Moral Philosophy - part 2

A story about being behind glass walls, able to look, but never touch

This is the concluding part of a two part story, read the beginning here:

Moral Philosophy - part 1

---

The space I’ve stumbled into is well lit, lined with industrial-looking pipes of various diameters. It rumbles with the low ambient hum of distant fans and the pulse of pumping. It looks like a maintenance corridor. Although I’m still throbbing, I decide to button up my jeans and investigate further.

After about twenty steps the narrow corridor turns right. I gingerly poke my head around the corner, with the guilty foreboding that comes with being somewhere I know I’m really not meant to be. But it’s too late, immediately I’m seen. There’s someone half-way down the corridor. I stop, raising my hands apologetically, but see they’re not waving me away, but beckoning me closer. I advance timidly, wiping my sticky fingers on the back of my trousers as discreetly as I can.

I approach the figure cautiously, keeping a respectful distance. Whoever it might be looks like someone has carelessly mislaid their own shadow. The stranger is clad completely in black, in a jumpsuit and balaclava that covers every part of their body, save a small gap for their eyes. Her physique is lithe and feminine, with a small but obvious bust. Her guise would make me seriously worry I’d just stumbled into the sights of a ruthless assassin — were it not for the ‘20s style Flapper turban perched jauntily on her head, its black satin dome elegantly decorated with a fine brocade of silver thread.

“You found the performance arousing,” she comments, in the tone of voice that’s more a statement rather than a question.

My response is to immediately blush, and grimace with an embarrassed smile.

“No need to be shy,” she continues, “I’ll let you into a little secret. All the occupants of the cube are all volunteers. The man you saw in the cube before coming here, he was masturbating in the empty cubicle in the men’s bathroom when the hidden door opened. I offered him a chance to try the cube for himself, he was very eager to experience it.” 

“You’re the artist?” I splutter.

She looks at me, I sense myself being evaluated. It is like how I imagine a bar-code might feel.

“Can I rely on your discretion?”

Her accent is eloquently European, each sentence delivered with a silky elan. French, possibly Belgian or Dutch. She speaks with a matter-of-factness I find quite disarming. 

“Of course!”

“Then, yes, I created this installation.”

“Whoa! Your works are so complex!” I gush, before going into full-on fangirl interview mode.

“Do you have a dream work of art? Like, one you yearn to create, but aren’t sure if it’s possible? Or permissible?”

I transmute my anxiety into blathering, desperate not to avoid appear dull by lamely lapsing into nervous small-talk.

She ponders my question without moving, and for so long I started to worry I’d been too boring, and she’d lost interest in me. They say you can tell when you’re in the presence of celebrity because they’re so comfortable with silence. It was like standing before a life-sized onyx statue of an oracle, one whose eyes stared through you before eventually sparkling eerily back to life as it announced its answer. 

“Yes I do. It would be a video, with a hypnotic subliminal message.”

“Oh!”

She continues speaking, slowly and meticulously, as if channelling the visions of a divine prophecy. Her blue eyes stare out from her weird inky silhouette, gazing straight through me with an evangelistic intensity.

“The video would be shared slowly and surreptitiously, from friend-to-friend. Those who watched it would feel a shiver in their mind. Nothing will seem to have changed, but viewers will feel inexplicably different afterwards.”

She pauses, as if gathering her thoughts, translating the sublime visions she’d seen into words a dummy like me might actually understand.

“But… soon, something will happen to each viewer that will reveal its true effect. For the next week, all who watched it will lose any notion of sexual embarrassment. What once made them blush and hide away will now feel acceptable and alluring. Viewers will begin to talk about their desires candidly and unashamedly. Secrets would be shared, and heard by compassionate understanding ears.”

“It could transform the lives of all who saw it. It would spread virally to every corner of the globe. Repressive regimes would try to suppress it, but it is hard to quash a contagious idea. A video like that could change the world. That is my dream work of art.”

I’m speechless. I’ve no idea if what she’s described is even possible, or whether she’s making a joke at my expense. 

I remember wondering earlier this evening: what actually is art? Now I realise she’s just given me her own answer: that art is something that alters its viewers, modifying their perspectives, like a software patch for the mind. Non-art is merely a pleasant diversion, easily forgotten, and which changes nothing. Real art melds with its viewers’ minds, updating those who encounter it in subtle ways.

The artist plucks her phone from her pocket and starts typing, oblivious to my presence. I wonder if she’s making notes, perhaps what she’s described really might be her next project. When she finishes typing, she addresses me directly.

“Have you enjoyed watching the new installation?”

“Oh my God, yes.”

“Do you know how it works?”

“It’s the movements of the stock market, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“I assume the machine is linked to a live feed of the market. If it rises, it fucks the occupant. If it falls, it flogs their bottom.”

“Correct.”

“Why?”

She bows her head and nods slowly, as if acknowledging the validity of my question.

“When I was planning this work, a survey was published reporting a third of Americans said they would permanently give up their right to vote in exchange for a ten per cent raise.”

“Wow.”

“Economics is not some kind of abstract accounting. It is an invisible force that shapes not just our politics, but our behaviour, and everyone’s lives. I wanted to make that imperceptible force visible. The ancients believed their lives were steered by the whims of capricious gods. Today, only the nature of our gods has changed.”

“And the name?”

“The moral philosophers of the Enlightenment proposed that the values we attach to things provided the basis of what we collectively consider to be right and wrong. When stock markets crash, and stagnation breeds dictatorship, it’s because scarcity promotes the ethos of more for us, and less for them. Moral philosophy is our society’s collective definition of fairness.”

“And I thought it was just a gal in a cube getting fucked,” I offer light-heartedly.

Her blue eyes twinkle, beneath her face covering, I sense she is grinning.

“Art requires a vector for its messages. An artist cannot lecture.”

“And yet this work is based on the stock price,” I observe. “Not on, say, the environmental performance of each company.”

“That is true. We currently have imperfect means of evaluating corporate performance.”

I nod, and notice her check her phone again.

“Ah, I see our current occupant’s session is just ending. My team has found a potential replacement, but I’ve enjoyed our little chat. I sense you’re open-minded, and would find the experience not just mind-expanding but deeply satisfying. So I’ll offer you first refusal. Would you like to enter the cube next?”

I try to remain nonchalant, as if I’m so achingly cool that appearing semi-naked in front of a crowd inside a high-tech art installation is no big deal. Yeah babe, just another zany adventure in my extraordinarily exciting life.

“Would I be anonymous?”

“Of course. No one will see you enter or leave, and your face will be completely hidden.”

I give myself time to think. Spanked in public! Fuck. It would be so humiliating, wouldn’t it? Or perhaps it would feel completely different if no-one knew it was me. I’d be blushing for sure, but without the nauseating soul-destroying fear of ostracism.

For a moment, I think back to when the cube abruptly went utterly black, when everyone present instinctively jerked around to face it. When we all acted like the group of primitive primates we really are, deep inside. 

Although we dress and groom ourselves better now, we’re still driven by our innate need to maximise our social-standing. Determining where we fit into our local social hierarchy is hard-wired into our puny ape minds. We still agonise over how others perceive us, and that’s why losing face and being embarrassed is so excruciating. We live with a genetic legacy from long ago, when being ostracised from our community could literally be fatal. Once upon a time, shame could literally be mortifying.

Yet I do find some kinds of humiliation undeniably exciting. How many times have I climaxed thinking about some poor young lady being subjected to some humiliating disciplinary ritual? That hot vicarious thrill of imagining myself being stripped of my modesty, then my dignity, then finally, my resistance. Dreaming of being spanked until my bottom is pink and sore, as others watch.

I’ve often wondered why such degrading scenarios arouse me so much. Maybe I’m seeking to tame my instinctive anxiety by eroticising it - but only in circumstances I feel I can control. In the privacy of my sexual safe spaces, with those I trust enough to treat my fragile psychology gently.

I do not know the person who stands before me, but I think I know enough of her work to understand her principles. Somehow, instinctively, I feel I will be safe with her, and she has something to teach me. I suppose all intimacy starts with trusting our vulnerabilities with a stranger.

“I would very much like to be your next work of art,” I reply, with as much confidence as I can muster.

“Wonderful. Would you prefer vaginal or anal penetration?”

Goodness, this conversation has escalated quickly! I consider the options, being buggered in public seems deliriously depraved. But it’s my wet cunt that’s aching to be filled.

“Vaginal, please. How’s the market looking?”

“Bullish.”

I feel my cunt clench.

---

I accompany the artist down the maintenance corridor, following an intermittent trail of yellow tape arrows. We climb and descend several grimy steel ladders, until eventually arriving at a large space with a mezzanine floor. There is a temporary staircase here, of the kind used in warehouses to reach the uppermost shelves. Its top step is just below a dark square hole in the ceiling. It could be the entrance to any domestic loft.

There are two other people already here, both dressed in the same all-black ninja jumpsuits. On their foreheads are what seem to be night-vision goggles, giving them the sinister appearance of special-forces soldiers. I feel like I’ve stumbled into the plot of an action movie, in the scene just before we all get taken hostage, and get tied up with our own panties. Or something. The artist picks up on my discomfort.

“Forgive the intimidating appearance of my friends,” she reassures me, “their attire allows them to remain invisible to the audience when the cube is blacked out, and their glasses allow them to work in the dark. They’ll help you onto the machine.”

She beckons me towards a row of sex toys.

“Would you care to choose a dildo? We have all kinds of shapes and sizes.”

Here’s a choice I never imagined myself needing to make tonight. I’m rather nervous about the machine pushing too deep, so I select one of the smaller toys, a blue tapered dildo composed of several balls of progressively decreasing size, widest at the base, narrower towards the top. The artist commends me on my choice, before one of her ninja assistants puts it into a ziplock bag, and stows it in a zipped pocket.

“We’ve already escorted out the previous occupant, so the cube is free, the feather is falling. We’re ready when you are.”

I take a deep breath. “I’m ready!”

That’s the cue for the two ninjas to ascend the stairs and disappear into the dark, I follow them tentatively, the steps are perfectly sturdy, but I can feel my legs quivering. I poke my head through the hole in the ceiling, emerging into a gloomy void. I hear a male voice encouraging me to keep climbing and extend my hand, and he helps me up onto the floor. 

The square hole in the floor glows weakly with the light of the room below, emitting just enough illumination to show we’ve emerged just beneath the pillory. My unseen helper closes the trapdoor behind me, and the feeble light from below is abruptly extinguished. In an instant, everything is utterly black.

I feel like I’ve climbed onto the roof, and am standing under a starless midnight sky. Beyond my bubble of darkness, beyond the thick glass panes, I can see the crowd milling around the cube. They are blurry indistinct shadows, like a gathering of ghosts.

I am led slowly forward, hands on both my shoulders. A female voice beside me warns of approaching steps, and when to lift my feet. I go up a short distance, until there’s something in front of me, jutting against my tummy. 

Unseen hands unbutton my trousers, and tug them down to my knees. Before I can protest, someone pulls down my sodden panties too. An imaginary voice in my head scolds me for my filthiness, pronouncing me guilty of masturbating in a public toilet. I am sentenced to be spanked on my bare bottom in public, until I come.

I feel like a guilty criminal as a palm presses between my shoulders, bending me over the beam in front of me. Once prone my throat is resting in a padded hollow, and my wrists are grasped and placed in the foam-lined indentations on either side. My mind races, felons like me get strip-searched, don’t they? I brace myself, half-expecting to feel the tacky touch of latex-gloved fingertips splaying my cheeks apart at any moment.

A male voice asks me if I’m OK, and I realise I’m panting. It also strikes me that I’ve no idea who just pulled my panties down.

I take a few deep steadying breaths, and reassure him that I am fine. He guides my right hand across to touch something, telling me this is my panic button, and if I press it the machine will immediately stop, the lights will go out, and they will come up to release me. He tells me he’s going to lower the stocks now, then fit the dildo I chose, and put in a clean set of spanking whips.

I hear rumbling as the upper portion of the stocks is slid into position just behind my ears, trapping me in the pillory like a mediaeval wretch. Instinctively I yank my arms, trying to free myself from my predicament, but the stocks are perfectly snug around my wrists. All of a sudden, I feel terribly exposed, helpless, and vulnerable.

I wait in the darkness, anxious and alone. What’s the name of the feeling when your body tells you to run... but your erotic mind compels you to stay? I distract myself by searching my memories, trying to remember where I might have heard it before. Something like the Flight or Fuck response, maybe?

I ponder that thought, until a much better term materialises in my mind.

Fuckfright. 

That’s the one, what I’m currently experiencing is fuckfright. 

Quivering exhilarating head-spinning fuckfright.

My head and hands, on one side of this wooden partition, feel weirdly disembodied. I can hear muffled creaks and clicks behind me, then the faint hiss of a piston, and the slickly lubed round tip of the dildo enters me. Frustratingly, it stops as soon as it pushes between my lips, lingering teasingly at my entrance.

The step I’m standing on then falls away, leaving my weight supported by the beam beneath my tummy. My feet are now dangling above the floor, kicking petulantly, my trousers gathered around my ankles like manacles. I feel so naughty, I’m going to get such a sore bottom.

I hear faint noises receding as those who brought me here depart, then nothing. A few moments later, the world outside the cube seems to erupt with light. Yet the side of the cube where my head protrudes through the pillory remains shrouded in total darkness, they must have raised the lights to illuminate everything behind me.

I peer beyond the glass and realise everyone in the room is now staring towards me. A hundred strangers admiring my pretty pert bottom, and my wet little slit. Yet instead of shame, I feel astonishingly empowered, like I’m the High Priestess of a profane sex cult, my congregation looking up at me with adoration. All mortals who view my beautiful body are enraptured. I have been blessed with a glorious power, to make five score cocks swell and five score cunts twitch.

I linger in my little personal pool of darkness, savouring the delightful thrill of being coveted, as I wait for the combined desires and whims of a million individuals and software programs across the globe to decide my fate.

I wonder if those trading would click differently to buy or sell if they could see me here, right now? Would they still choose to reap their profit, or change their decision in order to grant me pleasure, or inflict some pain? Or would they consider me collateral damage, just another insignificant incidental side-effect of the great economic game?

It seems their decision has been made. Beneath me the vast machine rumbles into life, its cold gears clicking and groaning like a mechanical monster. Its vibrations make the dildo tremble between my legs as I await the market’s verdict. I feel the protrusion push ever deeper, each bulbous ridge stretching my tight entrance wider, flooding my hole with a gooey rush of pleasure. 

Then as quickly as it entered, it withdraws, leaving my poor cunt achingly empty. I try to push back on it, but I have no leverage, so my legs flail impotently in the air. I remember too late I have an audience watching, no doubt sniggering outside as they watch me squirm, watching me act like a hungry slut desperate to be fucked. Even just imagining their judgement makes my heart thump and my cheeks blush - and to be honest, my slit seep.

About ten seconds later, the contraption grinds and hisses again, its piston thrusting deep into my throbby hole. I wonder what triggered its push this time? Did someone invent something new? Did the world become a marginally better place? I must say, I wholeheartedly approve of this brave new world.

The machine has its own immutable tempo, making me wait patiently like a good girl until it’s ready to plunge into me once more. I can’t help thinking of a past girlfriend, and how she used to fuck me with her strap-on like this. Since the act of penetration brought her no physical pleasure, she was never in any hurry. She liked to take me slowly, teasing me, dripping salacious whispers into my ear, tugging my hair, making me beg, making me wait.

Be a good girl, she’d tell me. Oh, it was so hard to be a good girl.

When the dildo fills me again, I call out her name for old times’ sake, begging her pointlessly, just like I used to. This soundproof box is the perfect place to shout out all my secrets.

I am getting used to the rhythm now. A deep thrust, followed by a tingly rush of pleasure, then the withdrawal and its accompanying lingering ache, before several moments of escalating anticipation as I wait to experience it all again. I now regret choosing such a small dildo, I crave to be stretched and filled completely.

Then a searing pain suddenly erupts across my bottom, causing me to yelp in surprise.

It seems I’d become rather carried away during that little bull run, and forgotten this was also a spanking machine. I was put here to have my bottom smacked, to remind me I am at the mercy of the market.

I can’t help wondering why I was just spanked. What events had just happened to sting my poor cheeks? I’d felt so insulated from reality in my little glass box, it was easy to forget the outside world even existed. But perhaps all is not quite as utopian as my first few minutes had led me to believe.

Another series of whacks land. I take my punishment stoically, without squirming like a silly brat. In truth, my body has now succumbed, with only my legs dancing limply beneath me. What’s left of my thinking faculties has begun meditating on why a fall in this abstract number meant my bottom must be spanked. Perhaps our interpretations of pain and pleasure can be so subjective. Who’s to say what is good and what is bad? 

I admit, I’ve always been an over-thinker, and in the periodic pauses when the machine is not whirring, my brain is abuzz with existential musings. Each time my bum is whipped, I find myself thinking about how the collective choices of the powerful already dictate the fate of societies and ecosystems. Those privileged with power can elect to be kind, or opt to be cruel. Such is the aphrodisiac of dominance, the primacy to nurture or exploit. 

The masters of our world choose to whip me again. Thank you, Sirs.

Our modern world is so complex, the effects of our clicks seem like raindrops falling into floodwaters. Our actions are conveniently abstracted into a line on a graph, obfuscated into a series of red and green numerals. No one set out to wreck our planet, yet our environment is now burning. Everyone denies starting the fire, but all of us contributed a few twigs of its kindling.

I recoil from another hard thwack. My bottom is now throbbing with a hot fiery sting. I find myself willing the world to be better, yearning to feel the kind comforting dildo again rather than the cruel whip. What is happening outside my glass prison? Why is society being so naughty?

Privilege breeds isolation, until we’re all isolated in our own glass boxes, happy to reside behind our impenetrable walls. Why has a majority chosen to let our fellow citizens go hungry to preserve the value of their money and protect their entitlement?

I accept another whack as part of our collective atonement. I feel almost messianic, whipped in public for society’s sins.

I squirm in the stocks, as the market drops further and I’m made the whipping girl for its loss. I am trapped, like captured prey, a predicament that makes adrenaline fizz through my trembling body. But still I don’t press the panic button. I want this. I can feel my wetness leaking, trickling and dribbling inside my thighs.

I brace myself for another scorching stripe, but instead the bumpy dildo enters me like a rescuing lover’s fingers. Caressing and soothing me, making everything better.

As I’m spanked and fucked by distant and unseeable circumstances, my mind begins to contemplate a deeper truth. For the first time in human history, the internet enabled us to connect to those far away, but it was mediated through the exchange of pixels. We could read the words of strangers, and vicariously experience their thoughts. We could see and hear anyone anywhere, but never touch them, and they could not touch us.

How ironic that a world with ubiquitous video calling was now suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. We were still strangers on opposite sides of our glass walls, able to look, but never touch.

Reconciling intimacy and distance - that was the challenge our ingenuity had yet to solve.

I meditate on that idea, my body fading from my awareness, until even the dildo’s slow thrusts were just a soothing internal massage. 

---

My mind has drifted into a fuggy daydream. I imagine myself as the boss of an upstart sex-positive technology company. Our breakthrough product is an affordable, remote-control spanking machine. A smaller simplified version of what’s whacking me right now, compact enough to fit within a doorframe.

In my mind’s eye, I can picture our machine’s design, its every rod, motor and ratchet. I know precisely how it would work, as if it had been revealed to me by an angelic apparition. I can see the app running on my phone that will control it, the software that would embed its intelligence, connecting the device to the wider world.

That software would permit a huge range of play-modes, for individuals, couples and larger groups. There would be countless downloadable role-playing scenarios, catering to every taste. Players could choose to hear the strict voice of a fantasy schoolteacher or their favourite disciplinarian, scolding them, telling them to bend over in front of the machine and pull down their panties. The software could even listen too, responding to any overheard brattiness with extra whacks.

I feel a distant smack sting my bottom. Yes, just like that.

That configurability and interactivity would be what would distinguish it from other sex toys. The software would equip the machine with a brain, an awareness of how its owner was reacting to their punishment, just like a real-life spanker would.

But the machine’s true potential would be unleashed when control was delegated to a play partner. They could be anywhere in the world, controlling it over the internet. Bottoms could feel the smack of their lover’s touch, even if they were far away. It would make a bedtime spanking possible every night, all could be cherished and put to bed with a warming glow.

Our machine could give rise to a whole new community of erotic service providers, a host of professional disciplinarians, spanking their charges from the safety of their own homes. It would support every aspect of our diverse desire for discipline, from comforting care-giving to escapist role-playing, from strict classroom tuition for those eager to learn, to painful corrections for those unable or unwilling to behave. 

How wonderful it would be if the machine could also be programmed by stories, and so be configured by writers, rather than programmers. It could be like an participatory audiobook, reading the story aloud, immersing the listener amidst its characters’ voices, until they were inevitably told to bend over, and received the spanking the narrative dictated.

Our company could become the Peloton of Spanking, assembling a community of instructors of a disciplinary kind, whose strict hands could reach across oceans. The very best might have classes of thousands, all simultaneously bending over in front of their smacking machines, waiting obediently for the next lesson. Classes for every fantasy the marvellous human mind could imagine.

I envisage customer demand prompts us to produce a deluxe version with a thrusting fucking rod, onto which its owners could affix their favourite toys. Users could be spanked, or fucked, or buzzed, according to the outcome of any external event. In homage to its original inspiration, there’d be a stock-market mode, of course — but why stop there?

The machine could be linked to any feed of erotic content, pictures of licking and fucking would make the piston thrust, whilst images of sore bottoms and spankings would make the flogger whack. It could be an entirely new way to masturbate, you’d no longer be in control, you\d get the pleasure you were given.

Or even more intimately, what if the machine was linked to a lover’s voice? I imagine whispers in my ear. Certain words and phrases, such as being called a good girl, and I’d feel them suddenly inside me. Whilst a word like naughty, whatever its context, would inevitably be followed by a bottom smack.

Exhibitionists could set up their webcam to share their spanking with their partner, or broadcast to voyeurs like a kinky Twitch. Presenters might roleplay scenes of their own creation, actors in front of their own intimate audiences, whose collective votes could colour the scene with pain or pleasure.

I imagine a million eyes watching me, bent over in front of my own invention. Each viewer deciding whether I should be spanked or penetrated, their democratic will aggregated and delivered every fifteen seconds. 

My customers fuck me like a tender lover. I know I’m going to come soon. 

My mind is emptying, my entrepreneurial visions dissipating. I feel I’m floating in darkness, adrift in the airless void of empty space, strapped inside some strange steampunk spaceship. I have the sensation that I’m looking down on Planet Earth, floating above the populace like a celestial presence. 

I can see outside, even though they can’t see me. My eyes scan the blurred silhouettes, until I spot Red Beret. She’s looking at me. I wonder if I made enough of an impression for her to recognise me. I wonder if she’s admiring me. I wonder if my plight has turned her on. I crane my neck as she walks along the side of the cube, until she disappears from view behind me. Why would you do that, unless you wanted to stare at my striped bottom and look between my legs?

I’m spanked, then fucked, then whacked again. I hold back for as long as I can bear, until I come like a goddess, in a magnificent glorious transcendent rapture.

Eventually, they will drop the lights and come for me. I never did press the button, and never would have done. I wanted nothing more than to stay here all night, surfing seemingly endless waves of pleasure, before sleep finally overwhelmed my feverish mind, and I fell deep into a phantasmagorical void of thrillingly lucid dreams.

---

In the blackness, I hear voices.

Someone is waking me from my woozy daze, asking if I’m OK. The top half of the pillory has been lifted, and gentle hands are helping me down from the bench on which I’m slumped. I feel my underwear being pulled up, and then my trousers. It’s so hot it makes my tummy flip.

My legs are still wobbly as I’m assisted down the stairs from the cube. I’ve been given some sunglasses to mitigate the dazzling brightness of re-entering the real world, and I feel euphoric, like an arriving rock star. The artist greets me with a wide smile and a warm embrace, before showing me to a private bathroom so I can clean up the disgraceful mess I’ve made. 

Bending over in front of the full-length mirror, I spend an inordinate amount of time examining the pink stripes the machine left on my bottom. Dozens of perfect parallel lines, all hot to the touch. They seem beautiful to me, like strokes of paint on an abstract canvas.

I glug down a glass of water, which tastes so fresh and sweet, then another. I’d forgotten water could taste so good. When I finally emerge, I wander back to join the artist, just in time to see the next participant being escorted up the staircase for his own life-changing appointment with bliss.

“How was it?”

“Transcendental. Thought-provoking. Inspiring.” I answer.

“Then I hope you will act on that inspiration. Consider it my gift, to you.”

“I will, I promise.”

She slips me a ziplock bag with a smirk, and the subtlety of a drug deal. My dildo is inside, still disgracefully splendidly sticky. It is also still warm to the touch.

“A memento. Something to keep the embers of your memories glowing. Think back to what you experienced here whenever you use it.”

I peruse my new totem, it does feel imbued with a mysterious ritual power, like a tiny exceptionally narrow ziggurat. 

I give my heartfelt thanks to the artist and her team, exchanging fist bumps before I follow the yellow-tape trail back to reality. I re-enter the hall through the secret passage in the Ladies bathroom, tugging it back into place for the next intrepid adventurer to discover. I keep the dildo in my pocket, which seems to flood my body with a new swashbuckling confidence, like a magical relic. Or perhaps it’s the residual high from my transformational experience, that time I was spanked and fucked and came before the eyes of a hundred strangers, and nothing bad happened. 

I feel indomitable, my inner censor silenced, as if nothing is impossible. If I could bottle my current state of mind, I know I would be unstoppable. 

It occurs to me I might have spent my life misunderstanding the true power of my orgasm. I’d always considered sexual pleasure to be the pursuit of gratification, chasing a state of pure satisfaction, the consumption of a natural narcotic to soothe and delight. Or as a release, as if I was a pet who’d spent the day locked indoors, eagerly seizing the opportunity to gambol freely outside.

But what if the euphoria we felt so transiently was just a hint of what was possible? A clue there was a bountiful source of feel-good fearlessness deep inside all of us. If only we dared to look deeper inside ourselves we might discover a battery waiting to be connected, an awesome superpower waiting to be unleashed.

Thought of that way, the erotic would be a reminder that the stale autopilot feeling of everyday life was not the boundary of human experience. A nudge that life’s true goal was to love and strive to recreate that state of joyful awesomeness. If we knew that, we’d be eager to exploit our superpower — but instead, we suppress our erotic nature, wrapping it in shame, hiding it in our shadows. 

We dismiss this vital life force as merely the feeling of being horny, revisiting it only when we have a thirst to quench, before locking it away in our own secret glass boxes once more.

I re-enter the expansive exhibition space, and stare back at the dark glass cube from which I’ve just been liberated.

My experience this evening has made me realise that eroticism is far more than just a synonym for sex. Eroticism is a transgressive force, a rule-breaking iconoclastic punch. The erotic takes us outside of the borders of reality and the petty limitations of life - just like great art does. Without this force, we might never be able to break through the barriers of suspicion that surround each other.

And so I nonchalantly sidle beside Red Beret, and immediately notice how she looks at me knowingly.

“That must have been so incredible!” she whispers excitedly.

I blush, unable to keep a straight face. But my contented smile confirms what she already knew.

“I recognised your shoes,” she clarifies, still whispering. 

We share a conspiratorial giggle. 

“Have you ever been spanked?” I ask quietly.

I see her emerald eyes fix on mine, and sparkle. 

“Let’s get a drink. I know a lovely spot overlooking the river. I’ll tell you everything.”

---

And that, was how our story started. 

Liberated from the glass cubes of our own anxiety, we spent the night in excited conversation, sharing secrets we’d never told anyone else. It seems the artist was right after all, it was possible to create a work of art that would inoculate its viewers against their own sexual shame. And something magical happens when two souls meet, and reveal their complementary imperfections to one another.

That was how I happened to meet a kinky gadget-making engineer, and how we started building our own spanking machines together. As we tinkered, a little community grew through word of mouth, so we built more, until we could no longer keep up with demand. Eventually, we founded a company together.

Business is booming. Our stock-market mode is amusingly popular, and our community is endlessly inventive, coming up with brand new ways to reconfigure and play with our toy. It brings me tremendous satisfaction to know that through us, thousands are discovering spanking isn’t just a spicy bedroom condiment, but an essential and undeniable part of their own sexuality.

Our company mission is intimacy at a distance. Our message is that in a world with billions of adults, there’s thousands, maybe even millions of others whose sexual fantasy is someone just like you. Not that you’d want them all turning up on your doorstep, of course. So our aim is not to remove distance, but to permit physical intimacy whilst distant. We feel distance need not be a limitation, but an asset. Distance grants us the essential space we require to explore, and the safety to be vulnerable.

But we were never meant to remain islands. In time, we hope our devices will build bridges, and when it is safe, help countless souls reach out, and touch each other intimately for real.

We advocate a new moral philosophy: be comfortable with what arouses you, because you are right and no-one is wrong.

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@spankingtheatre 2024