Pink Plastic

Lindsay floated, or did she?

All was dark around her. Her body had no weight. She couldn't move; not just her arms or legs, but her whole body. It felt as if she'd been poured into a cast of immobility.

Every finger, every tiny muscle was locked in space. Her head felt as if gripped in a vice. Her legs were spread almost impossibly wide, it seemed, but were they? She could not see or hear.

She was weightless; her lack of motion was absolute.

Lindsay felt hot. The first pangs of claustrophobia seeped into her darkened world. She screamed, she was sure of it. But the sound didn't reach her stuffed ears. It might not even have left her throat, as her mouth was blocked.

Maybe her voice just rang inside her skull.

If you can't move a finger, if you feel no weight and float in darkness, if you can't even hear your own voice, do you exist?

The drowsiness cleared.

It brought an overwhelming urge to run. She needed to run. She had to get out! White panic flashed through her deep black universe. Oh God, where was she? What did they do to her? What had she let them do?

Somewhere deep inside her a heart raced -- was it her heart?

Lindsay screamed again. Or did she?

Hours must have passed, or minutes. Suddenly the blackness was torn away. Glaring light rushed into eyes she couldn't close. Sheer bolts of pain smashed into her skull.

But no one would know, as she could not scream into the world. She couldn't flee, she couldn't fight. A pearl of liquid formed in each of her wide-open eyes.

Slowly her eyesight returned.

She saw a grossly obese pink creature hanging belly-up, suspended by a myriad of almost invisible threads. It floated in a white egg-shaped room that had no horizon. It had no corners, no ceiling, and no floor.

The wall in front of her must be a mirror, reflecting this pink cartoon creature. It hung in a web, cast in thick gleaming plastic -- crazily curvy, its legs stretched wide, knees to the sides. Its back was frozen into an arch, making two pink polished globes jutting out. They were nipple-crowned porn-tits of inhuman proportion.

And as she focused, there was another set of breasts behind it, and another... a row of fat tits down her chest and belly.

The creature's arms were spread like a bird in flight, but were they arms, or legs at all? There were pink hooves at their ends -- trotters, she thought, wondering where the word came from.

Then she focused on the head.

It stared straight at her, its hairless skull a polished pink ball. There was a snout; there were flappy ears, tiny eyes. And she knew. The creature was a pig, a huge, fat sow, cast in pink plastic.

Only her eyes might betray the human being inside.

She saw the red ball in its mouth, like an apple, lined by white pearls of teeth, and the wet pink of gums. The shock that she herself was this spider-sow struggled through her disbelief -- taking its time to plough through layers of inertia.

A figure came into her line of vision -- a black woman in a cream-colored business suit.

She walked upside down -- or floated, rather. There was no floor, remember, no ceiling. The woman smiled and made a mock greeting, nodding her head. Her lips moved, but Lindsay could not hear her.

The woman arrived at the inverted head. She touched the shining ball.

Lindsay felt nothing.

She could not move her lips, nor shut her eyes. It did not take long before she knew she could not close her vagina or her anus either.

She was totally open to anyone who might visit her.

The black woman bored her intense gaze into Lindsay's. Then the door of total darkness closed again. All was night once again. There was no light, no sound, no touch. All was closed, except for her wide-open lower entrances.

She felt lips kissing her tender pussy.

A tongue ran up and down her swollen slit. A finger entered her bowels. It slowly fucked the weak pink flesh inside. Lindsay moaned. She could not move. She was just a receptacle, a numb, shining hull, slowly filling up with the hot lava of helpless arousal. A stiffening clit slipped out of its hood.

It throbbed against the intruder's tongue.

Lindsay felt like a pink porn robot. It was like nothing she ever felt before. Moaning again she painted the intruder's face with her gushing juices.

It was the first in an endless line of bottled-up, helpless orgasms.

Lindsay had no control over her climaxes at all; she was a fucking machine -- a set of screaming genitals. The contrast between her slick, numb outside and her seething core kept her in constant arousal. She was like a volcano, she thought, seemingly asleep to the outside world, but forever on the brink of explosion.

Lindsay didn't know how many tongues, fingers and objects penetrated her that night (day? morning? afternoon?). She just screamed her desperate orgasms into an echoless tunnel of darkness.

Then she slipped past her exhaustion, tumbling into blessed unconsciousness.

***

Lindsay awoke.

Her body was a sore lump, the pain centering on her pussy and asshole. Her limbs felt paralyzed. She lay on a bed in a room with closed curtains, a hotel room, she supposed. The bed was soft, only a sheet covered her body. She moved and groaned; not a muscle seemed without pain.

Her jaws hurt.

And when she tried to sit up, her whole body started to tremble without control.

Lindsay uncovered herself and stared at the many red creases that crisscrossed her skin. From her chin down to her toes her entire body was marked with little lines. They must be the result of the tight bandages and the shining plastic that had covered the floating sow she'd seen in the mirror -- the pink pig that had been her.

A hot surge of indignation rose inside her.

The woman at the restaurant never told her it would be like this, did she? Modelling, she'd said, or hostessing. "They are looking for pretty girls," she'd said, while pressing a generous tip and a business card in her hand. "To help out in the weekends, you know? At art shows, cultural things. Would you be interested? See them. They pay nicely."

Being a grossly underpaid waitress, it had been all she'd needed to hear.

The address on the business card was a hip and tastefully restored warehouse at the harbor. A woman received her in a glass-encased office, and she was black. Everyone she saw in the building was black.

"Call me Gloria," the woman in the salmon Chanel suit had said, smiling a flash of white teeth. She'd poured her a glass of ginger tea while she explained the job, talking about art galleries and cultural happenings.

"Lindsay," the woman went on at last. "I shall be quite open with you. The position we offer is not a hostess's or a waitress's job. We have been looking for girls who would be both beautiful and talented enough to meet our expectations. And daring.

"Are you a daring girl, Lindsay?"

Lindsay blew softly on her steaming tea.

What she heard was at once vague and intriguing. Talented for what? What talents could she possibly have to please this woman? And what about this 'daring'?

"But I'm not artistic at all," she said, the crude edge of her voice irritating her in this refined atmosphere.

The woman laughed a deep, gutsy laugh. Oh, but she wasn't looking for an artist, she said; there were so many artists already, she was flooded with artists.

No, what she was looking for was art itself.

Lindsay guessed at what the woman might be aiming at.

"I have no experience in modeling either," she said.

The deep laugh sounded again.

"But, darling. You won't be the model. You will be the piece of art, proudly exhibited, the focus of attention. Now please drink your tea and I shall explain myself."

Lindsay took a sip; the tea still burned her tongue.

The woman's bejeweled hand rested on her knee, radiating warmth. Lindsay couldn't take her eyes away from her dark gaze, and the generous lips that shaped words she hardly understood.

"There is this little society," the woman said. "A female society of art lovers. Not art as in stuffy paintings or boring sculpture. No, we are, let's say, socially engaged."

The woman exaggerated the last words by separating the syllables. She also made quote-marks in the air.

"Artists from our midst," she went on, "create what we call socio-political installations that inspire people to reflect on their position in society, and how to improve on that."

Lindsay knew nothing about art other than Norman Rockwell illustrations and Bob Ross paintings. She never went to museums or galleries. But she'd heard these artsy-fartsy people on TV, using all this mumbo-jumbo when they explained why a certain mountain of junk should cost millions.

Which brought her to the one thing she understood.

"What about the money?" she asked.

The woman had smiled at that and patted her knee.

"What do you make, let's say in a month as a waitress?" she asked.

Lindsay told her.

"That is with tips?"

Lindsay nodded.

"Double it," the woman said.

***

Things had gone fast after that. Lindsay had called in sick on Saturday morning, and taken a cab to a huge marble-and-glass building down town, where she was ushered into the basement. There had only been women there, waiting for her, young black women in splattered overalls, artists maybe?

Strong they'd been, and carefree.

They'd smiled and asked her to undress. Then they'd painted her naked skin with a thick, clear goo and swathed her torso and limbs with long, wide strips of bandage. Even her head was bandaged, and her hair tucked away.

A blindfold was pulled over her eyes 'to protect them' as a woman said. In the darkness that followed, her body was pulled left and right. Hands tugged, machines hissed, and at every tug, the bandages got tighter, stiffer, hotter.

Just when panic hit her, she could see again, and her mouth was freed from the bandages. But all she saw, was the upper parts of the walls end a spotlight-spangled ceiling. Her head had been pulled back and rendered immobile.

"What... what are you doing?" she asked the ceiling, coughing and swallowing.

A straw was pushed between her lips. She sucked fresh water from it.

"It's all right, honey, you're doing fine," a voice said.

Was she? Did she?

She sucked more water and felt her panic flow away. The sweaty hotness that threatened to choke her seemed to dissipate. She relaxed against the tight cast that gripped her entire body. A sweet drowsiness replaced her agitation.

She took another deep draught of water.

An hour later, Lindsay was blindfolded again and carried along corridors, unable to move by herself. She felt the tugging of an elevator, and soon she floated, not knowing anymore what might be up or down, left or right. All Lindsay remembered after that was a sleepy darkness that descended on her.

***

Staring at the hotel room's ceiling, Lindsay wondered what to call what happened to her. Did she agree, or had they drugged her? Was she raped? Had she protested? Things were all so... fluid. The women had been nice to her; she hadn't been hurt, had she? Whenever things got tough, they'd helped her.

They had all been women. Women don't rape, do they?

'You will be the piece of art,' the woman at the office, Gloria, had told her. 'Proudly exhibited, center of attention.'

Ah yes, but 'proudly?'

Lindsay started crying.

When the last wrecking sobs subsided, she again looked around. They must have dumped her here, after peeling the plastic off her body. The room was a suite, rather, and quite luxurious. On the table, next to the bed, lay an envelope. It contained a swab of dollars and a tiny card that said:

"Thank you, little white sow. My black sisters feel much better now."

Shocked by the words, her fingers fumbled with the notes. She could not keep her waitress's mind from counting them. It was five thousand dollars. The woman had been right; it was twice what she made in a month, including tips.

So, she was a whore now.

The woman, Gloria, had turned her into a plastic receptacle for the frustrations of black women, and she hadn't protested. She'd taken a cab there, by herself, and repeatedly agreed she was fine.

But she hadn't been, had she? Ah well, she shouldn't have been. They made her into a subject of power hungry lust and twisted desire, and all she could think of was money. Anyone who'd felt the need could stick a tongue or a finger into her, the gross pink white sow woman -- a dildo or even a cock?

Many did, again and again. And she had come like a crazed sex maniac, again and again.

There was no need to deny it now: the money they'd paid for it, was a small fortune for her. She knew she should feel offended, disgusted; she should scream, she should let go of the money and run -- to the nearest police station, maybe.

But she didn't.

She felt nothing -- no hurt, no offense, nothing.

The pink plastic must have seeped into her soul.

Lindsay fell back on the bed, but new tears failed to come. So, was this the truth? Was she a whore if she kept the money, a slut at heart because she'd enjoyed the fucking -- and the intoxicating, primitive satisfaction of a bundle of banknotes?

But she'd been, well, sort of raped...hadn't she?

Lindsay sighed, watching her hands close white-knuckled around the money. Who was she kidding?

She was a whore. A prostitute.

She inhaled and held her breath, but nothing came -- no indignation, no tears, no pain. On the contrary -- a great calm descended on her.

To discover what you are can have a soothing effect, even if you abhor what you find. It may settle the turmoil of uncertainty and blow away the mist that forever troubled your vision. It might not be the answer you hoped for, but an answer it is.

Lindsay tried to get off the bed and the floor seemed to heave. Her head floated. Her knees hardly supported her. She sat down again and closed her eyes. What had she let them do to her?

And what else would they do if she let them?

The question popped up to her own dismay. Of course, she wouldn't! There wouldn't be a next time, ever. Through a storm of returning indignation, Lindsay knew that she'd never again let herself be caught this way. It had been a weak moment, hadn't it? She'd gone to the interview because of the dreariness of her existence, the shabbiness of her life, her utter poverty.

Yes.

The woman had taken advantage of her despair.

Surely.

But what about the money?

Her job was a joke. In the four years she worked at the restaurant, there had been one single raise of fifty cents an hour. At twenty-six she earned hardly more than a boy delivering newspapers. Without tips, she would never be able to pay the rent of her tiny, downtrodden apartment.

She hardly could as it was.

This money she held was a small fortune. It could set her free. She laughed ironically at the notion. By selling herself she set herself free?

The black women would chuckle at the paradox.

***

Lindsay sighed and again tried to master the floor.

She did a few steps and felt the dizziness leave. Her head cleared. Her legs held her up. She found the bathroom and emptied her bladder.

Then she saw herself in the mirror.

My God, how awful she looked. Her face was covered in a thick salve. Where she removed it, the skin was red. It must be because of the latex they painted on her face. The cream must be meant to repair the damage.

Goddammit! God-awful monsters to do this to her.

Lindsay stared at her face for a while. Then she stepped into the shower and took a long, hot bath. When she got out, she dried herself.

Wondering for the first time how she would ever be able to leave, being totally naked, she walked back into the room and opened a closet. The long-sleeved dress inside was exactly her size. So were the panties, pantyhose and the chemise and soft slip to protect her skin. They covered her marked body. Beside that they were quite fashionable.

In fact, they were better than anything she ever wore.

Lindsay slipped into the moderately heeled pumps. Then she walked over to the vanity mirror in the bathroom. She covered her reddish face with a nice make-up foundation she found. While doing her eyes and lips, she saw the big dark sunglasses.

"Thank you," she murmured, donning them before leaving the room.

***

The next morning, she called in sick again.

Staying in her apartment, she watched the red lines and the ruddiness of her face clearing quickly. Soon all that was left was a sweet bundle of dollars -- and the slight nudging of guilt at the back of her mind.

Slight.

How could she be this indifferent?

Dilemmas have a way of paralyzing people. Of course, they offer choices, and there always is one choice that we consider morally superior to the others. But let's be honest, isn't this just a rich man's philosophical exercise?

Lindsay had probably been raped and abused. And yet she pushed her brain to find all kinds of excuses to make her believe it hadn't been as bad as that. She started convincing herself that she'd been, well, just working. That she'd been a kind of a piece of art, say, a part of something maybe political, something cultural.

Can we blame someone who'd been exploited all her life, robbed of any opportunity, taken advantage of and underpaid, that she refuses to close this one, unique window on grabbing at least some money -- this one opportunity to escape stinking poverty?

Lindsay wasn't stupid, nor insensitive. She saw the moral dilemma. She knew she had choices. Keeping the money was a choice, and yet, it wasn't, was it?

That evening the phone rang, shaking Lindsay out of her circle-like thinking. It was Gloria, her voice all velvet. She praised Lindsay for helping make this important event such a great success. 'Event' she called it.

Lindsay 'd been perfect, the woman went on. People had congratulated her, blah, blah and so on -- and on. Not one question about how Lindsay might feel, no excuse, nothing.

Lindsay didn't answer, even after the woman fell silent.

"Are you there, honey?" she asked.

Lindsay cut the connection. She sat staring at the little box in her hand for minutes. Then she undressed, showered and went to bed.

Why had she cut the connection? It had been an impulse. Did it mean she'd decided? Had she really broken with the woman? Was it a 'no?'

She loved to believe it.

When the black woman called her again, three days of brain-numbing servitude at the restaurant had passed, topped off by exhausted, lonesome nights at her hot, airless apartment.

Of course, her days had seemed worse than ever; the customers were ruder, the manager meaner, the tips smaller. Her only escape had been the crazily expensive leather jacket she bought from the money, but hardly anyone seemed to notice it, let alone compliment her on it.

She sat in her old, overstuffed chair, painful feet up, listening to the voice in the little metal box. There was a new offer, even better, and she didn't turn it down. She even apologized for her rude behavior from before.

Lindsay decided she could not go on living the way she had.

She'd be a machine either way, wouldn't she? Why not be a whoring machine and go places, earning a lot of money? Be honest: what was she now? A serving machine, chatting up fat sexist guys for a tip, making ten times less in ten times the hours.

And wasn't it just as degrading?

Sure, presenting your body for paid abuse might seem something altogether different from serving food and drinks in a restaurant.

But to Lindsay it didn't feel so different at all.

Of course, she could never tell her friends or family, but did she really have friends or family that cared at all? An image of a fat, doughy face and an obese body on a couch popped into her mind; another of an unshaven, dirty man, lying drunk in his own vomit.