Dietland (30 page)

Soon, there would be other faces.

 

• • •

Airman Tompkins

During her deployments in Afghanistan, United States Air Force captain Missy Tompkins had eliminated more than two hundred enemy combatants. She returned home from active duty to live with her mother in Reno, but wouldn't speak about her experiences in the war or the men she had killed. Missy kept her feelings about that to herself.

The daughter who returned home from the war wasn't the daughter that Mrs. Tompkins remembered. The new Missy was withdrawn. She rarely spoke, slept most of the day, and sat at the kitchen table at night, smoking roll-up cigarettes and drinking Jack Daniel's. She didn't bother with her appearance, her dark blond hair limp with oil, her skin blooming with blemishes she didn't attempt to hide. Sometimes she made late-night phone calls in the parking lot of their apartment complex, sitting in the grass near the dumpsters so her mother wouldn't hear what she was saying. Missy disappeared for days at a time without a word. Whenever Mrs. Tompkins tried to talk to her, Missy told her she wouldn't understand.

One day Missy went out to buy tobacco and never came back. For days, Mrs. Tompkins returned home from her shift at the Silver Dollar Steakhouse hoping to find her daughter sitting at the kitchen table, which for once would have been a welcome sight. After a week passed, Mrs. Tompkins considered calling the police, but Missy was a grown woman who could go where she pleased without having to report to her mother. Instead of calling the police, Mrs. Tompkins searched her daughter's bedroom, where she found a note. Missy had left it inside the jewelry box she'd had since she was a little girl. She wrote that she loved her mother and her country, and then confessed that she'd flown the plane that had dropped the Dirty Dozen into the desert.

Missy's mother didn't follow current events, but news of the killings had trickled down to the tabloids she browsed at the drugstore during her breaks from work. In the note, Missy wrote that she wanted her mother to come to terms with the news and then, once she was ready, send the note to the editor of the
Los Angeles Times
so it would be published.

Mrs. Tompkins didn't know where her daughter was, but she knew she would never see her again. She decided to burn the note, had started to burn it—the corner was jagged and singed—but then she pulled the sheet of paper back from the flame. She read Missy's words again and decided they didn't belong to her. She didn't understand what Missy meant, exactly, but her daughter had been in the war and people would respect what she had to say. Mrs. Tompkins sent the note to the newspaper, where soon after it was printed on the front page.

“Jennifer asked me to help her and I don't regret what I did,” Missy had written. “This is a different war, not an official one, but who decides which wars are legitimate?”

 

• • •

The Jennifer Effect

Jennifer was already a national obsession, but after the publication of Missy Tompkins's note, she became a national
frenzy.

MISSING AIRMAN SAYS “THIS IS WAR”

Federal law enforcement swooped down on Mrs. Tompkins's Reno apartment complex. She was questioned about her daughter for days with barely any food or sleep. Along with Missy's brother, she appeared in a nationally televised press conference with FBI agents, military officials, and members of Congress, urging Missy to turn herself in.

Immediately after the press conference, Cheryl Crane-Murphy turned to her guest, a retired military general, and asked him if he wondered why Missy Tompkins had written a note and wanted it published. “Why broadcast her guilt? Excuse my language here, general, but that note is really just a big
eff you
to the military, isn't it?”

The general, tightly gripping the armrests of his chair as if to restrain himself from lunging at the camera, responded without answering the question. “We do not train American women for combat so they can come home and use those skills on us.”

“Might Jennifer also be in the military?” Cheryl Crane-Murphy asked. Missy's reference to “Jennifer” in her note bolstered the idea that there was a real person named Jennifer who was commanding others.

The general became so enraged at the thought that he turned to the camera and said: “We don't know who you are, Jennifer, but we're going to find you and kick your ass.”

Every aspect of Missy Tompkins's life was examined, from her childhood in Reno to her enrollment in the Air Force Academy to her years of military service as a fighter pilot. It didn't take long for investigators to discover that Missy Tompkins had spent her high school years in Southern California, where she lived with her father, and that during this time she had a classmate named Soledad Ayala.

“The plot thickens,” said Cheryl Crane-Murphy. “Leeta Albridge is connected to Soledad Ayala, the mother of tragic Luz, and now Missy Tompkins is connected to Soledad too.”

Soledad was supposedly in Mexico City visiting her sick aunt, but the police discovered that she didn't have a sick aunt. They were searching for Soledad so they could question her about the events unfolding in the United States, but she seemed to have disappeared.

The FBI director appeared on television for what the media dubbed his daily “Jennifer” briefing. “We have issued an arrest warrant for air force captain Tompkins and a material witness warrant for army specialist Ayala,” he said. “We are actively seeking the identity of the person known as Jennifer—if such a person exists. If so, she is working as part of a large criminal network, one that appears to involve at least one female member of the U.S. Armed Forces, but possibly more.”

On
The Nola and Nedra Show,
Nola Larson King said: “Clearly we have some kinda lady terrorist group here with someone named Jennifer as their leader.”

“I'm not comfortable referring to members of our armed forces as
terrorists,
” said Nedra Feldstein-Delaney.

“Then what would you call them?” countered Nola Larson King.

Three days later, the editors at the
Los Angeles Times
received something new: a letter containing a “Penis Blacklist,” signed by Jennifer. There was a postmark from Phoenix and nothing more.

The Penis Blacklist comprised the names of one hundred men, whose penises, the letter said, “must not be given shelter inside any woman.” The editors didn't know if it was legitimate or a hoax, but they published the list of names anyway. Anything Jennifer related was big news.

One of the names on the list was Senator Craig Bellamy (R-Miss.), an antiabortion advocate who was under investigation for reports that he forced his secret girlfriend to have an abortion and then blackmailed her to cover it up. Upon being told by a reporter that her husband's name was on the Penis Blacklist, Mrs. Bellamy panicked and agreed to appear on
Good Morning America.
“Craig and I don't have sex,” she said, looking directly into the camera. “The last time was when I conceived our son, Craig Junior. He's thirty now.”

Another name on the list was Todd Wright, the producer of a series of popular videos in which girls on spring break were urged to bare their breasts and take off their underpants and make out with other girls when they were drunk. When confronted by a camera crew for CNN, Todd Wright's girlfriend said, “I'm not going to stop having sex with Todd just because some [bleeping] bitch named Jennifer says so. [Bleep] her.” The next morning she started her car and it blew up.

In response, Todd Wright, who did not seem devastated, said, “Jennifer can suck my dick.” His strangled body was found three days later under the Santa Monica Pier, his severed dick shoved in his mouth.

After the murders of Todd Wright and his girlfriend, the FBI director appeared on television again. He went through a PowerPoint presentation with ninety-nine slides, one for each of the living men on the Penis Blacklist. Each slide featured the man's photo, his occupation, and where he lived. Among the names: professional athletes, CEOs, world leaders, Stanley Austen, and members of the U.S. Congress who'd voted against women's reproductive rights.

“We take this threat very seriously,” the FBI director said. “While we do not condone giving in to terrorist threats, I strongly urge women not to have sex with any of the men on this list. Do not date them, do not even be seen with them, for your own protection.”

Senator Bellamy's daughter chose to have her mother walk her down the aisle at her wedding, just to be safe.

As the search for Jennifer intensified, many women named Jennifer complained that they were under attack. The owner of Jennifer's Bridal Boutique in Idaho Falls appeared on Cheryl Crane-Murphy's show, saying: “Somebody threw a rock through my window yesterday with a note that said ‘You're a man-hating lez.'” Likewise, a police officer named Jennifer Leoni from tiny Caldwell, Delaware, said someone had spray-painted
LESBO
on her garage door.

“I'm noticing a trend with the
lesbian
insults,” said Cheryl Crane-Murphy, shaking her head. “If I were a young thug, I would have gone with
terrorist,
but perhaps
lesbian
is more abhorrent.”

The FBI director appeared on television yet again. “It's unlikely that there is a terrorist mastermind named Jennifer. I urge people to remain calm and rational and not let women named Jennifer fall under suspicion. Between 1970 and 1984, Jennifer was the single most popular name for baby girls in this country. There are well over a million women named Jennifer in the United States. It's as close to a generic woman's name as you can get. Jennifers are our daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. Jennifers are everywhere among us.”

“If there are Jennifers everywhere among us,” asked Cheryl Crane-Murphy, “then how are we supposed to remain calm?”

Soon, what the news media described as the “Jennifer effect” began to spread.

At a prestigious Connecticut university, fraternity pledges marched outside the women's dormitories chanting, “No means yes, yes means anal!” In previous years, this type of misbehavior would have been handled by a tweedy disciplinary committee in a conference room with tea and coffee, but this time the female students took matters into their own hands. They left their dorms en masse and destroyed the fraternity house, breaking all the windows and setting it on fire. By morning there was nothing left but charred remains.

On Cheryl Crane-Murphy's show, one of the women involved in the attack said: “When I heard the frat guys chanting, I thought,
What would Jennifer do?
That's when I grabbed my lacrosse stick and just went for it.” Cheryl explained that the female students added the names of the fraternity members to their own Penis Blacklist, a practice that was quickly adopted by women's groups at other campuses.

The Jennifer effect showed no sign of slowing down. Women engaged in violence and civil disobedience. Men took precautionary measures. The bad- boy lead singer of America's most popular rock band famously sported a topless mermaid tattoo on his bicep, her cartoonish breasts like round cupcakes with bright red cherries on top. Before his cover shoot with
Rolling Stone,
the makeup artist painted over the breasts, dressing the mermaid in a demure long-sleeved top that wouldn't have looked out of place in a J. Crew catalog. The rock star didn't protest or throw a tantrum. He had no interest in being dropped out of a plane.

On
The Nola and Nedra Show,
Nola Larson King said: “I've been thinking about what you said earlier, Nedra, and I agree with you. I don't think this is
terrorism
or
lady
terrorism.
Do you know what I think it is?”

“I'm dying to know,” said Nedra Feldstein-Delaney.

“I think it's a response
to
terrorism. From the time we're little girls, we're taught to fear the
bad man
who might get us. We're terrified of being raped, abused, even killed by the
bad man,
but the problem is, you can't tell the good ones from the bad ones, so you have to be wary of them all. We're told not to go out by ourselves late at night, not to dress a certain way, not to talk to male strangers, not to lead men on. We take self-defense classes, keep our doors locked, carry pepper spray and rape whistles. The fear of men is ingrained in us from girlhood. Isn't that a form of terrorism?”

“For God's sake, Nola. You're going to get us both fired,” said Nedra Feldstein-Delaney.

 

• • •

THE SEARCH FOR JENNIFER
and her cohorts continued. By September, sales of
Fuckability Theory
had increased dramatically and Marlowe was in demand by news organizations as an analyst on Jennifer-related topics. Verena had been asked for analysis too, particularly by Japanese news outlets, as Eulayla's documentary,
Born Again,
had been a cult hit there, but Verena refused. She said that Jennifer was a distraction from real work.

In between media interviews, Marlowe had begun writing a new book called
The Jennifer Effect.
The sound of her furious typing filled the kitchen as I finished my baking for the morning. I wrapped up the pastries and cakes, then sorted through the piles of newspapers and magazines that were scattered all over the table. “Leeta Albridge in Montana?” read one of the familiar tabloid headlines. I barely noticed these stories anymore. Wherever Leeta was, I was sure it wasn't at the fast food restaurants and shopping malls where she was routinely spotted.