My first sight of the imposing grey concrete buildings which are Stork Incorp. with their surround of high barbed wire fences, heavily mined on the inside, is almost enough to turn me about in my tracks.  Almost, but not quite. I am determined to meet him, this male who out of Mum's ear-shot and even then still under my breath I sometimes refer to as 'Dad'. As a child all I had to prove his existence was a small, crumpled photograph, torn from the Stork Incorp. catalogue of the year of my birth, but that tiny picture, hidden inside my pillow, heard as many childhood secrets and wiped away as many tears as any flesh and blood parent.  Blood, that is what we share and why without him I feel like I'm only half a person.  I have inherited my mother's hair and eyes but according to our medical records, my blood is my father's.  It's not my head or my heart which aches to know him, it is my blood.  It pumps faster now in growing expectation as my two escorts lead me through countless gates, doors and security scanners and past the windowless nurseries where the few male children reared, are kept.  I wonder about what a male child looks like. but I do not suppose I shall ever have the opportunity of seeing one.  It must have been a strange, strange world before the revolution, when males were allowed to roam free among us.

History has always fascinated me. It was both my favourite subject at school and, as it turned out, the reason for my eventual expulsion.  After many verbal warnings and letters home from the headmistress concerning my wearing of pre-revolution clothing, I finally, rather unwisely, dared to attend an end of term party in a SKIRT!  I was expelled instantly on grounds of  'unacceptable femininity'. Mum raged at me for ruining my chance of a good education and laid the blame for my degeneracy on my father's blood.  This only served to strengthen my resolve to meet him and each week I put a little of my meagre wages aside until I could afford the trip to Stork Incorp.

I am ushered into the waiting room and left by myself. In here at least, the decor is fairly cheerful, a stark contrast to the drab accomodation  blocks I passed on the way. Here, the walls are painted in pastel shades and covered in pictures of smiling baby girls with their proud mothers.  For a moment these photographs remind me of those that are sticky-taped to my bedroom wall at home, except that my photos and posters... I cringe with shame as I admit this... are all of males.  Degenerate I am, like Mum said. It's in my blood. Never-the-less I do find it embarrassing to walk into a second-hand shop, and under the disapproving eye of the proprietress, pick out the faded, torn pictures of rock and film stars from a previous age. Despite my shame and the fact that my purchases are invariably wrapped in brown paper and quickly thrust into my bag by the shrewd shopkeeper; once I reach home, tear off the wrapping and see those handsome male faces staring up at me, the ordeal is made worthwhile.

I have been waiting here for twenty minutes now and growing more nervous by the second.  What shall I say to him?

There is a pile of magazines on the table but they too contain nothing but endless pictures of mothers and their daughters. I wrote to the problem page of a similiar publication to these, a couple of months back, explaining that I was planning on seeing my dad and asking them what I should expect to find. Their reply was most unhelpful -'DON'T DO IT' in capital letters, and informed me that even if I succeeded in meeting him, the outcome would only be a bitter disappointment to me. 'Males aren't like us you know,' they chided and
recommended I send for one of their booklets, report for counselling and take up a physical sport after work. I need to keep calm, but how can I on this, the most important day of my life?  I have a book in my bag. I shall take it out and try and read. It's a romance, my favourite kind of fiction, no longer published of course. I  have covered it in the jacket of a volume entitled 'Advanced Hydraulic Systems, Their Maintenance And Repair', thus sparing myself the pitying looks of my fellow travellers on the journey down. It's by a woman named Jane Austen, the romance that is, not the hydraulics tome.  I believe it was written several centuries before the revolution.  I do not own many modern books or much else that is new, actually.  It's only clothes, books and C.D.s etc. from the pre-revolution years which find their way into my collections.  Most of these things can be obtained inexpensively because no-one else seems at all interested in the past.  Mum still finds my wearing of feminine clothes and shoes very hard to accept, but her reaction is mild compared with the fury I provoke when walking around our small town, dressed in all my finery.  The very first time I plucked up the courage to venture out in a DRESS and a pair of SLINGBACKS, the abuse and the spittle fairly flew in my direction, until I was dragged home in disgrace by a friend of ours.  That was when I still had friends.

Everyone will become used to the way I look in time.  They will have to as I have no intention of changing for their benefit.  Why should something which feels so normal and natural to me, provoke so much anger and hysteria?  I have had my face badly scratched twice already this year and two of my best outfits have been ripped from my back, but it only makes me more determined.  I just plaster my pre-revolution cosmetics on thick to hide my injuries, pile my long hair high with glittery combs and bows, clip on a pair of dangling diamante earrings to complete the effect and once again take my life in my hands on the street.  Never will I be tempted to trade my glamour and femininity for the drab uniform of overalls, sweater, laced up boots and cropped hair, worn universally by everyone else, young or old.  I am proud that degeneracy is in my blood.  I am going to thank my father for giving me this, the greatest gift of all.

The only word I can think of to describe what has drawn me here to finally meet my father, is an old fashioned term no longer used - LOVE.  I love him although I have never met him and 1 hope that once he knows who I am, he will love me.  Love must be the thing which fills up that cold, empty space inside of a person. When I look at my posters and pictures of males, I feel moved in some way.  Is that love too?  It must of been pretty important once.  Pre-revolution poets filled books with poems about it and most of the songs on my antique C.D.s mention the word as well.  I cannot see any of these songs of love making todays top twenty.  Nowadays almost every song written is about a woman's aspirations or career - either how well she is doing or how well she would like to be doing at her job.  I work as a plumber.  It was Mum's idea after the school expelled me.  She sees it as a good and honest trade  and turns a deaf ear to my complaints that it ruins my frocks.  I was startled to read somewhere the other day that there used to be male plumbers too in the old days.  Mum says that it cannot be true because it is a skilled job and if males had been responsible for our sinks and toilets the whole planet would have been flooded with sewage in no time.  It does make you think.  At school we were taught that males have only a limited intelligence and are all dangerous and destructive.  Apparently they began to threaten both the survival of womankind and of the planet itself, hence the revolution.

My escorts still have not returned.  Do you suppose they can have forgotten me? I must say that the women in this Jane Austen's novel seem to be very taken with the charms of the males in the story.  These males do not act like they are dangerous at all and the way she has written it, they seem to be almost as intelligent as the women.  I am
also reminded of that mysterious thing called SEX.  Jane Austen does not mention it at all but it must of existed because I own some books where it crops up on every other page.  The authors themselves do not agree about it though.  Some say that it's wicked and others enthuse about how wonderful it is.  I have always had a sneaking suspicion that some books were in fact written by males.  When I mentioned this to a school mistress however, I was ridiculed in front of the whole class.  There is also the subject of child-birth, but I tend to skip those sections of a story because the thought nauseates me.  Thank goodness the advancement of science has delivered us from that torture. I am heartily glad I didn't develop inside my mother's body and come into the world in a pool of gore.  It is too horrible to think about.

At last I can hear the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.  My escorts are returning to collect me and take me to see HIM! I can hide my book inside a different cover but I cannot hide my feelings.  I am coughing and sweating - will it arouse their suspicions, or are the women who come here to choose a father for their children, usually nervous like this?  If my deception is discovered I may be thrown back out into the street without seeing him or I may even be arrested.  That does not scare me as much as the prospect of meeting Dad, even though it is something I have waited for, for the majority of my life.  Will we be like strangers to each other?  After all, we share nothing but blood.  There is a warmth down deep inside of me, in my blood.  Perhaps there is a similar warmth in him and at the sound of my voice it will kindle into love.  I wonder if he will still be recognisable as the male in my photograph, taken nearly nineteen years ago.  Unfortunately, I will be behind mirrored glass so that although I will be able to see him clearly, he will not be able to view his daughter.  This is a precaution by Stork Incorp. to 'protect the woman's anonymity and to avoid causing undue disturbance to the controlled daily life patterns of our males'.  At least we will be able to speak to each other.  This is allowed so that those women looking for a male with a higher than average I.Q. rather than a specimen with mere physical beauty, may question the males at length though it's stressed in the publicity material that the males might well choose not to answer. I sit down in the chair provided and look through the glass into the opposite room, where my father will soon enter.  The escorts leave me, the door in the room beyond opens and here he is!  It is him!  Yes it is; older natually, a few lines on the handsome face, a sprinkle of grey in the thick brown hair, but it is unmistakably the face which has looked out at me from that torn piece of paper, these past eighteen years.  DAD!

"Hello" I stammer.  He sits down in a chair but doesn't try to stare in the direction from which my voice is coming, out of habit I suppose.  He has never had the opportunity to view one of his visitors and probably never will.  Of course I do not interest him - not yet, not until my fumbling tongue can explain our special bond. Our bond of blood.

"I have come here for a very special reason..."  He is not reacting to my words.  An awful thought has just struck me. Suppose he is not English and cannot understand me.  Some males are imported from abroad to give a wider choice and variety.  I must put the thought out of my head.  I must carry on now I have come this far. "Hello Dad, yes that's what you are, you are my father."  He jumps up out of the chair.  He understands! "I love you, Dad and I've missed you all of my..."   He has turned away from me.  He is pushing a button on the wall. What does that mean?  I cannot see his face to see how he is taking my news.  "Dad!  Dad!"  He is not listening to me. He is at the back of the room now. He is hammering on the door by which he came in.  He is pounding on his door, but it's my door which flies open.  My escorts are back and with them two huge, grim-looking women.  "Dad, what's happening?  What's going on?  Do they treat you well in here?  WHY WON'T YOU SPEAK TO ME?"

The heavy gates slam shut behind me, my hands are nursing my head where it cracked against the pavement. Lifting my face from my hands, I see first the barbed wire barricade around Stork Incorp., and then upon my fingers I see my blood, our blood, beginning to collect and to drip down the front of my dress.

The end.

 Copyright (c) 1992 Judy Upton