The Sisterhood of Philip
Weird fiction piece by Clark Humphrey
6/10/93
“Ya Gotta Meet This Guy!” was the first thing Julie told Bonita as they sat at the college cafeteria. “No, better yet — Ya Gotta Fuck This Guy! I just spent the most amazing 11 hours with him. Trust me: he’s the best that ever was.”
Julie, you must understand, was not into promiscuity under normal circumstances. She was certainly not into that catch phrase from 1986 talk shows, “man sharing.” But, as she told Bonita, “this is something special. And when you get something really, really special in your life, well my mommy always told me to share with my friends. You are my friend, aren’t you?” Bonita nodded silently, not knowing what to make of her friends aberrant behavior, both the behavior she’s displaying now and that she’s describing from the previous night.
“You know how some men smell like warmed-over antipersperant, and some smell like the carcass of a dead game animal? This guy, I mean THIS GUY smells like heaven. A dark, mysterious, cinnamon- and ginger-tinted heaven.
“He’s got muscle definition, but not so bulging that it’s self indulgent. He’s got smooth legs with just the right wisps of hair. His butt: to die for! He’s not long, but he is thick and he knows how to steer.
“His eyes are like wading pools, refreshing and inviting but not too deep. His smile is small and subtle, but completely unfaked. Without saying much of anything, he makes you feel totally welcome without being pushy about it at all. He never forces anything on you, not even a joke. He makes YOU want HIM. And believe me, you will.
“He just came here from some out of state college. He says he was kicked out of there, but he won’t say exactly why. He mumbled something about a scandal with a couple of female department heads that put a wrench into the office politics over there, or something like that. I didn’t want to ask any more about it. Hell, girlfriend, I didn’t want any more talking to go on.
“So we did it a few times slowly, on the bed, just to warm up. Then came the main course: on the wall, in the shower, on the kitchen counter — ever had a blow job with strawberry jam on it? Two great tastes that taste great together, hon! And on the couch, and on the Soloflex — there are some positions that that’s the exact right height for — I tell you there’s nothing he didn’t do for me. He lapped me up like a cat at one point, just like a cat.
“So, you’re not doing anything tonight, are you? Didn’t think so. Meet me at the College Inn at 7, then I’ll walk you to his apartment. And get a catnap beforehand if you can; you won’t be sleeping tonight, friend!”
Bonita usually deferred to Julie’s crackpot ideas, out of a lack of anything better to do. It was Bonita who went along on Julie’s leafleting drive to protest the cancellation of a minor elective class. It was Bonita who club-hopped beside Julie on her quest for the ultimate good time.
Now, Bonita was being led by Julie into a man’s arms. They rang the apartment doorbell at precisely the appointed hour. Philip answered the door in a modest sweater and black jeans. Julie embraced him passionately. Before Bonita could note any words being spoken, Julie nudged her into the embrace. Philip took turns kissing and caressing each woman. Fifteen minutes later she volunteered to undress herself before him, to the tune of the Cocteau Twins in the CD player. Bonita found it unusually easy to suppress the voice of sensibility in her head, the voice that usually stopped her from doing anything too stupid. She mentally ordered her inner voice to shut up and think of England.
When she searched her head for her inner voice sometime the next morning, it had apparently decided to take a permanent vacation. She was alone with herself, and with Philip and Julie. With no alcohol in her system, she clearly rememberd every act she’d submitted to, every act she later initiated. She now felt as if a different set of muscles had just been painlessly strung onto her bones. She was stronger, more self-assured. She breathed differently. She walked differently. She smelled like Philip; Julie was right, he did smell like heaven. She even seemed to have lost her far-sightedness; she could read the coffeemaker instructions without her contacts, wherever the hell they were now.
Most mornings before this, she stared out at an uncertain world with uncertain goals. Today, as her brain zeroed in while her body cried for rest, her agenda was simple: attend her morning classes, rest, do as little homework as she could get away with, rest some more, bring a change of clothes and makeup kit back here.
After several nights of this, a regular schedule emerged. Bonita took three two-hour naps a day: after her morning classes, after her afternoon classes, and after her study time. Study time quickly turned from “how much can I accomplish?” to “what do I have to do to pass?” Weekends were made for laundry, shopping, more sleep, and more sex. She stopped drinking. She adopted an athlete’s diet: low fat, hi carbs, quick energy. Movies and concerts meant nothing to her anymore. Recorded music was something you played to accompany sex (and Bonita never deluded herself that this was love or intimacy or anything but sex).
Gossip spreads quickly on campus, and soon everybody knew that Bonita and Julie were screwing the same guy. Bonita’s lesbian friends encouraged her to just shack up with Julie, to literally “cut out the middleman.” Bonita liked Julie but didn’t see a reason to stop being opposite poles, transmitting energy through the conduit that was Philip.
After three or four weeks of this, Bonita developed a thirst for novelty. Julie was still the better saleswoman, so Bonita asked Julie to recruit more members for their sisterhood. Two nights later, a poli-sci major named Charlotte arrived in a slight disguise (wig, different clothes and purse than her normal wardrobe); she said there must be absolutely no gossip about what she was about to do, in case it came back to jeopardize her run for the U.S. Senate in 2008. By her third night sharing Philip, Charlotte dropped all such secrecy. By her ninth night, she was starting to reconsider whether staying in school was worth the bother.
Julie and Charlotte recruited more sisters, while Bonita spent her non-class days tending to Philip and the apartment. Philip, cute nonthreatening guy that he was, agreed to every condition of the arrangement as drawn up by Bonita. She coached and spotted him in 45 minutes of weight training and Soloflex exercises daily, to maintain his muscle tone within his newly-housebound lifestyle. She forbade him from drinking, smoking or fraternizing with women not brought into the apartment by Bonita or Julie. Bonita watched over his diet, bought his clothes and CDs.
By the end of the quarter there were nine members in the sisterhood with a tenth woman seriously thinking about it. They took turns with Philip, one to three at a time, according to a schedule Bonita drew up at the beginning of each week. The sisters maintained their own disciplines. They gave up pot, booze and junk food. They never wore perfume or any makeup other than lipstick (Philip could smell really weird after several women). Condoms and contraceptives were, of course, mandatory, and were handled as sacred objects. The sisters dropped their boyfriends and all extracurricular activities. Those who could afford to quit after-school jobs did. Some quit school; the others rushed through their work in between Philip appointments.
Philip dropped out of school and stopped going to his afternoon job. The sisters pitched in to pay his rent and living expenses.
Charlotte found a large rundown house out in Ballard that the sisters could rent together. The sisterhood was officially divided into two classes: the five core members who moved into the house with Philip, and the (by now) seven junior members who stayed there several nights a week but maintained their own homes. The junior members accused the core members of scheduling most of the time with Philip for themselves. The core members accused the junior members of being insufficiently committed to the arrangement. Each camp accused the other of not doing their fair share of household upkeep.
Philip, who never had a say in anything, wisely stayed out of the arguments. He told every woman who straddled him that he loved all of them equally, and that they should resolve their differences among themselves. He just stayed in the house and gratefully serviced the women who were brought to him. If he had any had any clue about how to keep his charmed situation from collapsing, he didn’t show it.
By the second month in the house, it became clear that the sisterhood was falling apart. The arrangements were still too informal. Bonita drew up a charter to incorporate the sisterhood as a nonprofit organization “devoted to promoting the self-fulfillment of women.” The eleven members (Charlotte dropped out) were charged dues according to a complex formula based on their resident/nonresident status and their degree of Philip access (time per week, alone vs. sharing). To avoid any potential legal problems, Philip was forbidden to receive cash from any sister; food for the household was bought collectively, and his other personal expenses were paid out of a checking account controlled by Bonita.
The junior members found themselved drawn further and further into the group. Campus gossip and their sisterhood duties kept them from developing outside friendships, despite Julie’s admonitions at weekly board meetings that new recruitments had to continue and that the junior members, who spent more time outside the house, should do most of that recruiting.
At one particularly chilly house meeting with everyone present except Philip, the core members proclaimed that with household expenses rising and the sisters’ incomes falling, additional junior members were needed. The junior members were instructed to each bring a new woman to a party to be held at the house that Friday night. Jackie, Carolyn, Susan and Teri played telemarketer with their estranged girlfriends until they each snagged one. Evelyn found two ex-housemates for what she promised would be an all-girl soirée, making up for Pat’s failure to get anybody.
In deference to the six party guests, wine and beer were brought into the house for the first time. The guests were even allowed to smoke inside. The atmosphere was pure Girls’ Night Out: the art of high-energy conversation, jealousy-inspiring attire, familiar soft music. Julie steered the conversation toward her proposition that a girl who prefers friendship with other girls should still be able to get great sex from a great guy.
Promptly at 11:45 p.m., a freshly groomed and dressed Philip was brought downstairs, in the arms of Julie and Evelyn.
He slow-danced with each guest, not taking no for an answer and not talking much. His gentle demeanor and baby-blue eyes were in top form. After the CD was over, he disappeared upstairs. Individually and discreetly, Julie and Bonita told each guest that Philip would be available for a test drive. Three of the guests agreed to take turns in his room.
Philip’s bedroom looked nothing like a guy’s room. It was painted and furnished as a girl’s room that had a guy in it: sunny wallpaper, lacey windowshades, a pink featherbed with designer sheets. Its only masculine presence, other than Philip and his clothes, was his exercise equipment tucked away in one corner.
Susan’s guest Ingrid was the third and last guest to have a turn with Philip. As with all his lovers, the sex was great and she always felt in control. But something else happened. She reached him on a personal level none of the other women had ever neared. To her, Philip was no mere hunk. She talked to him like a person. She felt his loneliness in the midst of company. She actually made him laugh.
Bonita heared the laughter from the bathroom next door, and knew the arrangement was going to die. Even if this liaison proved to be a one-hour stand, Philip would never again treat every sister equally. If Ingrid asked to become a sister, Bonita and/or Julie would have to lead a request to reject the application, sparking a fight with the junior members that would surely break the group apart. Or Ingrid wouldn’t ask into the group, but would just take Philip all for herself; the spineless boy wouldn’t think but to follow Ingrid out and away from the best life a guy could ever want. Maybe she and the other core sisters could go out and recruit a new sex toy; there must be plenty of cute boys who know to shut up and fuck when they’re told to. In any event, it would be a lot of fun to find and train him. Bonita got up and flushed her recent life away.
