Stripped Down

by Tristan Taormino

  Final Grade: C-

  Professor Lynn Stone, PhD.

  CLINICAL TRIAL

  Radclyffe

  Hunger is a powerful motivator. It’s amazing the things you’ll do that you never would have conceived of doing if you hadn’t needed money to eat. Or in my case, to eat, pay the rent, and put gas in the car. Not to mention next semester’s tuition, textbooks, and the occasional new pair of shoes. All right, it’s not quite that bad, but almost. I’m the typical struggling graduate student, and fortunately, in a large university there are always studies being done that pay volunteers to participate. Although I’ve often thought that if you’re being paid, you probably aren’t a volunteer, but something else. In terms of my newest assignment, that “something else” turned out to be pretty hard to describe.

  It started yesterday when I saw an ad in the campus newspaper that said: Study subjects needed for psychosexual imprinting analysis. Must be 18 or older. Please contact Van Adams at extension 6361 for details.

  So I called, got the secretary in the experimental psych department, and scheduled an appointment for this morning at 10:15. When I arrived a little bit before the appointed time, the same secretary directed me to an office down the hall. The fluorescent lights in the cinderblock-walled, tile-floored hallway seemed overly harsh as my footsteps echoed in the hollow silence. The third door on the left was unmarked, but I knocked as I had been instructed.

  “Come in,” a disembodied voice called.

  The room was spare, and in the few seconds I had to scan it before my attention was drawn to the woman behind the functional metal desk, I didn’t notice that any attempts had been made to personalize the space. University-issue bookshelves against one wall, filled with haphazardly stacked texts, file folders, and piles of papers; no rug on the floor; two worn, armless, upholstered chairs facing a desk that sat in front of what I presumed were windows behind closed horizontal blinds. The woman who glanced up with a remote smile appeared to fit the room: late twenties, smooth pale skin, glossy dark hair pulled back from her makeup-free face, and big, dark, intelligent eyes. She wore a fitted linen blouse in a neutral shade, and although I couldn’t see below the desk, I was willing to bet there were tailored trousers in a darker shade and expensive low-heeled shoes to match. Nice package in a professional, no-nonsense kind of way.

  “Hello,” she said in a silky, rich voice while standing to extend a hand. “I’m Dr. Vanessa Adams.”

  “Robbie Burns.” I shook her hand, wondering how I appeared to Dr. Adams in my threadbare jeans, striped polo shirt, and sneakers. At least I’d had a haircut recently, so my collar-length chestnut waves looked fashionably shaggy as opposed to just plain old messy. At least my eyes, an unusual gray-green, were distinctive. And why that should matter, I hadn’t a clue.

  “You’re here about seven-sixty-nine, correct?” At my confused expression, she smiled absently. “Sorry. The multivari-ant sexual stimulus reaction study.”

  I held up the page from the campus rag where I had circled the small notice in red. “Would that be this?”

  “That would be the one.”

  I thought I saw another trace of a smile, but I couldn’t be certain. She settled down behind her desk and gestured me to one of the chairs that had probably once graced a student lounge but now should have adorned a trash pile somewhere. I sat and waited while she opened a folder and took out a number of forms. The first one she turned in my direction and pushed across the desk. “This is a nondisclosure statement. I’d like you to read it, ask any questions you might have, and sign it before I begin the intake interview.”

  “There’s an interview?”

  “Yes,” she replied evenly. “There are certain screening criteria which are necessary for inclusion as well as exclusion from the study. The questions I will be asking are both personal and confidential—for you and for the study.” She paused, studying me. “And before we go any further, I need to see proof of age, please.”

  I grinned and reached into my back pocket for my wallet. After opening it to the clear window that displayed my license, I passed it across the desk for her perusal. “Twenty-five.”

  “Thank you.”

  She passed the wallet back, and I replaced it automatically as I scanned the page before me. It was a standard nondisclosure form essentially saying that I couldn’t tell anyone the details of the study, the questions I had been asked prior to engaging in the study, or the activities I might be involved in as a study participant. I signed it and handed it back. Dr. Adams took it, tucked it neatly away, and pulled out another page filled with blanks and boxes. Eventually we finished with my name and birth date and other vital statistics. The initial round of questions covered standard medical, family, and social history-type things. She dispensed with them quickly and moved on to the good stuff.

  “The remaining questions will be personal ones relating to your sexual preferences, activity, and function. Is that acceptable?”

  “Fire away.”

  “Are you single?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and/or transgendered?”

  “Lesbian.” This was getting interesting. She didn’t look up as she checked off boxes in various columns.

  “Would you say that you have any kind of sexual dysfunction?”

  I hesitated. “Does not enough count as a dysfunction?” I thought, but I couldn’t be certain, that the corner of her mouth twitched.

  She looked up and met my eyes, her face completely composed. “We’re more interested in such things as anorgasmia, premature orgasm, or anything that you would define as a physical or psychological problem associated with sexual activity.”

  Anorgasmia. Thank god for those two years of Latin in high school. But didn’t the absence of orgasm follow from my question regarding not enough? Oh. Anorgasmia as in “the inability to have” orgasms.

  “No. Given the opportunity, I don’t have any problem coming, and I generally have pretty good control.” Of course it’s been so long, who can remember.

  “Good.”

  She made another little checkmark.

  “Do you masturbate?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to prevent one of those stupid responses such as “Is The Pope Catholic?” and replied, “Yes.”

  “Frequency?”

  “Yes. I mean…ah…three, maybe four times a week.”

  “You would be required to refrain from orgasm either with a partner or via masturbation for the duration of the study. Is that acceptable?”

  “How long will the study last?” They were going to have to pay me a lot of money for this.

  “I can’t say how long your participation would be. It will really depend upon your response to the various stages. A week, possibly several.”

  “How will you know if I’m compliant?”

  She still didn’t smile, but her dark eyes twinkled. I was certain of it. “It’s the honor system.”

  I grinned. “Agreed.”

  “Are you able to masturbate to orgasm while being observed?”

  Her head was bent over the forms again, her pen raised above another little box. The study was getting more and more interesting by the second, and I was still only in the interview stage.

  “Yes. Who’s going to be observing?”

  She raised her head. “I am.”

  I have no idea what showed in my face when my clit twitched. Hers revealed nothing.

  “If you feel uncomfortable and prefer not to participate in the study,” she said gently, “just say so, and we’ll terminate.”

  “I’m okay so far.” I took a breath and forced myself to relax. “Is there going to be group activity?”

  “Only in the advanced stages of the study, and you may never get to that point.” She leaned back in her chair and her voice took on a professorial tone. “The study is designed in levels, or tiers, and these strata are individualized depending upon the study subject’s reactions to the test stimuli. Your
responses to the early stages will determine the direction and nature of subsequent interactions. Although each set of study criteria is standard, not every subject will participate in the same sequence.”

  Somewhere out of that doctor-speak I think I got that what was going to happen would depend a lot upon how I performed in whatever it was we were going to be doing. I was curious, more than curious. Intrigued and not a little turned on. I’d always considered myself a sexual adventurer—at least I’d never said no without trying something. Okay then. Masters and Johnson, here I come.

  “That sounds fine.”

  Another sheet of paper appeared. More blanks, columns, and boxes.

  “Do you object to viewing sexually explicit images?”

  “No.”

  “Do you find sexually explicit images arousing?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you use sexually explicit images as a tool during masturbation?”

  Fortunately, I don’t blush easily, and we were far beyond that point already anyway. “Sometimes.”

  “Literature, photographs, or videos?”

  “All of the above.”

  Check. Check. Rustle. Rustle. I was getting wet. The interview couldn’t have been more clinical. The subject, however, was getting to me. Talking about sex in any form, in any fashion, under almost any circumstance, turns me on.

  “Have you ever used sexually explicit images during mutual masturbation with a partner?”

  “How many people are going to read the interview form?”

  Dark eyes met mine. “One. Me.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  Dr. Adams put down her pen and placed both hands on the desk, her fingers lightly clasped. She regarded me with a slight tilt of her head and a contemplative expression. “If at any time, for any reason, you want to withdraw from the study, you simply need to tell me. I will be administering all of the tests and collecting all of the data.”

  Well, that got me nice and hard. Administer away. The sooner the better. I nodded.

  “I’d like to start tomorrow. Can you be here at eight a.m.?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s important that you be well rested and in as relaxed a state as possible. I know that may be difficult, but I assure you, there is nothing painful associated with any part of the study.”

  “I promise to go to bed early.” I grinned.

  “And please remember the stipulation regarding abstinence.”

  How did she know that the first thing I wanted to do as soon as I was alone was jerk off?

  “Got it.” After all, she wouldn’t know. If I did it. Or if I just happened to be thinking about her when I did.

  At five minutes to eight the next morning, I knocked on the door with the small plastic nameplate that read V. Adams, PhD. She answered immediately. Today, she wore a moss green shell, hemp-colored linen trousers, and low-heeled brown boots. Her lustrous hair was still severely tamed and tied back with a scarf.

  “Good morning, Ms. Burns.”

  I laughed. “Could you call me Robbie? There’s no way I’m going to be able to get excited if you keep calling me Ms. Burns.”

  “Get excited?” she asked as we started to walk down the hallway in the direction she indicated with a raised hand.

  “Well, the only reason I can figure for the questions you asked yesterday and the stipulation that I not jerk…ah, have an orgasm anytime except during the course of the study is that I’m going to need to do it here.”

  “Let’s save this conversation for later,” she replied evenly. She removed several keys from her pocket and opened the unmarked door to a large room at the end of a hallway. Inside was a leather recliner in the center surrounded by electronic equipment on rolling carts, a bank of video monitors, and a small glassed-in booth in one corner. From what I could make out, the interior of the booth was wall-to-wall equipment. I also saw a microphone and headset resting on the counter.

  Dr. Adams checked the thermostat just inside the door and turned it up. The room was already quite warm. Not overly so, but, I realized, warm enough that someone without much in the way of clothing would be comfortable. Holy shit.

  “Today,” she said as she gestured to the recliner, “we are just going to establish baseline values.” She leaned down, opened a drawer in the bottom of the oversized chair, and withdrew two white sheets, one of which she spread out over the recliner. Turning to me, she held out the other. “Please undress completely and sit here. I have a few notes to make before we begin.”

  “I guess you’ll tell me what I need to do when the time comes, huh?”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be given specific step-by-step instructions.”

  Under other circumstances, that sounded like it could be fun. The psychologist went into the tiny booth and she must have adjusted the lights, because the overheads in the main room dimmed and the booth went completely dark. I knew she was in there, but I couldn’t see her. It’s not like I didn’t know what was coming. Ha ha. I took off my clothes and got as comfortable as possible, which wasn’t very. Hell, my clit was the only thing that wasn’t twitching.

  It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before Dr. Adams came out of the booth.

  “Ready?” Her voice was soft and warm. Or maybe it was just the room.

  “All set.” I think I sounded pretty confident. Usually, I am pretty confident about most everything, particularly sex. At the moment, I was terrified I might have performance anxiety and blow the very handsome stipend she’d mentioned the day before. Besides that, I wanted to appear studly in front of her. Since she hadn’t given me the slightest reason to think she had any interest in me whatsoever other than as a study subject, I couldn’t say why.

  “Good. I’m going to be connecting you to various monitoring devices,” she said as she rolled the carts containing the electronic equipment closer to me.

  Most of what she attached I recognized—EEG pads on my forehead, EKG leads on my chest, arms, and legs, and a blood pressure cuff around my left biceps. When she motioned me to lean forward so she could run a thin flexible strap around my chest just below my breasts, I asked, “What’s that for?”

  “Respiratory rate and excursion.”

  She was so matter-of-fact about everything that I relaxed without even realizing it. Until she reached for the little alligator clamp with the thin red and blue wires trailing from the tiny jaws. We’re talking minuscule, maybe a half an inch long—too small to be a nipple clamp. I had an uneasy feeling about where that was going to go.

  “Uh…”

  “This morning,” she said conversationally as she stood beside me with the tiny clamp dangling from her fingers, “we’re going to take baseline measurements during unstimulated masturbation.”

  “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the little tiny teeth along the edges of the little tiny clamp. “Where are you putting that?”

  “First question first.”

  I swear to God I heard a hint of laughter in her voice.

  “Unstimulated in the sense that we won’t be using any visual aides. I’d simply like you to masturbate to orgasm unassisted by anything other than…well, whatever you ordinarily use in terms of mental encouragement.”

  “So fantasizing is okay?” I was struggling not to inch my way over to the far side of the chair. Escape was impossible at this point, unless I wanted to hotfoot it buck naked through the psychology building with electrodes hanging off my body.

  “Absolutely. This,” she said, indicating the device in her hand, “is a tonometer, designed to measure turgidity in the clitoris.” She must have seen my pupils dilate. “I promise you won’t even know it’s there.”

  “Where exactly are you attaching it?” There was no way she was closing those little tiny serrated jaws over the head of my clit. No fucking way. Not for a million bucks.

  “Just distal to the junction of the corpora with the clitoral body.”

  “Translation?” I asked throug
h gritted teeth.

  “On the shaft at the base.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.” As I was fairly sizable, I figured that thing couldn’t hurt too much.

  “I’d let you do it,” she said evenly as she drew the sheet up to my waist and leaned over, “but it needs to be precisely positioned to pick up small variations in pressure.”

  I tried not to tense my thighs and told myself that this was just like a visit to the gynecologist’s office as she spread me open slightly with the fingers of one hand and exposed my clitoris. Oh yeah, right. I never get a hard-on in the gynecologist’s office. To my acute embarrassment, the second she touched me, I got stiff. Great. Then I felt the slightest bit of pressure in my clit, which only excited it more, and she was straightening up again and adjusting the sheet. I stole a look at her face, but she had that same dispassionate expression she always wore. I was just another lab rat.

  “Comfortable?”

  “Oh yeah. Perfectly.” I was afraid to move in case something fell off. “There’s a problem, though.”

  One of her perfectly sculpted brows rose infinitesimally. “Oh?”

  “How am I supposed to masturbate with that little thing on my clitoris?”

  “It may fall off, depending upon how vigorous you need to be. But all data is information. Try not to pay any attention to it.”

  Right. It should be a piece of cake to jerk off while attached to a bunch of machines with a beautiful woman watching and a little probe attached to my clit. No wonder they paid a lot of money for this.

  “It would probably be helpful if you closed your eyes while I check the calibrations.” Then she turned and walked away.

  I leaned my head back and did as she said. Behind my closed lids, I could tell that the room got a little bit darker. I can’t say that I was relaxed, but part of me was enjoying this. I’d liked her touching me, even in such a distant and clinical way. Her fingertips were soft and smooth and gentle as she’d attached the electrodes, and she’d handled my clitoris like she knew what she was doing. I pictured her eyes and recalled the honeyed timbre of her voice, and my clit twitched.