Investigating a Case of BDSM

A CASE OF BDSM

INTRODUCTION

If you, dear reader, have come here expecting a page-turner, I have to apologise. A page-turner this is not. It is hardly a story. Perhaps the below is closer to poetry, not everyone's cup of tea. Like poetry, it is an exercise in imagination. If this makes you leave, I will respect this.

Here is the deal.

I will describe sixteen colour photographs. They cover an event that did in fact happen, in 1998. I will describe them in great detail. The images centre around a young woman, somewhere in her twenties. There is man in a supporting role and a dozen characters that make appearances. Some are merely extras.

The event is one of great emotion to the woman.

Your role as a reader is a bit like that of a detective, whose task it is to make sense of given information. You put yourself in a position to feel and interpret what the matter is. As you advance from photo to photo the plot will thicken and you will sense you have figured it out. But have you? Do you have a solid idea of what the woman felt? Did she have a choice? If so, what drives the woman to go and experience what she did? What about the man in the supporting role? If he did all that to her, why? The others? Why did they do what they did? The bystanders, why did they not act?

In an afterword, I will give you some more details of what has gone on and what I had to do with it. And why I didn't give you the photographs in the first place.

Picture no. 1 -- in portrait format

We see a woman. A young woman. She is standing in the centre of a large, brightly lit room. The only living soul, so it seems - but there's the photographer too. The floor is grey and bare and polished. We see a backwall, adorned with three modern art pieces. The wall is some ten to twelve meter further behind and the pictures are hard to evaluate. But it feels safe to say that the large room is a gallery space. So, the woman is standing in the centre of a gallery space. At her feet, we see a pair of scissors and over a dozen clothespins.

The woman then. We'd be most interested in her, wouldn't we? She is presented to us, showing from head to foot. She wears a pair of patent leather black heels and a simple black cotton dress, fairly short, but not exactly mini, with short sleeves and a fairly high neckline -- no cleavage visible. All in all, an unremarkable black dress. At stomach level, the dress shows the words CUT PIECE, two words, each on a separate line. They are crudely hand-painted on in yellow capitals. She does not wear stockings -- her legs are bare. The gloss on her legs suggests they are smooth and recently shaved.

Her arms cross behind her back. We see the fingers of her left hand just appearing from behind the small of her back (her right side, before you get confused), at the same level as the words CUT PIECE. The hands behind her back make her look vulnerable, defenceless.

The woman's vulnerability is enhanced by three other defining features. Firstly, her ankles are enveloped by leather straps. The two straps are linked by two metal eyes, thus closely linking the feet. The separation is five to ten cm, so she would have great difficulty walking without falling over. She may shuffle at best. Secondly, she wears a leather collar around her neck, with a couple of protruding D-rings. Lastly, but not least, her mouth is taped shut by gaffer tape.

We can't say much about her body yet. The dress obscures rather than enhances it. Her legs can be seen, are nice enough, but not remarkable, not 'thin.' 'Normal', we could say. Same for her arms. But don't get us wrong. The dress does not help defining it and we cannot say much.

But is she attractive? Certainly. This is attributable to what we haven't talked about yet, her most telling part: her head, her face. She looks directly at the camera, judging by the one blue eye we see. The other eye is hidden behind a lock of hair; her hair is mid-blond and a touch dishevelled, but in an attractive, carefree manner. Her gaze is hard to judge. One thing for certain is that she is not smiling. How could she, with her mouth taped shut? But whether she is composed or nervous? My money is on nervous, but maybe I am projecting.

Has she consented to being here like this? Was she free to not consent? Not sure.

We estimate her age as second-half twenties. Could be mid-twenties, who knows?

Let's waste no time and consult the second image.

Picture no. 2 -- in portrait format.

Here it comes.

We see the same room, but from a different vantage point. Lower, in particular. We see the beams of the ceiling, suggestive of an industrial building. We see a rucksack in the background now, on the floor next to a chair, the back of which doubles as a coat hanger. The woman is no longer alone. She shares centre-stage with a man. They both face the camera, though slightly turned to each other and not looking at the camera. She stands on our left, he on our right. The man wears a black T-shirt with the website address of a pornsite, and black jeans complete with belt. The legs of his jeans appear to hide shafts of boots. He is two or three decades older than she is, judging by a hairline that has receded far; his hair is long, combed back and brownish-grey. He wears a grey goatee and a shaded pair of glasses. He is trim. The woman's arms are in the same position as before, so we offer the hypothesis that they are bound, just like her ankles.

The pair of them are involved in an action. That is, in his left hand he holds the pair of scissors that we saw on the floor in the previous picture, now positioned near her chest, her left breast specifically. His right hand is near there too, but the picture is blurry here -- he must have moved during the exposure time of the picture. The clothespins are still at her feet.

Their faces... He is intent on his work with the scissors. She looks down at what he is doing. She looks taken aback or embarrassed, or maybe just tentative, cautious, uncertain of what is going on -- we cannot see her eyes very clearly.

Indeed, we are as yet uncertain what precisely he is doing.

Picture no. 3 -- in portrait format

In the next picture, the woman is alone again. We see her in half-profile from her left, in front of a gallery wall we haven't yet seen, a sidewall, sparsely filled with artworks. She is approximately five meter away from this wall and still ten to twelve meter from the backwall we saw in the first picture.

The pair of scissors are back at her feet, next to a dozen or so clothespins. And if we look well, there is also a round piece of textile, black cloth.

Where that piece came from is immediately obvious when we look at her and her dress. Her left breast is partially exposed where the piece of textile has been cut out of her dress. And we see that a clothespin has been placed on her nipple.

Her arms are still behind her back. We still only see the tips of one or two fingers of her right hand protruding from behind her back. Though we still cannot see any wrist straps, our conviction that they are retrained that way has grown.

The left side of face is obscured from view by locks of her hair. Her mouth is still taped shut. She looks straight ahead, i.e., not at the camera. Her gaze, well... it could be interpreted as amused. We can't be sure, as her left eye and mouth are invisible.

Perhaps now is the time to wonder about what the situation is. The woman will be in the company of at least two people: the man we saw in the previous picture and the photographer. But if the space is indeed a gallery, chances are there is an audience. The man and the photographer, male or female, are they friends? Is either her lover? We are guessing. What then is the nature of the action they are engaged in? Is it play or serious? Is she free?

Picture no. 4 -- in landscape format

We have news: a few questions are answered in the fourth picture. This shows the woman from the same side as the previous picture. The vantage point has moved; just a bit more from the side and a touch closer -- we cannot see her legs. This time both of her eyes are obscured from view - her hair is in the way. For the first time we can positively ascertain the length of her hair -- it just about reaches halfway down her shoulder blades.

We observe that a second hole has been cut in her dress, one which reveals her belly button. The cut separates the words CUT and PIECE. A clothespin has been placed on her skin there. The one on her left breast has been moved from the nipple to an inch below it. Why? We can only guess.

As to the main question this picture answers: it shows three people we have not seen before. A man is almost fully hidden by our woman. He is standing near the sidewall with the art works (including some kitchen utensils!) Then there is a woman in her forties standing at our woman's front, a bit to her right, facing her, who is busy cutting the dress near the collar; we can't see exactly. The woman cutting is a touch less slender than our woman, just a touch, and dressed in an embroidered white blouse with short sleeves and short tartan skirt; her thighs are outside the frame. Her hair is in two pigtails above her ears. She wears a clear touch of rouge on either cheekbone and red lipstick. Her back arches backward and she is very concentrated on the job she is doing. Then there is a heavyset man with combed back hair, sideburns and a moustache, dressed in loose-fitting jeans and short-sleeved shirt with vertical stripes in shades of blue. He stands directly behind our woman and is bent over, so that his head is just below her shoulders. It seems he is wearing a little smile. He is busy cutting the hem of her dress.

What can be concluded?

There appear to be at least five people at this event, the first man we saw, with the black T-shirt, the photographer and the present three. (Okay, if you insist, it could be that the photo camera rotates between the persons and there are only four people present.)

We have seen at least three different people cutting her dress up.

A few more little answers then... The words CUT PIECE will refer to Yoko Ono's famous art performance in the early sixties, where strangers cut off her clothes until she was naked. Who knows the same will be happening to our woman? Now the fact that this seems to happen in an art gallery makes sense.

Picture no. 5 -- in landscape format

We presently hit upon the first of the pictures that can be categorised as Porn. Mild porn, depending on the taste of the beholder, but porn nonetheless.

It shows the back of our woman, from mid-back to mid-thigh, in half-profile to the left. The other woman with the tartan mini-skirt is just about visible behind our woman, standing very nearby.

This picture provides an answer to a key question we have been asking since the beginning: are our woman's arms restrained behind her back? We concluded: almost certainly, yes. This answer is now confirmed. She wears leather straps around her wrists, similar to the ankle restraints and these bands must be joined.

Why would this picture be classed as pornographic? Because we see her bare buttocks through two elongated vertical slots that someone has cut away from the dress. Our woman is (and was?) not wearing panties. These long holes start at the top of the buttocks and end five or ten cm above the hem.

Suspect no.1: the heavy-set man with the blue striped shirt we saw in the previous picture, as he is the only person we have yet seen that was concentrated on our woman's hind area.

We can see that our woman has pretty juicy buttocks, just about the max a slender woman may have. We see the two thighs side by side, by a length of some three to four inches. The skin appears to be smooth and soft. No blemishes. An endearing detail, a secondary fold just below the left buttock. Enticing, mouth-watering!

A great image along the way to what we suspect is a fully denuded woman. Forced or voluntary? Or something in-between. Or both? Stranger things have been true.

Picture no. 6 -- landscape format

The picture shows two additional people surrounding our woman. She is standing quite near the sidewall now. Just her torso and head are shown and occupy the right side of the picture. The two new people are both men.

The left side of the picture is dominated by a man in a red T-shirt. He is all but facing the camera. The shirt has a black image of a Betty Boop-like diva printed upon it, with her back towards the viewer, but her head coyly turned towards us. His torso leans to his right, away from our woman, and he bows his head; we see the top of his head of short brown hair, which is thinning considerably. The armpit of his left arm is pretty sweaty. His left upper arm is raised to head level, his lower points downward. Presume his right armpit is sweaty too, but that arm is clenched shut against his body. He has tattoos on both bare forearms. On his horizontal right forearm, directly below his raised left, a dragon, tail pointing to his elbow and snout towards his hand. On his left, a mushroom, stem pointing to his hand. With his right hand, he holds the material of the dress, at nipple level of her right breast, but closer to her breastbone. The clothespin on the left breast is now located above the nipple, so it has been moved again! We can just make out a clothespin on the right breast on or just above the nipple. With his left hand, the Betty-Boop man holds the scissors and cuts some material there, right above his right hand holding the fabric. He is cutting in the area where someone cut a round hole at her right breast similar to that at her left. This man appears to wear a little smile.

At the very bottom of the picture, we see a third clothespin, above her navel. The characters C and T in yellow paint are visible above the hole in the dress, the 'U' is hidden in the folds.

Hidden behind our woman to her right, we see a second man, wearing glasses and a goatee. He is dressed in a blue open-collar shirt and looking on amused -- yes, this man is certainly smiling.

Our woman, finally. Her hair is now in a ponytail on her back, held together by a clothespin. Her face looks especially pretty, like a Madonna! Her left ear is on full display. Beautiful too! But her eyes are closed, so we cannot fathom what is going on in her mind. She looks serene, in our opinion. Like the Virgin, perhaps.

Picture no. 7- portrait format

Our woman is once again shown from head to toe, front-facing, in half-profile from her left.

The general perspective is into the corner between the left sidewall and the backwall (with the rucksack of picture no. 2 in evidence again). The woman stands about ten meter from the back and six from the left sidewall. We don't see the ceiling, but instead we see the expanse of the grey, polished floor.

(Look, we know these details will not be necessary in everyone's eye. However, we want these descriptions to be of almost forensic quality, so that the interested [obsessed...] reader may conjure up every detail. Yes, the woman is the main interest, as are the people doing something to her, but the scene is only whole with the full context. The devil is in the details. Back to the picture...)

The picture shows us yet another new character in this play. In profile, we see a handsome man of thirty to forty years old, with long, auburn hair and a small goatee. (Yes, goatees all around!) He wears an oversized white T-shirt with a band or celebrity photograph -- two identical heads, Ziggy Stardust-like - printed high on his back. He wears a checked knee-length pair of shorts, white socks and Reebok half-high trainers, white with a blue rim at the top.

He kneels down on his left knee, to the immediate left of our woman, with the right knee up, as if he is proposing. Underneath him, a tangled piece of plastic yellow rope or wire is spread out. Not sure what its function is or was. We have not seen it before and won't see it again.

With his left hand, he pulls at the hem of her dress. With his right, he is cutting the fabric at the small of the woman's back. Conceivably, he has made his way all the way up from the hem, a stretch of some fitty cm. Less than a thumb-length away from where he has reached, we see the fingers of the woman's right hand appear.

The woman... Her situation has been progressed significantly since the previous picture. The number of clothespins at her feet is down to seven. We see some six pieces of her dress scattered around.

More importantly, although the shoulders and neckline of her dress are still intact, her entire chest has been cut bare, down to five to ten cm below her belly button, revealing both of her breasts. The right one is adorned by two clothespins, one immediately above her nipple, one directly below. The one on her left breast is still there, two inches above her nipple but at the extreme right of that breast, so, near her breastbone.

A small hole of some one-inch diameter has been cut around her labia and each of her labia majora has landed a clothes-pin.

Both of her thighs are fully visible, through longitudinal slots cut in the dress from the hem up to the loins.

Her face... Both eyes are open but she looks vacantly at the floor before her. Vacantly? She looks somewhat uncomfortable. Is she in pain? Is she tired? Trying to shut out any embarrassment?

Timewise, we have no idea how much time has passed between the first picture, when her dress was still intact, and this one. Ten minutes? An hour?

Picture no. 8 -- in portrait format

The next picture shows the woman almost in full left profile, from below the knee to the top of her head, shown against the sidewall.

A man stands behind her, almost against her. Yet another new man. The man is taller than her by half a head. He wears a black or very dark blue polo shirt and slacks. He has a pager on his belt. He may be the gallery operator, but we don't know; in contrast to the other people we saw so far, his face profile has been pixelated. We can make out that he has short greased-back, mid-blond hair and is beardless.

His left arm is raised right up and his fingers are bent, slightly cramped, but we don't see his right arm or what he may be using it for.

The woman, you are asking, what about her? Well, her mouth is still taped shut, but now she also wears a blindfold. Wait, it is exactly the same colour as her dress, so we may conjecture someone has blindfolded her with a piece of her own dress! This is well possible, as her dress is just rags at this point. The neckline, shoulders and sleeves are still intact, but the entire left side of her dress is gone. We see that the front of her left thigh is covered by a length of the remaining fabric and we see a piece of the hemline behind her left buttock, but the dress has become much less of a dress since the previous picture. Therefore, we may admire almost her complete left side, from the knee up to just above her breast.

She is a pretty girl. And entirely powerless.

Both breasts are visible through the large gap that lays her entire torso bare.

With regard to the clothespins, there is an extra one on her left breast, directly on the nipple. And there is one on her belly button.

Picture no. 9 -- in portrait format

Wow, this picture is one unlike the previous ones! Porn, without a doubt. A close-up of her vulva, no more, no less! We see the very tops of our woman's thighs, guarding her vulva. We see two clothespins, but they are not the very pair that were clipped to either of her outer labia, two pictures ago. Presently, one is located on her vulva, right where her thigh meets it, at least ten cm above her slit. The pin is shown in all its naked glory. Every fibre is visible, as are its frayed edges. The second pin is clipped to her clitoris, her hood or one of her labia -- we cannot be certain, as we lack the overview. This pin is a lot smoother. If you like, the coarser clothespin is having the kinder impact.