-out master plan, leaving him with no way to make more money, nothing to spend it on, and nothing to rule.  As far as chapters go this one isn't even close to being finished damn it damn it damn it.

"So we are expected to make at least one man a pervert.  And that's where you come in, Inkswitch."

"I won't cooperate!" I screamed.  "Take off this Gods (bleeped) second trap!"

Miss Pinch looked at Candy.  "How do you feel, dear?  Ready?"

"Oh, yes," trilled Candy.

And the torture-porn continues.  Miss Pinch wrenches the remaining rat-trap around with Gris' fingers in it, while Candy get so excited by the screaming that she's panting and bouncing in her seat.  Miss Pinch soon whisks her away to the other room, where Gris once again listens to groans and moans and shrieks of pleasure while being unable to imagine what the pair of masochistic lesbians might be doing in there that gets them so hot and sticky.

This time when the women emerge they're "practically naked," with no elaboration on what's keeping them from full nudity, so enjoy that little mystery.  There's a lot of smeared lipstick and frazzled hair as they get another pair of beers.  Candy takes hers and holds it "against her (bleep)," while Miss Pinch shares her drink with Candy via some kinky "mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."  Then they bust out the marijuana, and while Candy lights up Pinchy explains to Gris that she only does Big H, bringing up the Heroin Subplot from two books ago that has largely sat forgotten in the backseat.  She also accuses Candy's psychologist of trying to get her on cocaine so he can sleep with her, proving that not only is the Psychiatric Birth Control plan not being effectively administered, but it's being undermined by its own disciples. 

Miss Pinch belatedly makes introductions.  Candy's full name is Miss Candy Licorice, and she is "not pleased" to meet Mr. Inkswitch.  Then it's time for some music.

Miss Pinch hurriedly raced over and opened up a casket.  It was a stereo.  She put on a record.

A low sound filled the room.  It was coming from the mouths of the two devil masks on either side of a brick fireplace evidently used for heating torture tongs.

Wagner!  One of his more stern, foreboding symphonic works.

Candy listened for a while.  Then she began to massage her very ample breasts.  The nipples began to stand up.

"Oh Pinchy," she said, "would you think me forward if I said it's time we really began to prepare for the evening's sex?"

This involves Miss Pinch hitting Gris in various delicate places with a fourteen-inch truncheon.  Gris assures us that "it stung!"  Eventually Miss Pinch resorts to just punching Gris, until Candy whimpers for her to take her now and the two jump into the next room for more off-screen sapphic adventures.  They return and have more beer and joints, Miss Pinch berates Gris' lustful eyes, the music switches to Night on Bald Mountain, more truncheons, Gris passes out, he wakes up, Wagner is done so Pinchy switches to a funeral dirge, Miss Pinch finds an even bigger truncheon, and the chapter just won't end.

Gris wakes back up.  Candy is out and covered with lipstick doodles.  Miss Pinch explains a few things about Gris' money - she didn't pay off the security chief, who is an honest drug pusher.  Rather, Miss Pinch used a hidden camera and fingerprint scanner to record Gris' identity whenever he made a withdrawal, regardless of what he signed the forms with, a system her predecessor taught her and one that Rockecenter doesn't know about.  She now has records of all Gris' semi-official embezzlement to report to the IRS if he speaks out, putting him completely in her power.  Pinchy showers Gris' naked, beaten body with the money she took, before stuffing it all in a safe.  She gives him a hundred dollar bill to cover his taxi fare - both home tonight and back to her dungeon tomorrow night - and suggests that she might part with more of the haul later.  Oh, and there's a hidden camera recording everything so he can't murder her.  Guess she and Candy don't mind putting on a show.

So Miss Pinch shows Gris out, but not without some parting words.

She opened the front door and wrought-iron gate.  She stood there, naked and thin-lipped in the icy blast.  "The first time you came to my window, Inkswitch, I told you to beat it.  I didn't think you'd last.  But due to Psychiatric Birth Control, all the males around here lately have turned into gays

Reader to author: PROVE IT!

to help cut down world population.  And I refuse to risk the danger of separating two dear gays.  So you're better than nothing, Inkswitch.  Although not much.  So I will see you right here tomorrow night.  It's better than three years in a Federal pen.  The homos there would murder you.  Don't be late."

Gris staggers home, and finally, finally the chapter ends.  A chapter containing Hubbard's forays into erotica, half-baked evil schemes, insistence that things are happening that aren't supported by the rest of the story, psycho lesbians, torture, revelations that mental therapy is trying to turn us all gay, bad economics, and blackmail.

And there's more to come.


Back to Chapter Five

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