=8=

“Please,” she says without actually saying the word aloud, or, for that matter, making any sound at all, but using the position of her body alone to communicate her meaning, like a totemic hieroglyphic, to convey the message: 

“Please, beat me harder.”

Neena is bound in the usual way, that is to say, her arms pulled overhead, wrists crossed, cuffed, and a chain stretching upward into a darkness as infinitely regressive as outer space. She has been stretched to the extreme, hoisted onto tippy-toe, and she takes the expected, but no less so for that, delightful, mincing little half-steps, forward and back, backward and fore, that advance her no place at all. She has asked, previously, if her shoes might be removed: large Plexiglas platforms in the heel of each of which a green Gloster canary is imprisoned—but this wish of hers, to her great disappointment, has predictably been denied.

Her torso, stretched taut, reveals her ribcage, each rib in aesthetic high-relief, alternating light and shadow, a xylophonic provocation, illuminated by off-stage spotlights, which tempt the viewer to imagine the severe fetishistic constriction of her breath, as if she might be wearing a transparent corset, and who can say for certain that she isn’t?  

What you can say is that she isn’t entirely naked, only very nearly so. She is wearing a platinum g-string featuring a tiny “v” of lycra mesh that does little to conceal, and much more to frame, the plump cleft peach of her shaved mound, which is moistened, periodically, with atomized camphor held by a seemingly disembodied hand emerging from the surrounding shadows. The ultra-thin, nearly invisible string that keeps the scrap of underwear from falling to her ankles seems drawn over her sharp white hipbones with nothing more than a cursive pencil line deftly executed by a left-handed Marcel Duchamp. [Note to Pinker: Was Duchamp left-handed? Please verify].

She opens her mouth to moan, but, of course, no sound comes forth, her mouth merely opening wide and closing, like the mouth of a goldfish in poorly oxygenated water; thus, it is that she “moans” when, exhausted, she is unable to maintain her tiptoe balance for any reason, whether it’s a blow from the heavy bullwhip that periodically falls or from simple exhaustion, for her position requires unceasing physical discipline and one-point mental focus, and, occasionally, her mind drifts off into a weary haze and consequently her heels drop an eighth-of-an-inch towards the cold blue tiles of an otherwise transparent floor.

It’s just such an interlude of quiet moaning that Neena experiences now, a period that is neither here nor there, a limbo within a limbo, without a climax, and therefore, perhaps, all the more excruciating for that.           

Someone—or something—whips her, clearly that must be the case, but who or what it is that administers this flogging, no one knows. The whip appears and disappears, as does the atomizer, wielded by a seemingly disembodied hand. It is the very anonymity and relativity that is what is most provocative about this beating, and the real source of its erotic frisson, to be specific: its utter incomprehensibility.

Whether there is real pain or not, or if it is all merely simulated, a performance, that, too, is irrelevant, (to the observer in any event), but what does interest whoever might be present, although there is no one present at the moment (but you), is that Neena is posing as if there is pain, or, if not exactly pain, as if she is feeling something,  that she isn’t a cold, unemotional, frigid bitch.

Is there real damage being done to her body, is this damage visible on the pale, previously unblemished flesh, and is this even a concern (and to whom?), aesthetically or sexually, or both, and why does this seem to be the last thing to consider in this particular “intervention”?

We don’t know.

Common sense informs us that it would be impossible to suppose that a lead-weighted bullwhip braided into existence from strips of salt-cured leather and quarter-inch copper cable, and wielded, as it is, with both expertise and savagery, by either a mechanical or a human agent, upon the body of a nearly nude, helplessly bound, delicate and vulnerable young woman such as Neena would not have disastrous effects.

There are, thus, upon closer inspection, all the expected alarmingly garish wounds, ie. the ripped flesh and exposed muscle, the blood freely flowing, and bones that actually break under the force of blows that strike with a surprising solidity, no matter how many times they’re struck. The idea, roundly put, seems to be to ruin the girl’s body entirely, while leaving, untouched, the agonic spirituality of the suffering angelic face, or suggestive of something equally ridiculous.

What eventually becomes clear is that it would be a simple matter to end this scene with a single flourish, such as laying open Neena’s carotid with an off-hand whip stroke, but that possibility, for reasons previously alluded to, will never be entertained, and so the beating continues, as it has, with a brutality so methodical and disinterested that it has all come to seem quite in the ordinary course of things, like, perhaps, the operation of a printing press.

Neena, likewise, continues posing, as if it mattered, as if someone wandered in to watch, and one can say, without any certainty whatsoever, that no one has; but really one wouldn’t know, how could one, and so one makes no speculation on the matter at all (even though we have), but continues, as does Neena, to behave, vaguely, as if it were possible that someone were watching, which, theoretically, it always is.

And as always, just before the viewer, whether present or not, might be reasonably expected to direct his or her attention elsewhere, the joints of Neena’s arms, extended to the absolute limit by her extreme position, finally “pop” out of their sockets, first the left and then the right, causing additional pain to register on her classically beautiful face. But this is not to be mistaken for the climax of this interlude, (oh no don’t mistake it for that!), as the whole thing goes on and on indefinitely, as does the hypothetical viewer’s attention, whether present or not.

What we have here is a model of endless foreplay—or is it excruciating frustration?—such as might be a model of an obsessive sexual fantasy. One simply notes that Neena’s exposed armpits, of which she is mystifyingly (under the circumstances) self-conscious, are painted yellow and violet, left and right respectively, with a kind of UV sensitive paint that glows when illuminated by black light, as it does now, as all the spotlights, suddenly, go out.