In an exclusive interview with the resident President of the Hedon’s Society, our correspondent, Ado Ink, discovers their novel recruitment and matchmaking strategies.
January 2021: Early in the interview, Ms. Maramma Horishetti, President/Head Hedon, explains her discomfort with the leadership position, but that it is this edginess that compels her to discharge her duties well. In the early years of the society, in the 1960s, the society had trouble with leaders who enjoyed leading so much that they chose to forget what the society meant to its fellows. Since then, leaders who find pleasure with the power have been expelled and termed infidels and false hedons. Now, ironically, only fellows who do not enjoy leading are made Head Hedons, albeit only for a year; a sacrifice every hedon finds worthy.
So what does the society mean to its fellows? I asked her. She explained, albeit succinctly. We find hedonists, facilitate their pleasures, and teach them control, class, and, most significantly, charisma. We take them from being aberrant and wacky to idiosyncratic and eccentric. Many observe their transformation and while they become more accommodated to the drab dystopia outside, choose to find their family here. We have grown from pleasure to pleasure.
Many of the fellows, whom the outside world brands obsessive-compulsive, have helped make functioning of the society smooth, cataloguing the variety of modern pleasures. Surprisingly, or rather unsurprisingly, the only members who are disappointed as a result of this are the fellows who love surprises. Well, actually, no. The murderers and the rapists also. But they are no longer members, so definitively, yes.
After a minute of awkward silence, nervous clattering, and some frantic fake coughing outside the door, my nervousness slowly subsided. She comforted me with a tale of the thundering third Head Hedon who was the first to infiltrate the Eavesdroppers Anonymous, not that they knew of course, and had liberated many of the younglings. In his honour, the society still holds fortnightly sham secret meetings for the eavesdroppers to eavesdrop on.
It was now that I had discovered the trickery of Ms. Horishetti. She was no Sardar Patel when it came to leading (or extorting/blackmailing either), but she was a conversationalist of the superlative degree. She had tricked me and caused us to digress away from the boy ToI had termed “the boy who lived”. Typical ToI. Couldn’t refrain from plagiarism. “pop culture” my ass.
How was the boy found? I emphasised. She had to concede. “Everyone sees us. Few notice us. Fewer still look for us. Scant seek us. We gather these remnant seekers and bring them here.” She assures me that I have seen them and when I discover my true pleasure I would discover them too. She also assures that none of their banner ads are annoying. Well.
The boy was a young one, naught but nineteen years of age. Staying away from home hadn’t been pleasant to him. Nothing led to another nothing, and there he was trying to force stop his life. Fortunately, his noose gave him the most ecstatic experience he’d ever felt. He soon discovered the society and sought it. Ms. Horishetti tells me that in the past few years, the recruitment team has had tremendous success. With the spread of internet access, it has become easier to reach eyes.
What would the boy’s fate be now? I asked. The Head Hedon laughed out loud. She found my concern amusing. The boy hadn’t contracted a deadly disease. He had only learned something new about himself, a thing that was turning out to be latent in large numbers of the population now. She reckons this asphyxiation fixation to the Vespa fad of 2012.
The boy has found himself a complementary mate at the society, one who is meek, but also particularly fancies choking others. Ms. Horishetti had picked her matchmaking chief from the board of Mensa. The Chief funds matching compatible people more fun than matching colourful sweets on increasingly smaller screens.
These are exciting times, says the Head Hedon. The populace’s notion of normalcy is evolving. As eccentricities become more mundane, the society will become both omnipresent and absent.