Punish Me, Please Me

by Ashley Zacharias

  “Hello,” the woman replied uncertainly. “Why are you in that box?”

  “I’m not completely in the box. My head is sticking out.”

  “I can see that.” The top of the big black box was made of heavy black canvas with a hole in the middle. It was held close around Catherine’s neck by elastic. “Why?”

  “It’s art.”

  “Oh.” The woman seemed to accept that as an explanation. “I need to refresh my drink.” She wandered away.

  A young man wandered by and looked at her. “Someone told me that there was a lady in a box here. I guess you’re her.”

  “I’m not completely in a box. My head is outside.”

  “You have a pretty head.” He smiled and sipped his martini.

  “Thank-you. Some people have told me that I have a pretty body, too, but I’m not so sure about that.”

  “I can’t see your body.”

  “You can. You just can’t see it here.”

  “I see.”

  Catherine knew that he didn’t see, but he would soon enough. The party was just beginning. People were still arriving. The important part of her performance wouldn’t begin for another half hour.

  The young man was still looking at her. To make conversation, she said, “How do you know Jeff?”

  “I don’t know Jeff. My wife is one of Marty’s people. He invited us.”

  “I see. I’m Catherine.”

  “I’m Howard.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “What do you do?” Catherine asked.

  “I’m an IT manager at Stanford.”

  “Really? I’m a student there. In the art department.”

  They chatted for a few minutes about Stanford. A couple of other people wandered over to look at the woman whose head was sticking out of a big box and she included them in her conversation.

  She told people as much about herself as she thought they could stand to know. Her openness encouraged them to ask more questions about where she was from and what she had done before entering Stanford’s Fine Art program.

  It was standard small talk.

  After a while, Howard gave Catherine a little salute and wandered away to find his wife.

  She would have returned his salute but her arms were stuck inside the box.

  The room was filling up.

  Howard wandered into another room and nibbled on a few hors d’oeuvres from a buffet table, then noticed a lot of people standing in another room toward the back of the house. He let his feet carry him in that direction.

  The back room was large and devoid of furniture. There were a dozen big flat screen televisions hanging on the walls, all showing pictures of a woman in a business suit. The whole woman could not be seen in any single screen; each showed only one part of her. One screen showed her dark blue skirt and stocking-clad thighs; another showed her midsection from the side; another the skirt covering her buttocks; another her torso from the back, clad in a pale pink blouse; and so forth. Every part of her body was shown in one screen or another from different angles. Every part except her head.

  The images were live transmissions. She wasn’t doing anything in particular. Her hands moved aimlessly and she shifted position every couple of minutes, resting more weight on one foot or the other.

  Howard happened to be looking at the screen showing her upper thighs when she began hiking her skirt upward, bunching it in her hands as she raised the hem almost to her crotch. She was wearing stay-up stockings. When the skirt was hiked high enough, a strip of creamy white thigh was revealed. The color and resolution of the monitors was excellent. Howard could see every thread in the lacy tops of the stockings. Then her hands released the skirt and reached down to smooth the fabric out down to her knees.

  The people around him seemed not to notice the display. They continued to chat with each other, making the same small talk that could be heard at any other party in Silicon Valley.

  He looked through the door to the room with the buffet and saw his wife putting a piece of brie on a cracker while she chatted with her boss. He went out to join them.

  “The invitation said that there was going to be a display of performance art here,” Marcie was saying. “Is the art that the woman in the box out there?”

  “It is,” Marty replied. “She’s the artist that we hired.”

  “What’s she going to do? Just be in a box?”

  “I don’t know. I hope that she’s going to do more than that. Jeff’s paying enough that it ought to be something good.”

  The talk turned to business and Howard soon got bored. He drifted back to the room where the artist’s head was sticking out of the box.

  He watched her talking to people for a few minutes. He could see her head move as she shifted her weight and moved her hands but he had no idea what she was doing inside the box.

  As before, she was smiling and talking. She had an animated face and people seemed to enjoy her conversation. She was telling people about growing up in a small town in Wyoming. Her father was a dentist and his clientele mostly seemed to consist of cowboys with bad dental hygiene and a hankering for perfect smiles. To her father’s exasperation, his patients invariably failed to see the relationship between the two.

  She must have been exaggerating some of her stories but the people listening to her didn’t seem to care.

  There was a buzz rising in the back room.

  Howard walked back through the buffet room to see what was happening.

  Everyone in the television room was turned to look at one of the monitors. The woman’s blouse was unbuttoned to her navel and she was using her hands to spread the front open and caress the white lacy bra that covered her breasts. As he watched, she unbuttoned the next button, allowing the blouse to gape further open.

  The resolution was good enough that he could see the glimpses of her rich pink aureoles through the holes in the lace.

  Her hands moved continuously, but slowly. It took several more minutes for her to finally pull the hem of her blouse from her waistband, unbutton the last button, and brush the blouse off her shoulders.

  She had lovely shoulders.

  There were a lot of women in off-the-shoulder dresses at the party but, somehow, the image of the artist’s shoulders on the screen was more desirable than the bare shoulders of the real women standing beside him.

  The woman on the television screens let her blouse hang over her lower back, draped from her elbows, while she slowly unbuttoned each cuff. It was a couple more minutes before she let the blouse slip completely off and fall to the ground.

  This was an excruciatingly slow strip tease with no dancing and no music.

  Howard wanted to go back into the other room and see if the woman in the box was still talking about her childhood but he was afraid that he’d miss something if he left the television screens. She kept playing with the lace edges of her bra cups and he thought that she might be about to take it off.

  After another few minutes, he looked around and saw that there were many more men than women in this room. He could see more women than men clustered around the buffet table outside.

  He wondered if more men or women were talking to the artist’s head in the front room.

  Then the woman on the screen reached behind to unhook the back of her bra. A picture of her hands and the white strap dominated the screen on one wall. The gesture pushed her breasts forward to strain against the cups. Lovely creamy curves overflowed the cups on a screen on the other side of the room. Men swiveled back and forth between two screens to track the changes to the back and front of the woman’s torso.

  Howard wished that he could see the expression on the woman’s face when she released the tension in the strap and felt her breasts fall forward, loose and natural inside the cups. But he couldn’t have everything. And he wasn’t about to leave the television screens to see her live face in the other room.

  The hands on the screen hefted the breasts, still loose inside the cups, one a
t a time, but did not pull the lace aside to bare them yet. That would wait for a few more minutes.

  Howard’s wife, Marcie, brushed her hand against his arm. “Do you want to try a piece of the beef vindaloo on nan?” she said. It’s delicious.”

  “No thanks.” He barely looked at her.

  “Come on,” she urged. “There’s a great spread out here.”

  “I’m all right. I’m not hungry.” But there was hunger in his face as he looked at the gigantic breasts loosely encased in white lace on the screen.

  “Suit yourself,” she said. Her voice had the brittle tones of cracking ice. He would be returning to a cold night in their bedroom after the party.

  Marcie had to push between Marty and another man to get out the door. Their attention was focussed on the television screens. They barely noticed her.

  Marcie continued into the front room. There was only one other woman talking to the artist’s head. All the other women in the room were sitting on couches or standing and talking to each other.

  “Is that your body on the television sets in the back room?” she asked, breaking into the conversation between the woman who and the artist.

  “Does it matter?” the artist said. “What difference does it make if it’s a live feed of me or pre-recorded program? What difference does it make if it’s my body or some other woman’s?”

  “It matters to me,” Marcie said.

  “Why?” The artist looked curious, like she really wanted to know.

  “Because, whoever’s body it is, it’s not mine. My husband is staring at some other woman’s half naked body and that matters to me.”

  “I can understand that,” the artist replied, “but he doesn’t have the option of looking at your body right now. If you were naked in front of him, then he’d probably choose to look at you instead of me.”

  “He could be talking to me right now instead of looking at you,” Marcie countered.

  “Yes. And he could be talking to me instead of looking at me, too. But he didn’t choose to do either. None of the men want to be out here talking to me.” It wasn’t strictly true. There were a handful of men in this room. But the point was clear. Most of the men preferred watching videos of half-naked female body parts to talking to a real woman.

  “Are you surprised by that?” Marcie asked.

  “Not really,” the artist answered.

  Marcie could see her head bobbing a little as she spoke and wondered what clothing she was stripping off now.

  “But this isn’t all that flattering to me, either,” the artist continued. “I’d rather not be images of parts on television screens.”

  There was a low cheer from the other room.

  Marcie wondered if the woman had removed her entire bra yet or only bared one breast.

  But the artist kept speaking without pause. “I had hoped that at least a few of the men would have wanted to be in here to enjoy my quick wit and sparkling personality.”

  “Your wit isn’t all that quick and your personality isn’t all that sparkling,” Marcie snapped.

  “No, but my body’s not all that beautiful, either,” the artist opined. “My calves are heavy and my hips are too wide. There’s an awful lot of beautiful women being ignored in this room. And, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’re one of them. I really like what that dress does to you. Is it Dior?”

  “Macy’s. Off the rack.”

  ‘Then it must be the way you wear it that makes it look so good.”

  Another woman joined them.

  “I’m Catherine,” the artist said.

  “I’m Marcie,” Marcie replied.

  The other woman didn’t volunteer her name.

  “Don’t you think that Marcie’s dress is flattering to her?” Catherine asked the third woman. “The lavender is just the right shade for her delicate complexion.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the new woman asked.

  Catherine raised an eyebrow. “I’m chatting about Marcie’s dress,” she replied. “I think it looks lovely. Don’t you?”

  “You’re stripping for the men in the other room.”

  “That’s just television in there. In here, in the real world, I’m talking to you and Marcie.”

  “Someone said that you call this art.”

  “I am an artist,” Catherine replied.

  “Well, I call this pornography,” the other woman said. “It’s just a cheap sex show. Jeff should be ashamed of himself for inviting us here to see this smut.”

  There was another cheer from the other room.

  Marcie did not know if that meant that the artist’s bra was now on the floor along with her blouse or if it was her skirt that had been stripped off this time. She was surprised to find that she was curious.

  “I guess one person’s art is another person’s sex show,” the artist said. “But I have to correct you on one point. It’s not cheap. Jeff paid quite a bit to commission this performance.”

  “Then he should have saved his money and hired a stripper instead.”

  “That would have saved him a lot of money,” the artist said with a smile. “But then it wouldn’t have been art. It would have been a different thing altogether.”

  “I don’t see what point you think you’re making,” the woman said.

  “I do,” Marcie said. “The point is that when men have a choice between seeing a woman as body parts on a television screen and interacting with her as a real woman, they choose the body parts. Right?”

  “That’s one interpretation of this piece,” the artist replied. “Not necessarily the only one.”

  “What else, then,” Marcie asked.

  Despite herself, the other woman couldn’t resist showing that she had some insight, too. “There’s a more general comment here. Society gives people this choice all the time, not just tonight. Women are dehumanized by television every hour of every day.”

  “My piece admits a feminist interpretation, for sure,” the artist said.

  “Are you implying that there’s some other interpretation?” Marcie asked.

  A fourth voice joined the conversation from behind the other two women. “Men aren’t the only people at this party.” The two women turned around to see an older man standing behind them. “There are women here, too, and they also have to make a choice. A surprising number of them choose to eat and pretend that nothing is happening. There’s a pretty ordinary buffet in the other room but the women in there are raving over it like it’s the best food they’ve ever seen. I think that their avoidance of both rooms is the most interesting choice of all.”

  “Meaning what?” the unidentified woman said. “Meaning that women avoid the hard choices?”

  “Or that the choice between the body and the personality isn’t so interesting to them,” the man replied.

  “Women are interested in other women,” the unidentified woman said. “They’re not interested in sluts.”

  “Ouch,” the man said. “That’s kind of a harsh judgment, isn’t it?”

  “I say it like I see it,” she replied.

  “Do you think that every woman crowded around the buffet has made the same judgment about our artist here?”

  “They aren’t in here talking to her, are they?” the woman said.

  “What is the state of your undress now?” the man asked the artist.

  “I can’t say,” she replied. “You’d have to go in the other room and see for yourself.”

  The man smiled at her and then left the room. The three women watched him saunter past the buffet without pause. He had the air of one who was more curious than excited. But it was a driven curiosity.

  “You can rationalize it all you want,” the unidentified woman said, “but your actions show that you’re nothing but an exhibitionist at heart.”

  “I don’t think so,” the artist replied. “Not in my heart. I’ve never been naked in public before and I don’t like doing it now. If I had a choice, I’d be happy to keep my clothes
on.”

  “You have a choice?”

  “A Hobson’s choice. If I don’t complete my performance then I’ve stopped being an artist. I can’t do that.”

  “Didn’t you design this so-called performance?”

  “I did.”

  “Then you had a choice. You chose to create a performance that required that you strip. You could have designed some other performance.”

  “I didn’t begin with the idea of stripping my clothes off in public. I began with the idea of separating the body from the person and I looked at a variety of different ways to do it. I couldn’t find a better way than this. It was hard to convince myself go to through with this rather than choosing a different topic but I couldn’t find any alternative. It’s art. It can’t be compromised. But I find this evening as uncomfortable as you do. Maybe more so.”

  “That’s what every whore says” the woman replied. “That she doesn’t have any choice but to fuck other women’s husbands for money. It’s her parents’ fault. It’s her pimp’s fault. It’s society’s fault. Her choices are never her fault.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to make love to anyone’s husband tonight.”

  The other woman shook her head and walked away without responding to that.

  Marcie looked around. “There are a few men in here,” she observed. “Not all of them are glued to the television screens in the other room.”

  “I’ll bet there are a few women in the television room, too,” the artist said. “It’s a pity that I can’t go in there and see for myself.”

  The artists couldn’t satisfy her curiosity but Marcie could. She walked through the buffet room into the television room.

  She was surprised to see that there were more women in this room than men in the other room. They couldn’t all be lesbians.

  She looked at the screens. The artist had shucked her skirt. She was wearing nothing but her shoes, stockings, and panties. There was nothing particularly erotic about the panties. They were simple white lace panties that matched the now-removed bra.

  Marcie realized that the underwear was not intended to be especially erotic. The only reason that the artist had worn stockings instead of pantyhose was so that she could remove them one at a time and stretch out her tediously slow strip tease that much longer.