Daphne de Winter loved to sit at a sidewalk café, nurse her coffee, and watch the parade of people pass before her on the trendy boulevard. On the rare weekday morning when she had time to sit, she saw working women of all descriptions. She saw shop girls and tradeswomen. She saw nannies wheeling their whining young charges in their colorful stollers in the spring sunshine while dragging close behind those slightly older and somewhat able to walk on their own two legs despite their never-ending demands to be carried. She saw busy executives hurrying toward their next destinations, as often as not trailed by a string of younger associates struggling to stay up like baby geese following their mothers. She always marveled at the potpourri of styles and colors that despite their variability and the seemingly free choice and individuality of their wearers, somehow managed to convey position and status so precisely.

At dark, the wonders increased. The conscious anachronism of the gaslights gave everything a warm, sentimental glow and gas heaters kept the clientele at the outdoor tables comfortable. Everyone wore her best. Utilitarian daytime garb gave way to more fanciful evening expressions. Women of means wore their elegantly tailored man-skin coats and jackets against the evening chill.

Daphne saw two stylish, tall young women, one blond and one brunette, dressed alike, their long legs' great strides devouring the boulevard. Their brief, man-skin miniskirts and soft and supple, thigh-high man-skin boots displayed their long, well-shaped legs to good advantage. Behind them waddled their little beige and brown pot-bellied pig, huffing and puffing in his harness, and taking scores of steps with his four stubby legs to their every longer stride. The knowing smiles on the women's artfully made up faces showed that they fully relished every bit of the attention that they attracted.

She saw women with their boys. Most boys wore somber-colored, long caftans that covered everything and brushed the ground as they walked beside their escorts. Once, however, Daphne saw a petite young woman in a short man-skin jacket over a silk blouse and man-skin pants leading a much larger male who was as naked as the day he was born and perhaps even more so. Except for the hair on his head, he had been completely depilated. His oiled skin revealed the masculine angles of his well-sculpted muscled form. The glistening gold rings that adorned his nose, nipples, navel, and sex glowed warmly in the gaslight and served to accentuate his total and complete exposure. The ring through his glans was attached to the ring though his navel by a short gold chain, suspending his thick penis and exposing his ripe scrotum underneath to emphasize his gender's vulnerability. Sperm counts were rising, Daphne had read, now that scrotal temperatures were several degrees lower.

Daphne recalled learning of a time when a single male - a 'man' they called them then - could terrify a dozen apparently sane, healthy women, simply by threatening to expose his male parts. Times had changed. Still, most males kept covered out of doors and artful nudity was usually reserved for the salons and the boudoir, not to speak of the ranches and hunting reserves. No matter how naked underneath, most males walked the boulevard beside their ladies in the evening in their unrevealing caftans. This male was exceptional and he certainly merited display, if any did, Daphne thought as she watched the woman tug impatiently at his leash. The fact that his wrists were cuffed securely behind his back, kept him fully within the bounds of propriety and assured everyone's safety against male enthusiasm for violence.

Someday, she wished, she would have a male, a boy of her own. Somehow she had been brushed with the ancient curse, Eve's curse, they called it. She long had thought that she was like everyone else. Then she had gone with her sister to a party where a friend had brought her own boy to share for their entertainment. They had teased him and cajoled him until he had taken off his clothes and each took turns holding him against her body. When her turn came up, Daphne overcame her trepidation and held him again herself, tentatively. His hard male chest pressed firmly against her soft breasts. To her surprise and embarrassment, his immediacy made her simply breathless. Honestly without volition, her hand strayed from his narrow hip to brush his muscular buttock and thigh. Then she kissed him and felt something that she had never felt before. The fierceness of her reaction surprised her. She just lost her breath.

"Ee-ou," her sister had said, scrunching up her nose. "Do you know where his mouth has been?"

Daphne really didn't care and kissed him again, feeling something loosen in the depths of her pelvis and a wetness between her thighs. She had been with her friends and these feeling were different, more demanding and intense.

Later, they had him wank off for them. This time, she determinedly adopted her companions' laid-back posture of casual good humor as camouflage and took her turn touching the velvety skin of his arrogant, jutting cock. Her fingers could barely encompass his girth and his full scrotal sac filled her hand. His heavy balls bounced against her palm. What she felt was far different from what she had shown and as powerful were her roiling feelings then, far less than she later felt when he knelt before her and served her sex with his ardent mouth and tongue. The powerful sensations arising from her sex drowned out the others' raucous teasing. She actually trembled and nearly stumbled and fell.

Several of the women had actually fucked him. She watched with interest, but hadn't the nerve to try him herself that night.

She had tried others other nights, though, and gone even further. However, the practiced skills of the surgically enhanced, jaded males of the pleasure houses with their metal studded tongues and hydraulic appendages simply would not substitute for unsullied amateur ardor and eagerness. They were expensive too.

How could she get a boy of her own? She never used the dehumanizing term, "jack". She was shy, but she could talk to boys. They talked to her, but conversations never grew beyond causal banter. Many women, too many women, competed for a tiny number of available males. One half of males were consigned to processing just as they became old enough to become interesting. For the younger boys, women with money offered the promise of a purchased deferment. Daphne had no such money. The other half endured the Hunt and no more than one in ten survived to win the privileges of citizenship. Rich women offered tremendous prospects for wealth and security. Some women were so just attractive that boys just caught themselves up in their entangling webs of seduction. Daphne was only a simple girl. She was healthy and well-groomed but she was no femme fatale.

Something had to be done. Daphne thought that she too deserved a chance for happiness. She knew that male numbers had to be limited, but perhaps things had gone too far. Perhaps, psychological testing might identify safe males with little tendency for violence. Perhaps, males might be trained. After all, lions, tigers, and dolphins were trained. No one has ever trained a shark, someone retorted. True natures will eventually come out, said another. Perhaps, the system itself had to be changed, Daphne thought and set about quietly to find others who shared her insight. She had never thought of herself as a rebel.

Daphne thought about her new-found politics as she looked in the window of L'Apone's and admired the exquisite and exquisitely priced man-skin goods so attractively displayed. Daphne was surprised at the fervor of her own envy. She snorted at her own deeply contradictory feelings. On one hand, she wanted to save males from slaughter and on the other, she ate jacques and even garcon without a thought and seethed that she might never earn enough to buy such a garment for long years with medical school, internship, and residency before her. Her college friends able to move into the job market much more quickly after a mere MBA, would all buy their coats well before her. She had eaten jacques for as long as she could remember and she recalled still the specific day when she first had realized that creatures gave up their lives to be her meat. Although she knew intellectually, it was still hard for her to connect the neatly packaged cuts of meat with the living, breathing creatures.

A very lucky lady in an ankle-length manskin coat, perhaps a trifle warm for the spring afternoon, emerged proudly from the store. In her excitement, she had failed to remove one of the sales tags. Daphne spotted the perpetrator in the crowd even before she struck. The lady was obviously surprised and shocked when the misguided revolutionary darted from the stream of pedestrians, and emptied a can of red paint on the shocked woman and worse on her brand-new man-skin coat. The perpetrator, wearing a nondescript gray jogging suit, quickly dropped the can from her gloved hands, and jumped on the back of a waiting motorcycle. The motorcycle swiftly shot out into traffic. Few even watched the escape as all eyes were on the hysterical woman and her damaged manskin coat.

Daphne told Jenna the story. Daphne was surprised at her own mixed feelings. She knew how she would have felt if her dearly purchased coat had been ruined. She also knew that some opposed the new order of society. No one - or no more than very few - wanted to go back to the evil days of the Patriarchy. Hell, you could still find someone who wanted to restore the Merovingians to the French throne, if you looked hard enough. However, some felt that society had not yet reached a stable equilibrium. With the Hunt and the ranches, male numbers were kept below 10% of the adult population. Male meat and skins had become luxury items in an increasingly prosperous society, freed at last from the depredations of war and the endemic of violent crime. Some still looked for a better solution.

Daphne's problem was not ethical. Some eschewed meat of any kind, and Daphne saw this as an intellectually tenable position. However, Daphne ate meat. Some people claimed not to enjoy jacques - the flesh of males - no matter how expertly prepared. Peoples tastes varied, Daphne knew, but she relished jacques. Honestly, she knew of no one who had actually tasted jacques and still said she didn't like it.

Some people refused specifically to consume jacques or purchase goods made of manskin. Daphne knew that humankind had always claimed the right to exploit the other species on this Earth for its own purposes, so, in her mind, no question ever arose why humankind ought not exploit itself, as long as some vigorous effort was made to avoid unnecessary cruelty and suffering.

In fact, human-kind had always exploited one another since history began and very likely before history began. Males themselves were most guilty, most destructive, and most cruel. The modern world was just a bit more efficient about it. She had learned so in school. The possibility of suffering that annoyed her, though males had never had much concern about the suffering of others. She had learned that males didn't feel pain like ordinary people. Some quipped that while pain is a spinal reflex, real suffering takes a fair degree of intelligence. When Daphne looked in the mirror, she had to admit that she was just pre-occupied with her extra-culinary appetites and the other potential uses of a live, intact male..

Jenna was terrified by the tale of the coat when Daphne related it. She glanced around the room and furtively showed Daphne her new change purse which had been skillfully crafted from the skin of a single scrotum. "It cost me a month's salary. In my business, I've got to keep up appearances - look affluent to become affluent. I guess some people think its wrong to use jacks the way that we do."

Just then the server brought a large platter with small cubes of loin of jacques. Around the border of the platter lay small bowls with various tropical fruit salsas - mango, tamarind, guava, papaya, and pineapples for dipping. Her associate brought a burner and a pot of already hot olive oil. She set the pot on the burner and handed the women the traditional long handled forks. All conversation ceased as Daphne and Jenna's attention focused on this new challenge. Daphne had to keep up appearances too in order to conceal her revolutionary activity - at least that's what her new friends told her. The jacques was quite delicious and made her task all the less onerous. It was just so damned expensive.

Daphne was at a loss over her inconsistencies. However, her new friends encouraged, even more than tolerated, her conflicting urges. Her interest in manskin fashions and clearly politically incorrect appetite for jacques provided an excellent cover for their revolutionary activities.

"Megan - I mean Mnesimache, rather - excuse me. Did you see her face?" Alissa asked. "I tossed the damned red paint all over her and she looked at me with the most confused expression that I've ever seen." Alissa used the nom de guer, Anandrosa. Megan - Mnesimache called her "Drowsy," and Alissa called Megan, "Che-Che."

"I got us lost in traffic pretty smartly, you must admit" Megan boasted too. Suzabella the dog, always eager for an opportunity to eat, heard something had happened somewhere and stirred from her place under the table.

"You know, if we can break this trafficking in male meat and skins, we can break this untenable 5% solution," Deianeira- "Dee-Dee" - explained. "Too many people have a vested interest in keeping things just as they are.

Just then, they heard the garage door open and seconds later, the sound of an engine shutting down and then the door closing again. Minutes later, Caitlin - Kreobote or Bootie - came in, guiding a blindfolded male, dressed in a formless caftan. He was tall and strongly built. His features were pleasant enough though partially concealed by his blindfold. At his side stood Daphne, their newest recruit.

"Hi, guys!" Daphne said. "Bootie and I liberated one this trip."

The male relaxed visibly and smiled, feeling safe at last. Suzabella sniffed around his legs and favored him with her slobber. "Thank you guys for rescuing me. I was to ship off for the Hunt in a month and I don't know how I could do it," he gushed gratefully. "Can I take off the blindfold now?"

"You're very welcome - but don't touch the blindfold. The less you see the less you can tell if they capture and question you. They can be quite compelling questioners - that's why we use these silly fake names. Wait till Da - Mi-Mi - takes you downstairs." Drowsy explained, stifling a yawn.

The young man marveled at his good fortune. Two days before, he had been preparing himself for the Hunt. Just about one-half of males survived the three days of terror and perhaps a smaller percentage for males like himself in their first years. Now, he was safe and with friends.

He had always known that there were those who opposed the new order, but he had been willing to take his chances in the Hunt and prove his manhood. It seemed to him that many of the so-called rebels were just skanky girls looking to get laid. Daphne was different - really different. He could tell that she really liked him, but he was determined to participate in the Hunt and prove himself a man, to use an old fashioned word. Then he heard his younger sister, Lisa, trying to convince their mom to sign him over for processing for the substantial government bonus in order to would pay for her new car. At first, he thought that he must have misunderstood, but then he heard them again. His mom never said yes, but $50,000 was a lot of money and he could tell that she was weakening.

. "I feel so good," Daphne told the others whom she had met in Medical School. "I'm really glad I helped. Something has to be done. There simply must be a better way. She grabbed the male's arm.

"It's just not humane - not womanly," Caitlin replied. "I searched the grounds after a Hunt with the Med School volunteers. I went to the packing plant on the edge of town. I agree, there must be a better way."

"Look at it this way. Fifty thousand carcasses are processed a year, selling for about $500 million for meat and skins, " Denise continued. "Hunting permits are a quarter of a billion a year and hunting gear is about the same. The government pays two and a half billion a year in bounties."

"There've always been bounties for 'varmints,' right?" Megan asked with smile.

"And it's actually less than was spent on armies and prisons in the bad old days, but as long as so much money is changing hands, we'll never see any change!" Alissa added, stifling a yawn.

"It's all economics," Denise seromnized once more. Daphne escorted the male down the stairs. Caitlin stifled a yawn at Denise's rhetoric and waited upstairs. It was the least that she might do.

The male, named Chad, was visibly upset by all this talk of male meat and skins. Daphne helped him down the stairs. Blindfolded still, he leaned on her for balance and she smiled affectionately at his enmticing awkwardness. The room below was simple, a bulb hanging from the ceiling, a mattress on the floor, a toilet and a hose positioned over a drain in the floor that served as a shower. Several rumpled, machine washable blankets lay on the plastic covered mattress.

She helped Chad sit on the plastic covered mattress. "Well, Chad, we're home and you're safe- finally," she sighed. He reached for the blindfold and she held his wrist and reminded him of Deedee's request. She relished his warmth and the pressure of his body against her own.

He turned his head toward her. "Thank you," he said simply and without affectation. His plainly spoken words clearly revealed the depth of his feelings.

Daphne looked quickly at her watch. She could take a half an hour and still have plenty of time for studying. She drew his face toward hers and kissed him once gently, then ran her tongue lightly around his lips and kissed him agai, more strongly. Playfully, she pushed him back onto the mattress and began to unbutton his caftan. With his eager help, he soon lay naked beside her. Her soft hand stroked his lips and ran over his chest to his belly and beyond. He was a beautiful boy.

He greedily enjoyed her manipulation of his sex and she loved the way his body responded to her ministrations. His erect cock grew larger, his ball sac tightened, and he moaned uncontrollably with urgent pleasure. She relished the feeling of power when she worked him vigorously and made him spurt gobs of semen.

He hesitated when Daphne asked him to suck her ass. He owed her a lot and really liked her. With her gentle, persistent cajoling he surrendered. He kissed and licked her buttocks, amused by her growing ardor. Then, she repositioned herself and his tongue swept the crease between her buttocks. His tongue brushed her anus, and her unspoken demands became more imperative. Finally, he understood what she wanted, and he stiffened his tongue and penetrated her muscular ring. She came so hard, she thought she might faint. She came again and again in rapid succession and lost her breath. The exquisite pleasure quickly transformed into pain, and she pulled herself away from him laughing at her own antics. At least Chad was blindfolded and couldn't see her all breathless and disheveled. It was true that no one could suck an ass like a boy..

Chad was grateful, but more than that he was in love with her too. The obvious depths of their ineluctable feelings for one another had finally given him the courage to trust her. She had saved him. Regretfully, he would never see her again for his own safety, and her selfless sacrifice made his love all the more sweet and poignant.

Daphne caught her breath and kissed him fondly on the forehead.

"I love you," he said.

"I know," she smiled. "I love you too.' She still might salvage an hour or two for studying tonight, if she left right now, she thought as she climbed the stairs.

As Daphne climbed up the stairs, Bootie headed quickly down to the basement without a word, obviously on some important errand. Daphne'd just have to say goodbye to her latter. She relished the warm glow of a good deed done well, said her goodbyes to the girls upstairs, and headed out the door and down the walk.

"Bootie!" Deedee called down the stairs, "Please bring up something scrumptious from the refrigerator for Suzabella. Ever since Daphne had joined them, their success in spiriting off males had sky-rocketed. She had been a tremendous addition.

When Bootie returned after the passage of about five minutes, Daphne had long left and Denise, Megan and Alissa were still rehashing the old discussion. She smiled at the umpteenth rerun of the familiar chat and filled Suzabella's bowl with a formless piece of meat from as plastic bag. Then she joined the others at the table.

"Any trouble?" Alissa - Drowsy - added, once more stifling a yawn.

"None at all!" said Kaitlin, glad to be done and have a chance to sit. "He went down very easily." She laid her 22 caliber pistol on the table and examined the silencer very closely.

"Someday society will go forward and we'll keep the males to less than one tenth of one percent - not five percent - of the population. They'll be safely confined to farms and milked for sperm. They'll never trouble women again," Denise explained.

"It seems rather ironic that we finance ourselves with their skins and meat, though," Megan commented. "Doesn't it?" She looked at her friends.

"That reminds me," Kaitlin remembered, "whose turn is it to gut and skin him. I killed him, someone else can clean him."

When Daphne inhaled she could still detect his musky male scent on her body. She shuddered pleasurably with the mild tremors that erupted from her pelvis, aftershocks of her orgasms. Some people said pro-male political agitation was only the way that sexually-frustrated, homely girls might hope to get laid. Daphne was proud that she and her new friends indulged in no such calculating hanky-panky. Rather, she was honestly, truly head-over-heels in love with Chad. Daphne was truly in love with love, and luckily, she fell in love quite easily. She walked down the street, singing to herself. Tomorrow, she would take home her share of the meatand Kaitlin promised her that one more skin and she would have her coat.