Working title "The Gender Barrier", EXTREMELY rough draft

Sitting. Sitting. Sitting here. Right here. In the chair. Staring into space. How long have I been sitting? Here in the chair, that is. Not long. Or maybe very long. A long time indeed. The longest. No, longer. Or perhaps not. Maybe it hasn't been long. Sitting here in the chair. Not long at all. Very briefly in fact. Ten minutes. Twent minutes. Three hours. How long have I been sitting here, in the chair?

No, better: How long have I wanted to do something else? Well that would be the entire course of my life. I've never wanted to do this, never wanted to live around here. Too boring. Too uptight. Not a good place to live at all, really. But I've been here for a long time. A long time indeed. Seventeen years is a long time, I think. Nothing to do but sit and think really. Well, I could write, like all the artsy kids. Or I could play sports like the athletic types. I could access the intranet and talk to some locals. Nah, I'd rather sit here. Here in the chair. Sit here and think for hours. So what am I thinking about? How about this place where I live; this terrible little town, with it's giant fence and it's conservative notions.

See, my little town, out in the middle of nowhere, works a little differently than most. The entire town is seperated by sex; girls on one side, boys on the other. It would be a lot like gym class to someone in a normal town, only all the time. I don't really understand the legality of the whole thing, but a generation or two ago, there was a conservative revival, and people started going to church. Soon enough, certain people in the church became annoyed with all the "trouble" the high school kids were getting into with each other. That is to say, the boys and girls were "pairing off", which is of course to say they were fucking. They took the complaint pretty high up I guess, and whatever happened next is a bit too technical for me. All I know is, a highly guarded fence was built between the two halves of the town. Wherever there isn't a fence, there's a guard. Nobody can even get out of the town without going through a checkpoint.

Of course, getting out of the town really isn't that hard. If you're an adult, at any rate. Minors aren't allowed out without adult supervision, and just my luck, my father never wants to go anywhere. Hm, my father...

See, the only reason I exist in the first place is my father was one of the "lucky ones," as we call them. Every year, late in the spring, all the boys from the age of eighteen to thirty "enlist." They all take an aptitude test, get checked in for a physical and are then compared based on the results. The best of the best, a lucky twenty, get chosen based on their intelligence, physical fitness and fertility. They get put through a short sex ed. course, and then are teamed up with twenty women from "Pussyside." The men and the women pair off in whatever two person combination they see fit, and they become sexual partners for as long as it takes for the woman to concieve. A few romance options are available, of course; the facility they meet at is perched on a hill which overlooks the entire town. Built into the facility is a games room, a chapel, and a gorgeous restaraunt with a breathtaking window view of the entire town. Just imagine it: a candlelit dinner between the two of you, young lovers just meeting, sitting in the comfiest booth ever made, looking out at all the tiny little houses, the lights twinkling like stars built into the ground, and the actual stars up in the sky twinkling even brighter. Hearts racing, palms sweating, blood flowing to the nether regions, all that good stuff. Then comes dinner, hand-holding, a bit of petting if you're particularly bold. Anybody would be tearing the sheets apart after that. The Sex Commitee must have realized this, hence why the building was designed in the first place. Of course they built a similar (if cheaper feeling) facility down below the hill, about a half mile away from the "funk palace" as the less mature of us call it.

Every week, we all meet at that facility, male or female, and sit through a sermon, or maybe play some video games or some ping pong or something. We're always under watchful eye, so nobody's ever made more than a lazy attempt at sneaking off for a smoke or a shag or anything. The boys and the girls don't actually get along much, surprisingly. Some of the more friendly guys might wander over to the girls on occassion and try to entertain them, and sometimes they'll keep them around for a while, but when the day is over, we all go home and forget about our temporary truce. I guess the lack of sex doesn't help.

Huh? Oh yeah. I'm still sitting in this chair. I wasn't even staring off into the distance this time; I've actually closed my eyes, and was apparently drifting off to sleep. So now I'm awake. I'm looking around with sudden clarity, infinitely more aware of my surroundings before. TV hanging on the wall, tuned to the local public access station, playing some recorded sermon from a sunday long past. "Jesus' words ring truer today than they ever have before. In this time, we have abolished another form of sin: the sin of the flesh. With God's guidance w-" I grab the remote and click it off. It's interesting the first time, but this is a rerun. I've seen this exact sermon at least thirty times, a few times even spoken before a live audience. I only had to listen to a few seconds to recognize it; that's how familiar I am with it.

I swivel the chair around and around, making myself dizzy to fight the boredom and the insomnia. I see a yellow lamp in the corner, over on the end table by my still-made bed. I see my desk, a notebook propped open, yet nothing written down. My mind begins to synchronize with the motion, and the world becomes a nauseous blur to me. I see my bedroom door closed, and I see the lightswitch turned on, and I see my dresser over in the opposite corner, and I see my closet open, a small pile of clothes laying in front of the door, and I see my computer on the other end of the desktop, and I see the curtains half open, and I see a man in a black suit chilling out in my doorway. I make another revolution before I realize what I saw. Guy in a black suit and red tie by my door. Who the fuck is he?

Oh yeah. Dad has company. That's right. What was his name? "Jeff" I think. Right, it was definitely Jeff. How does dad know him? Oh, I don't think he told me. Well whatever. He's looking at me. What does he want?

"Hey kiddo. Jakob right? Let's have a chat."