The Magazine Article

Fillmore Phelps yawned as he waited for Dr. Bigelow’s chesty receptionist to call him. Fillmore had been seeing the orthodontist for four years now, and finally he was getting those goddam braces off…he could finally eat an apple.

 

Fillmore looked around on the table for something to read. Yeah. Good, something other than “Highlights For Children” Cool. Fillmore opened the magazine to a story and began perusing…

 

Controversial or Kinky? Landon University’s popular Good Intentions, Better Results Clinic.

BRISTOL, RHODE ISLAND—The fence hangers persist outside the Gibber Clinic, hoping to see the smokers on their breaks. “Dude, here’s someone, oh shit, it’s just a fat guy” says Devon Rigeri, junior at Providence College.

 

“Aw man” says the younger guy next to him, who has refused to give me his name, because “My mom loves your cartoons, and she thinks I took the car to a SAT prep class in Boston this afternoon.”

 

“Shit here’s a hottie!” screams Sid, his 70’s Vulcan ears framing long, dirty hair. “Dear on Ebay, these ears were.” Sid pronounces Dear as De-ah and  “were” as “weh” as the New Englander he is, geek or not. Sid will not give his last name, as he works as an audiovisual aide in a local Christian academy.  “Look, fellas!”

 

Yes! Next to the naked fat man, puffing a Pall Mall and  shivering outside the Good Intentions Better Results Clinic, known as Gibber, an attractive and quite embarrassed redhead comes out wearing only snowshoes and a scarf, and carrying a single cigarette, which Fattie lights at the end of his.

 

When she sees the boys gaping, Red tries to go around to the side of Gibber, but a tall blonde in a parka has suddenly popped around the side of the building, and is whacking, WHACKING Red back to the front of the Clinic, where Red endures clapping and catcalls from the fence onlookers.

 

“It’s what they deserve” Skinner McCoy says matter-of factly. McCoy, a  slim, chestnut haired Landon senior is one of the founders of the Good Intentions, Better Results Clinic. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’m trying to force them on a different road, though most of these fiends don’t belong in Heaven.”

 

McCoy speaks of the Clinic’s attendees as “fiends”. Gibber “cures” habits ranging from drinking too much to excessive masturbation “In girls as well as boys, actually. Girls love to twiddle their twattle.” McCoy says, laughing.

 

Indeed, it is distressing to watch a pale, emaciated looking junior wearing a baby bonnet and a Depends diaper, carrying a pair of oversized rubber dice in his two hands. They look like the dice that hung on my brother’s rear view mirror in high school, except that they’re not attached to anything.

 

McCoy calls him over. “Bruce, this is Adam. Bruce is here because he likes to gamble. Smith Barney, his understanding employer has sent him here in lieu of firing him because he also likes to embezzle. Wanna toss the dice for me, Brucie?” Skinner smiles.

 

Bruce shakes his head, but then drops the huge cubes on the floor. A three and a four. “Seven!” Skinner laughs. “If Bruce gets two—one dot on each dice—I give him a big kiss, and he likes that, right Brucie?” Bonnet-boy nods his head.

 

“But Seven is not so good for Brucie.” Skinner blows a whistle and a large black man with  a shaved head  and wife-beater T-shirt comes to Brucie, who is protesting wildly.  The two go into a small room down the hall called SECLUSION. The door closes, and locks.

 

“Lucky for you, Seclusion is locked, Mr. Gopnik.” Skinner says. “Its’ kind of  a fun—“

 

McCoy pauses, noting a young woman sitting on a collapsible metal chair in the corner of the Gibber day room. “Lourdes, it’s time for your smoke, hon.” McCoy smiles, cocking her cropped blonde head as Lourdes protests that she doesn’t need a smoke just now.

 

“I’m all right, Miss McCoy” the dark haired Guatemalan insists. Lourdes Rivera, a Brown University linguist, is on her fourth day of the ten day treatment here at Gibber, and is “entitled” to seven smoke breaks a day, but the breaks are mandatory.

 

“No, no you’re not, Lourdes.” McCoy smiles, getting up. “You see, Mr. Gopnik, Lourdes is about to lose her gig over at Brown because she constantly is going outside to smoke, and now she doesn’t want to for some reason.” Skinner McCoy casually picks up a long rattan cane from her desk, and saunters into the dayroom.

 

McCoy spins and looks straight at me. “Just think, Harold Ross died at fifty-nine, a great editor…from cancer, because he didn’t get the great tuition that I’m giving Lourdes here.”

 

It is odd to hear “tuition” used as a non-bursary word from a twenty-one year old.

 

Skinner taps her cane against her hand. “You know you want to smoke, Lourdes. I’ve been watching you putting a pencil in your mouth, and the trash is full of your Nicorette wrappers.

 

Suddenly the door opens, and we turn to see the redhead from outside, run in, and as she sees me looking, she blushes, because of course she is nude, and her skin is blue from the February weather. Red rushes to pick her clothes up from another metal chair, and bursting into tears, runs into the bathroom.

 

“Well, we can see that Angela enjoyed her smoke, eh?” McCoy snorts. “Now Lourdes, you know I get upset when you’re dishonest with me—“ McCoy taps the rattan cane against her hand “—so why don’t you just admit you’d like to take a smoke break.”

 

Lourdes stands up, “I-do want to smoke, but not-not that much.” She twists her gloves in her hands. Lourdes has not even taken off her coat today, it seems.

 

McCoy taps the rattan cane. “You know it’s time for your smoke, and I get upset when you’re not punctual. Would you like Adam here to see what happens when I get upset?”

 

Lourdes Rivera gets up from her chair, tears running down her olive cheeks. I strain to keep from objecting, for I know it’s my presence that is hindering her “break.”

 

“Don’t worry, honey.” Skinner says softly. “Adam’s just watching for your own good. He wants you to live longer than his colleague James Thurber, who died of pneumonia at sixty-six years old. He wants you to put the cigarettes down eventually, hon.”

 

Lourdes, tears flowing, makes one more appeal. “Can I wear—“ Skinner shakes her head pleasantly. “Nothing. You can wear nothing. Not even your panties.”

 

And Lourdes takes off her heavy camels-hair coat, dropping it on the metal chair, before removing an attractive turquoise blouse, and then stepping out of stone washed jeans, tears running down her face. Finally Lourdes removes her undergarments, and steps up to McCoy, who hands her a Virginia Slim. “Your favorite” Skinner smiles.

 

And out Lourdes goes, naked into the shivering November cold. As the door shuts we hear adolescent screams of “Oooh, check out the stretch marks on Latina here!”

 

And Skinner McCoy smiles. “Now how many more smoke breaks you think she’ll need?”

 

Howard Kineburg, President of the American Lung Association says that Miss McCoy and the Kappa Gamma Sade House, the sorority who sponsors the not-for-profit Gibber Clinic, are amazing. “They have been in business for twelve  years, run by students and of 185 graduates from the first semester  smoking cessation program in 1995, 182 are still not smoking today. That’s a remarkable recovery rate, though their methods are quite unorthodox.”

 

But not as unorthodox as their current head Director!

 

Skinner McCoy, oldest daughter of a successful plastics manufacturer, was born in an “aqua-birth” in Nantucket. “My parents are rich hippies” McCoy snorts. “And I can tell you about them because no one can fire my dad, since he owns a Fortune 50 plastic company.”

 

McCoy noticed a curious dynamic between her parents as early as age seven, when it became clear that although her mother had a rather lively night life, her father was always home babysitting McCoy and her brother Phineas, now a male baton twirling champion.

 

“Mom was always in charge” McCoy says. “I didn’t find her whips and see Dad’s scars til I was a teenager, but I always knew Mom did what she wanted, and Dad also did what Mom wanted. And I admired that, though I can be a submissive at times myself.”

 

At St. Casimir’s Preparatory School, McCoy roomed with Marisol  Persephone Pratt, the controversial Madame of “Miss Pratt’s Academy” a house of domination for primarily gay women.

 

 “Prattsie and I got on really well, and learned a lot from each other, as girls will who live together from seventh through twelfth grade.” McCoy would not confirm whether she and “Prattsie” were romantically involved, but it helped a good deal, along with her familial influence, to interest the  young woman into becoming a “BDSM freak”

 

“Yeah, it’s all about BDSM” McCoy says. “That’s an acronym. B&D is bondage and discipline, D&S is dominance and submission, and S&M, well, you know. They all used to be real separate, but BDSM is congealed now, and it’s what we’re all about “ she adds vaguely.

 

 “Like the gay Stonewall bullshit back in the sixties? You can’t push them around? Well, you have to push us around, it turns us on…or get the fuck out of our face, right?”

 

When it came time to go to college, Skinner McCoy chose Landon University, a small nondenominational school in Bristol, Rhode Island. Why? “Because of Kappa Gamma Sade, duh.”

 

The Kappa Gamma Sade House, partially named for the Marquis De Sade, is not recognized by  the National Panhellenic Conference, which is the umbrella organization for 26 national women’s sororities, or the National Multicultural Greek Council which generally covers all the rest.

 

“They are just a freaky off-shoot, I don’t care if KGS has been around since 1905” says Kappa Alpha Theta Vice President for Public Relations Campbell DeLionardo.

 

“They [the Kappa Gamma Sades] don’t represent what sororities are about” says Delta Gamma Corpus Christi Alumnae Chapter member Peyton Dessler. “We’re about clean-cut women becoming successful financially, romantically and philanthropically.” There is a cough over the phone. “Not whipping each other, like a bunch of dikes, no offense to lesbians, or gay women; whatever. “

 

Skinner McCoy laughs hard when she hears this. “That’s so rich!” Skinner slaps her thigh, and throws her cane in the direction of a young man wearing a chastity belt thing who is shivering in the corner. “The Kappa Gamma Sades have a long tradition of girls marrying rich guys, as well as becoming really rich themselves….and our marriages LAST, man.”

 

Skinner yawns. “Forget the Gibber Clinic, let me tell you which one of the Kappas married the most conservative Supreme Court Justice Her name is…”

 

Fillmore dropped the boring magazine on the table as he got called. His sister was into that kinky shit, and she was a geek…but Fillmore would get in bed with all her friends after his braces were coming off, in the next twenty minutes!