"Tell me if this is OK," Blanca insisted to a mildly distracted Ashanta.
"Say what?" Ashanta asked. Turning her attention away from the bottomless waiter just then leaning over the bar several feet from their booth, the bright-eyed girl feigned renewed attention.
"You can't be looking at him," Blanca cautioned. "Gawking at males is illegal, especially when they are not wearing pants."
Ashanta, rolling her eyes, reluctantly reassigned her gaze to reality, which meant back to Blanca.
"I don't get why we can't look," Ashanta grumbled. "What's the harm? Women used to stare at people who identified as males all the time, did other things too."
"That was in the past, Ashanta," Blanca curtly responded. "It was before women were free of all that relationship stuff. Now pay attention. I need to read you the start of my paper. It's due Monday. Tell me if my introduction, ya know, if it makes sense."
Ashanta motioned her to continue, but, employing her standard display of boredom, she leaned forward, yawned, and hunched her narrow shoulders in a statement of courteous indifference.
It is Friday, and the women are doing what they habitually do at the close of a busy week, stopping for cocktails at Chumley's, New York's premier speakeasy. Speakeasies, unheard of since the Jazz Age, are suddenly everywhere, their reappearance resulting from the passage of the 29th Amendment.
"OK," Blanca resumed, "It starts with, ya know, with some background on how the 'cum manifesto' ever saw the light of day. Then, I point out how women, ya know, even with all their education and stuff, how they still believe that weird study's creepy conclusion. Remember I told you about the Albany Study?"
"I remember. And I half-believe it too," Ashanta, matter-of-factly, admitted. Blanca, pursing her lips and leering dismissively, flipped the pages of her draft.
"What's the title?" Ashanta, glancing at the waiter again, indifferently asked.
"It's called '2032: Feminism's Triumph over the Male Vote.' Are you sure you're listening?" A nodding Ashanta faked attention, prompting her friend to continue. "Anyway, here goes:
'The 29th Amendment,' Blanca began, "'coming on the heels of the 28th, which declared the male vote illegal, drew overwhelming support from the electorate. The 29th reads as follows:
--The generation, sale, direct transfer (from persons identifying as male to persons identifying as female) or transportation of human semen within the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof is hereby prohibited' " --
Pausing, Blanca looked up to double-check on her girlfriend, who, amazingly, appeared attentive, prompting her to continue:
"'Part 1 - 'EXPOSING THE MYTH THAT SEMEN AFFECTS FEMALE EMOTION -
No one predicted it,' " she began, "'No one appreciated that an off-the-wall research study would be accepted as factual, if only by a minority of foolish women still clinging to the old ways.'
"See what I'm saying, Ashanta?" Blanca digressed, "I'm, ya know, I'm saying people still buy into this shit."
"I know what you're saying, Blanca," Ashanta aloofly maintained. "But it's boring. I learned about cum in fourth-grade Sex-Ed. Now I'm in college! And guess what? Of all the girls in my dorm, I'm the only one who has ever seen semen, let alone tasted it.
Even to get pregnant, look at what they make us do? We go to boring state-run labs where sperm is under boring lock and key. Conception happens in boring Petri dishes through the wonders of boring science! It's all so fucking B...O...R...I...N...G!
"Don't you get it? Girls want the real thing! Even Chumley's, this...this speakeasy; it's a pacifier for bored-stiff women...an illegal one at that! If the Thought Police catch us here, we'll get twittered to death and..."
"...well, ya know, boring or not, that's how it's done, girlfriend," an irritated Blanca broke in. "I need my feminist studies degree, and rocking the college boat isn't high on this girl's list! No way I'm handing in a paper that bucks the system. I live by one rule: 'cooperate to graduate.'"
Ashanta, unmoved, averted her eyes, her attention, wandering over the speakeasy's rapidly swelling assembly in search of their server, the tall, handsome Kenvante Sparks, about whose cock she obsessed.
Not seeing him, she assumed the worst—that he was taking his break before the nightspot filled to the brim with bored, irritating women, women she assumed found their way here in response to the same carnal craving she craved.
"Ashanta!" Blanca suddenly snapped. "HELLOOOOOO...I'm over here! PAY ATTENTION! Come on, will you? I need your opinion before I hand in this assignment and get a fucking 'F.'"
Ashanta, once again responding to her friend's pleadings, temporarily suspended her visual search. Instead, her eyes returned to Blanca, who continued reading. "'Only anti-feminists accept the Albany Study as scientific, and even today, few women stand by its shameful verdict.
"'Initially, the work of sexual response researchers Gallup and Burch, the 'Albany Study,' determined that exposure to semen affects mood—women's mood. By insinuation, it even makes the point that females have a right to perform their own extractions of the off-limits male bodily fluid.