Chapter 1: Performance Art
A college professor presents a performance art production of "I, Masochist" with a little technical help from W. Afterwards, the professor who referred the masochistic models to her asks her and W's help in recording the six young women's stories of how and why they are masochists.
The eight chapters of this story each stand on their own, but make more sense if you have read the previous chapters. These stories are loosely based on conversations I have had through the years with people who are attracted to or receive pleasure from pain, but none of the individuals depicted is based on any one person. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Chapter one of eight describes the "I, Masochist" performance and events leading up to it.
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It wasn't the best party I have ever attended, but it wasn't the worst. The problem was that it was one of those parties that you have to attend rather than one that you want to attend. I know, you don't have to do anything in this life except die. Everything we do is a choice we make. I know I didn't really have to come to this party or any other party. I know that ultimately, I chose to come to this party. But the only thing that got me through the door that night was to keep telling myself that I HAD to come to this party.
I didn't want to be there. The truth was that I had reluctantly agreed to come to this particular party because Shelly had batted her baby blue eyes at me and said, "Please, W. Please, please, please come to my party Saturday night." Then she gave me her Hello Kitty smile and added, "There is someone who really wants to meet you."
That alone - "somebody who really wants to meet you" - should have been sufficient reason for me to decline the invitation. But I didn't. Instead I said, "What time and what kind of party?"
She answered, "Starts at eight and it is a standard cocktail party with a bunch of mostly vanilla people from the university."
I was still not sure whether my being there was repaying a favor Shelly once did for me or storing up a favor for some future needs, but in any case, I arrived at her place around 8:30 to a room full of typical college-type professors, students and administrators. Well, typical if you factor in the fact that Shelly is an artist and most of her friends are artists. Shelly is somewhat famous - or perhaps I should say infamous - for her various "performance art" exhibits. A couple of them have even been featured on network "news magazines," and one made national headlines when it was very noisily picketed by a group calling itself "Citizens Against Pornographic Art." Shelly sent them a very nice letter thanking them for doubling the attendance at her performances that summer.
Her performance art is how I met her. She was setting up a show with a BDSM theme and sought me out as a consultant. It was entitled "I, Masochist," and was supposed to consist of a series of glass booths with naked coeds bound in different ways with various kinds of electrodes stuck onto and into their bodies. The planning drawings indicated that the girls would be wearing full coverage bondage hoods with ball gags and micro-mini G strings that were little more than thin straps that held dildo electrodes in place front and back.. It wasn't clear if the ear, eye, and mouth flaps of the bondage hoods would be open or closed.
The drawings showed large buttons on the outside of each booth that would supposedly control the electrical impulses. When you pressed the big red button, Christmas style lights wound around the girl and the booth were supposed to flash and the girl would thrash and scream convincingly. There were two other large buttons with up and down arrows on them. If you pushed the up button, the lights would flash brighter. If you pushed the down button, the lights were dimmer. There was also supposed to be a keypad with the numbers one through ten. Whatever number you pushed, that is how many times the lights would flash when you pressed the button.
Someone had referred Shelly to me. She wouldn't say who it was other than the fact that they were intimately familiar with, and highly satisfied with, my work. She contacted me and asked if I would be willing to look over the designs for the displays and make sure that they were realistic. The drawings were very complete and very realistic. The bondage was bearable and non- destructive for a normal human body while still projecting an almost fantasy level of erotica. And most of her equipment - including the tongue and ureter electrodes that were shown on a couple of the models - could be or had already been purchased over the internet and were actually capable of doing exactly what she was showing it doing. I was impressed.
I did, however, have one question and a couple of suggestions for her. "Are you going for bondage or torture?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" she replied.
"All of your models are totally bound and gagged," I explained. "That means no safewords. If this were real, they would be totally at the mercy of the person with the button. That is - or can be - torture rather than a BDSM scene unless the sub and dom have a real understanding of each other."
I suggested that, for the sake of realism, the models have some readily apparent safeword device, perhaps a brightly colored ball that could be dropped to indicate a limit threshold. If she was truly going for realism, she might even have them drop the ball once in a while during the performance and see if the people at the controls honored the signal.
She said she would implement my idea, and then asked what else I would suggest.
"Shelly," I said, trying to sound scholarly since I was talking to a full professor. "Your concept is good..., it is very good..., and it is erotic as hell. But you are reaching out to only one of the senses."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"It's all visual," I answered. "And I don't mean just here in the drawings. The models are sealed away behind glass. All the other senses are cut off from what is happening. In the real thing, there is the smell of woman and the smell of leather and the smell of fear or arousal or both. There is the sound of the subs breathing - the little intakes and catches of breath as they attempt to go into the pain and turn it into pleasure. Even the creak of the chains and the sound of the leather rubbing against the restraints is a part of a real scene. You have cut your audience off from all of that. They might as well be watching a video screen. What you have right now is a 3D projection of a silent bondage video. At best, it is a living statue - a damned erotic living statue, but it is still only a statue and still only visual."
"What do you suggest I do?" she asked.
"I would put some holes in those plexiglass cages or use something open that looks like the bars of a cell or reinforced chicken wire. And to up the ante, I would add sound to the shock. Make it buzz or something when they deliver the shock. Don't let your audience stand there passively. Involve their bodies. Make them do more than just punch one button with one finger to cause a pulse or change the intensity. Use a big dial or handle like on a large water valve to turn the power up and down. And make it hard enough to turn that they have to use their whole hand or both hands to turn it. Have something hum or buzz softer and louder, or lower pitched and higher pitched as they make those adjustments. Then use a switch to initiate the pulses that would require that they have to use more hand and body motion than just a tap of the finger.
Maybe you could have it turn like a key starting a car or pull back like a lever. Maybe even the lever could come back until an unknown release point allowed the switch to snap forward. That way, as they are pulling it back, even they wouldn't be sure when the pulses would start. All of that would pull them and their body and their mind into your display as they hear and sense and feel what they are doing or are going to do to the woman under their control."
I looked up from the drawings to see how my suggestions were being received. Shelly's mouth was open and her breath was slightly ragged. There was a light sheen of perpetration on her face. Her eyes seemed slightly out of focus.
"I was going to ask if you could visualize what I meant," I said. "But it appears obvious that you can see it in your mind and you like it."
She answered in a very deep throaty voice, "I can see it, and yes, I like it! I like it a lot!" She shook her head to disengage herself from the vision of her revised work and asked, "How much do I owe you?"
I told her that all I had given her was advices, and advice was cheap. I wouldn't charge for the consultation since I hadn't worked up any drawings or gotten bids or done any of the typical pre- production stuff I would normally do for a client. My only charge would be a pass to the exhibit some time during its run.
She thanked me, and I thought that would be the end of it. A few weeks later, however, she called again. "W," she said, "I really need your expertise on this - the kind of expertise and equipment I have to pay for. The exhibit was a smash hit this weekend, and the studio wants it to run every weekend all summer."
"That sounds like great news," I answered. "So what's the problem?"
"The problem is with my models," she answered. "I got their names from a professor who is doing sex studies at the university. All six of them are actually art students here, and all six of them are truly masochists. I figured with that combination they would both understand what I was trying to do from an art perspective and be more realistic from a pain perspective."
"I'm surprised he gave you names from his study," I commented.
"Doctor Collins didn't." she replied, "I asked him if he could give me a couple of names from his study and he said that his confidentiality wouldn't allow that, but he would give some of his test subjects my name and they could choose whether or not to contact me. He gave my name to eight girls whom he knew to be masochists and art students. Six of them wanted to be models in my show."
"I still don't see the problem." I replied.
"They are all art students," she said with some exasperation. "Because they are art students, they say that they want a 'true performance.' They keep quoting that damned Professor McCarthy who claims in all his writings and lectures that the only way performance art can be true performance and true art is if it is all true - that is real."
"It is real bondage," I interjected. "And the equipment is real. It would work if you hooked it up."
"That's just the point," she answered. "They are also all masochists. Because they are masochists, they want to feel some pain or it isn't real to them. They say that the setup is fake and I am just teasing the audience with an illusion of reality and teasing them with a promise of pain. They are threatening to quit and tell everyone that the whole thing is a fake unless I make the system real. In other words, the bondage has to be real. The shocks have to be real. It all has to be real."
"Like I said," I replied. "No problem. Your equipment is all real. Just hook them up and let people play if that's what they want."
"One problem," Shelly replied. "... a big problem. Last weekend when the controls only affected the lights, about half the time the people ignored the ball drop safe signal. I even watched one man turn all the dials up to maximum after the model had dropped the ball. Then he pushed ten on the number pad. If one of the girls reaches a limit, it won't be honored. That would be torture. Someone could even get hurt. I can't have that. I need your help."
I chuckled softly and immediately named a price. I even offered to do the installation. "Don't you have to think about it?" she asked, somewhat startled.
"Not at all," I replied. "I sell a self-bondage safety switch that interrupts all power. It should be easy to rig in the displays. You wouldn't even need the wireless version. In fact, the wires might add to the effect. It's about the size of a tennis ball and can be any color you want it to be. If it leaves your hand, everything shuts down. You already have the models holding something, so no one will even notice that anything has changed."
I didn't realize how wrong that last statement would prove to be. EVERYONE noticed that something had changed. Simulated bondage with simulated pain is very different from true bondage and true pain, especially when the person receiving that pain is a true masochist.
I installed the items the next evening and Saturday night, the second night that the system was live, I attended the performance. I asked Shelly how it had gone the night before and she said that the displays looked the same, the girls looked the same, they even acted more or less the same, but that the crowds were reacting very, very differently. It had her perplexed. She couldn't figure what was different. "I've looked over everything and can't put my finger on it," she said.
"Quit looking and start listening and inhaling." I told her. "I can hear passion from every cage. I could smell arousal as soon as I came in the door. And that smell isn't just coming from the women in the cages. Half of the females in here are reacting to a pheromone and fantasy overload and creaming their panties. If a guy brought a date to this and doesn't get lucky tonight, he really doesn't know how to play the marvelous cards you have given him."
Her eyes widened slightly as she took in what I had said. Then she nodded her head slowly, and asked, "Can you stay until after the show ends tonight? I have something else I want you to check out in the cages."
I tried to look like it was some sort of sacrifice on my part to stay for the whole evening, but the reality was that the displays were having quite an effect on me also. I don't know if it was art, but it was one hell of a performance. One of the girls was covered in a full body tattoo that intertwined vines, flames and serpents. The only visible skin not covered with the design was on her hands. It provided quite a contrast since none of the other girls showed any ink at all. I was sure they had no ink because I spent the evening examining their skin very closely as I watched them buck and writhe while the lights danced around them.
The tattooed lady and one other had the ureter and tongue electrodes. You could see the thin electrode protruding slightly from their pee hole like a catheter and there were wires going through the safety breathing hole in the center of their ball gags. I'm not sure exactly what type of electrode was in the mouth. It may have be one of the wide tongue clamp types or perhaps there were just metal strips on the ball gag. All of the models had anal and vaginal electrodes as well as other surface electrodes on various parts of their bodies. One model, a somewhat older woman in her mid to late twenties even had light up nipple weights dangling from each breast that obviously applied shocks directly to the nipples each time they flashed.
I have to admit that the erotic effect of six nubile young women in full pain bondage was very powerful. The fact that all six were basically anonymous somehow heightened the experience. Four of the models were wearing full coverage bondage hoods. One of the hoods was sealed. The other three had the eye, and ear openings unsealed and red ball gags visible in the mouth opening.. All four were standing with their hands extended and restrained above their heads by chains that attached to the top corners of the cage. Their feet were spread wide and held in place by leather restraints that were attached to the outer walls of the cage.
The two remaining models may or may not have been wearing hoods, but it was impossible to say because their heads were not visible. One was standing upright with her head and hands held in place in holes like you would find in a set of stocks, except these holes went through a low ceiling in the cage. The area above the ceiling was dark plexiglass so it was not possible to see her head. Since a set of wires went through the ceiling next to her right hand, I assume she was holding a safety switch, but her hands were also concealed behind the dark plexiglass.
The inside surface of the ceiling was covered in a dark velvet or felt so that her body seemed to end at the blackness. She was just a naked, headless body writhing in a cage. The other model was in a similar restraint, but instead of her head and hands being concealed in the top of the cage, she was bent over at the waist in a much lower cage, and her head and hands were held in place through one side of the cage. This was the model with the dangling light-up nipple weights. Again, the area on the other side of the restraint wall was masked in dark plexiglass, and the interior side was covered in black velvet. Her cunt, which was very visible, was wet and gaping.
I stopped for quite a while to watch one very blue-eyed girl sway and writhe with the pulses as the lights flashed around her. Her very trim and muscled body was bathed in a sheen of perspiration as she jerked and swayed and strained against her restraints. Despite the fact that she had the full electrode treatment, including wired titty clamps and an electrified pee hole, I could tell from the muffled grunts coming around the bright red ball gag that she was saying "More, more, more, more," each time the shocks hit. When the shocks stopped she would buck and grind the air uselessly trying for friction to take her over the top.
I went over to her cage and waited for a very sweaty frat boy to finish playing with the controls. I turned the dial up to maximum and pressed 22 on the keypad. Since I programed it, I knew that the 2 button was an override and wasn't limited. 99 was the largest number allowed by the system and I had thought about having the 9 as a bypass key, but 99 seemed to be a bit much if things were set on maximum. I pulled back the shock lever and when it went "twang" and released, she began bucking and trashing.
When the pulses went past ten, her eyes changed, and I could see that she was trying to smile around her gag. She rolled back her head and closed her eyes as she swayed with the shocks which were biting her ass and cunt and nipples as well as her pee hole, mouth, ass cheeks, and the upper muscles on her thighs. Somewhere around 19 or 20 she threw her head fully back, let out a long, extended groan and hung slack in her restraints. Juices were literally flowing down the insides of both of her legs.
At first I was a bit concerned that I had overdone it, but then I noticed that the only muscles that had not gone slack after her orgasm were the muscles of her right hand. She was still tightly clutching the drop safety firmly in her fist. I gave her a single pulse at low energy and she opened her eyes and looked at me. I smiled at her, and her lips formed - as best they could around the gag - "Thank you."
As I turned away from the cage, I could see a young woman leaning back against the wall in the relative darkness away from the displays. Her feet were braced against the floor and she had her hand down the front of her slacks. She was breathing rather loudly in that deep, recovering- from-an-orgasm sort of way. Her face flushed dark red as she caught my eye, and she quickly pulled her hand from her waistband and stepped rather unsteadily away.
The show closed at 1:00 am. I helped Shelly and her assistant release the girls from the "stages" on which they had performed. Shelly introduced me to each of them and explained that I was the one who had rigged the equipment and designed the safety interrupt. The girl with the bright blue eyes said, "What I really needed was a control to run the shocks higher. The only time I was able to get off was when you overrode the system somehow."
I said, "I could reset the programming to allow audience members to take it up to 25 rather than 10."
Three of the girls said, "Please do it!" The other three said, "No! I couldn't stand that."
I compromised and said "Shelly knows who is in which cage. I will change three of them. But I am resetting the override on those to the number 5 rather than the number 2, so if you see me outside your cage, you might be in for 55 rather than 25."
"I'll risk it," answered the blue-eyed blond.
"Couldn't you make it the 3?" said one of the other two.
"Maybe I will just activate the remote on it so I can punch in any number I want from my phone. That way Shelly doesn't have to worry about somebody accidently overriding things."
All six girls smiled at me and said, "Thank you."
After they had left, I told Shelly that it would only take me a few moments to make the programming changes to the pads. She answered, "Then I want you to do something for me."
"Anything within reason," I said, and began programming the pads. By the time I had finished with the sixth pad, I could no longer hear Shelly doing whatever it was that she was finishing up at the other end of the studio. After the last pad, I walked toward the back of the gallery and stopped. An additional cage had been moved into the very back of the studio..., and there was someone in it.
I walked over to the cage and there was a note taped to the keypad. It read, "W, I have to experience what this is like. I can't be in here during the performances because I have to be available to meet the people. I want you to take me to my limits and beyond. And then I want you to fuck me while I am still in bondage. That is the performance I had truly imagined when I first conceived this idea, but there is no way that kind of art could ever be publicly displayed - at least not in this town."
I took my time to appreciate the way that Shelly had bound herself - or more likely had allowed someone to bind her in the booth. Her legs were encased in thigh-high boots that were laced up the sides and appeared to be solidly attached to the floor of the cage. Her arms, encased in tight- fitting leather gloves that reached almost to her shoulders, were stretched high above her head and held widely apart on a spreader bar that was mounted firmly on a diagonal across the top of the cage. The black on her arms and legs highlighted the paleness of the skin of her abdomen. She didn't have ureter or mouth electrodes, but there were wired ass and pussy dildos held in place with the thin black leather straps of the supposed G string. In addition, black square contact electrodes were clearly visible on either side of each nipple as well as a pair on each ass cheek. There was no way that she got herself into this, and there was no way that she could get herself out of it unless someone released her.
She was wearing a full coverage bondage hood. The flaps over the eyes and mouth were closed. From the bulge, it appeared that there was also a ball gag under the closed mouth opening. The ear flaps were not closed, but there was a bright red ear plug in each ear that seemed to be held in place with soft wax.
There was nothing in her hands, so I looked for the safety drop. She had insisted I supply a spare, and I now realized that it must have been for this stage. It was on the floor of the cage, securely wrapped in tape, obviously intentionally disabled. She was serious when she said that she wanted me to take her to her limits and beyond.
I spent the next hour and a half playing her body like a fine musical instrument. Since I had a remote that did more than just change the number of pulses - which was not limited on the remote, I varied the frequency and added ramp variation to both the amplitude and frequency of the shocks. I also adjusted the relative timing so that the pulse hit her pussy a fraction of a second - or even a full second - before or after it hit her breasts. I also tried the cascade effect that hit her ass cheeks, ass, pussy and then breasts in rapid sequence.
And all the while, I kept her just short of orgasm. If it looked like she was going to cum, I backed off the intensity to minimum for a couple of rounds. She was pouring sweat and grunting and thrashing so violently that the cage was swaying slightly as she moved. Then she started yelling into her gag. It was impossible to tell for sure what she was saying, but it sounded an awfully lot like "Please! Please! Please! Please! Let me cum! Let me cum!"
Finally, I had pity on her - well not so much finally having pity on her as finally giving in to my own needs. I set the shock level to the lowest setting and the number on the remote to 999 and stepped into the cage with her. I removed the strap that held the front dildo in place and pulled it from her sopping cunt. Then pulling her toward me and crouching down slightly, I impaled her with my rock-hard member.
I could feel the slight tingling of the shocks as I stood there. Shelly immediately began pumping her hips and rocking against me. I ended up just reaching out with my hands and steading myself against the sides of the cage as she rode me violently standing up. She had asked me to fuck her while she was still in bondage, but the truth is that she was fucking me. I stood there and let her ride me as I went with her to a very strong orgasm.
When we finally finished, I stepped out of the cage and shut off the pulses. I let Shelly hang there, totally limp, for another five minutes or so before I re-entered the cage and began releasing her from the bondage. The last thing I did was to remove the hood and gag.
"The hell with meeting the public," she said emphatically after her mouth was clear. "Next week I am going to be in the seventh cage."
Her show ran for the rest of the summer, and yes, there were seven cages every Friday and Saturday night. They even added a Sunday matinee toward the end of the summer. Somehow the idea of BDSM performance art as a Sunday matinee seemed odd to me, but the gallery was filled to overflowing every Sunday afternoon.
In the fall, school resumed at the university and Shelly returned to teaching classes. The models must have told some of their fellow students about the cages, because I did have a flurry of orders for the safety switch. Either a significant number of the coeds were into self-bondage or they had boyfriends that they didn't totally trust with full control of electronic stimulation.
Then Shelly dropped by and invited me to her party, and I agreed. As I looked around the room full of people, I had a pretty good idea exactly who it was that Shelly wanted me to meet. There was one older gentleman who looked totally out of place.
It wasn't just that he was dressed differently from anyone else there. He had that forced casual kind of look that happens when a really up-tight suit dresses down to mingle with the masses. And it wasn't just that he had an overly well-groomed goatee that was so obviously dyed black. Primarily it was that he wasn't a part of the party. He was observing the party. He looked and acted exactly like a therapist waiting for a group session to finish its greeting time and get down to business.
After fortifying myself with a half-glass of dark ale, I walked over to him and said, "You must be Dr. Collins. I assume you are the person that Shelly said wants to meet me."
He looked startled, but answered, "Yes..., yes, that's why I'm here..., to meet you. You must be... ... 'W.'" He said my name like it was distasteful to him.
"You don't like the fact that I go by my initial, do you?" I asked him.
He answered, "No. I'm sorry. It just seems artificial and contrived."
"It's a long story," I answered. "I got stuck with it way back in grade school and there are some things that are with you forever."
He smiled back. Evidently we had gotten over whatever his hangup was with the alphabet.
"So, what do you need from me?" I asked.
"I understand that you write stories," he said. "I've read some of them... most of them - at least as many as I could find with an internet search." He paused as if thinking of how to phrase his next comments. "And I understand that you have met Shelly's models and they are impressed with you."
"I don't know if I impressed them, but yes, I have met them."
"I would like you to interview them and write their stories," he said. "Would you be willing to do that?"
"Why?" I replied. "They are a part of your research program. You already know their stories."
"But they lie to me," he answered with a touch of frustration and a slight whine in his voice. "I know they do. They withhold things and change things to what they think I want to hear. Or they just play with me out of spite. They think that I am judging them or something and so they aren't open with me."
"That's because you are judging them," I answered. "You are probably studying them because you think that they are sick or degenerate, and they can sense that."
"I can't change who I am," he responded rather defensively. "But I do care about them, and I think that we need to know more about what makes a masochist a masochist. If you can get them to open up and tell you their stories, I can use what they tell you in the stories to better understand them."
"Why do you want to do this?" I asked. He shifted his head back and forth for a moment before opening his mouth to answer me. I could tell I was going to get a rehearsed, canned answer, so I cut him off with, "Tell me the truth or I walk out of here and you never see me again."
He bristled, but answered rapidly, "Because I no longer think they are sick or degenerate."
"Wife or girlfriend?" I asked.
"Me," he answered, coloring a little and looking down at the floor. "With my wife - it only happened once. We were both more than a little tipsy and started making out in the living room like a couple of teenagers. After a short while, we were both naked. As we were starting to get into some deep kissing, she could taste cigarettes on my mouth. I had promised her I would quit smoking and had told her that I had. She suddenly said, 'If you are going to behave like a child, I am going to treat you like a child!' Then she pulled me across her lap and started spanking me with her slipper."
"It hurt like hell at first, but then suddenly it didn't hurt. It felt good. In fact, it was some of the most intense pleasure I had ever felt. My wife and I tried some spanking play a couple of times after that, but it just hurt. Neither of us really want to try it again, but after that I realized that it isn't that a masochist likes, or needs, to feel pain - at least not all of them. Something happens and for some reason a masochist's body interprets pain as pleasure. I want to learn how and why that happens."
He looked up at me as if he was expecting me to say something. I remained quiet and he whined, "But they won't tell me the truth! How can I get any insight into what might be going on in their bodies or minds if they won't tell me the truth?"
He stared at me with pleading eyes and asked, "Would you do this for me..., and for them? Will you talk to these six girls and write their stories? The stories would probably be worthy of posting or publishing, and I would have data that I otherwise couldn't get."
I took a deep breath and answered, "OK. Let me think about it. But you can't set up ANY of this. It all has to be set up through Shelly. And the girls need to know that I will be publishing the information so that the whole world - including you - would have access to it. If I do this, I will change their names and other pertinent information, and I don't tell you who is who unless they all agree to it after I have completed my stories."
He smiled at me and answered, "Agreed. Now, if you don't mind, I think I will leave. I really am not comfortable in situations like this."
As he got up and walked toward the door, I wondered to myself why it was that the therapists and shrinks always seemed to have more hangups and problems than any of their patients. I let that thought fade away as Shelly walked up to me. "Having fun?" she asked.
"Not yet," I answered. "But the party is still young."
"And there is time for more fun after the party is over," she stated with a smile. "I sort of wonder what it would be like to have normal sex with you?'
"All sex is normal," I replied. "Some of it just takes a little more work to pull off."
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END CHAPTER ONE OF EIGHT
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24.01.14
story continues in I, Masochist - Chapter 2: Abigail
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