Author's Foreword

 

Several years ago, a man of my acquaintance introduced me to the salacious world of BDSM video. These audacious vignettes enthralled me, but their thin and sometimes non-existent storylines were a disappointment.

Here I was, literally salivating over their visual onslaught, but forced to make up my own backstory in real time. I wanted more meat: I wanted to know the plot and the characters; I wanted to know what the submissive heroines were thinking as they suffered so deliciously; I wanted a story I could remember not just a fleeting mental image.

The following is the tale I imagined behind the video "Straightjacket" [sic]. Think of it as an accompaniment or a remix of the original. If you follow this video genre, you will quickly recognize the name and hopefully recall the original's suggestive imagery as you read.

To those who are disappointed that it's a short story rather than a novel, please consider the following. My goal was to write "the story behind the video" not to author a different story, one vaguely inspired by the video. More words, in my view, would have taken me too far from the original.

 

DP

 

 

Introduction

 

Caroline Thomas was a bitch.

This label isn't very PC these days, but it fit Caroline to a T. She enjoyed hurting others. Even more, she enjoyed laying the blame for her social mayhem on someone else. This wasn't easy, but she relished the challenge. In her mind, successfully deflecting an accusation to someone innocent was a two-for. Her rich-girl eastside upbringing and her smoking-hot good looks helped with this of course, but it was her intelligence and amoral conscience that got the job done.

This is not to say that Caroline was destined to become a serial killer. Her meanness wasn't sociopathic, it was impulsive, and she often felt badly afterward even depressed by her actions. These feelings of depression eventually drove her to seek help. She genuinely wanted to change: to become "nice." After one especially appalling incident, her rich parents sent her for professional help.

Her Park Avenue psychiatrist labeled her condition "chronic disempathy affect;" in laymen's terms, an inability to feel what others felt. Ironically, the shrink blamed her parents who were footing her bill. Caroline disagreed, she viewed her dysfunction as a genetic character flaw; something inside was compelling her to be mean. Neither theory resulted in a cure.

Anticipating trouble, she decided that even someone with her character flaw could fit in at NYU, especially if she avoided temptation by having her own apartment. It worked for a while: the highly-competitive NYU culture and the comprehensively mean streets of NYC allowed her to mask her compulsion to be catty or cruel. It did not help, however, with her guilt, which by now was provoking serious bouts of depression.

She muddled through until she dumped her popular boyfriend, David Falcone. She and David had been cooing and fucking like lovers for nine months when, on an impulse, she unilaterally ended their relationship. Watching him suffer, listening to him plead for a second chance brought back the old feelings of cruel excitement. By the time her bitch-guilt kicked in, it was too late to repair what she had done.

Worse, their breakup shocked her friends. David was a catch: a gentle soul from a wealthy family with a winning personality. Everyone liked him. Her unconvincing and inconsistent reasons for dumping him were not well-received and they shunned her. For the first time, her bitch-cloaking skills had failed.

 

***

 

Dr. Sinclair Whitman, a well-respected professor of psychology, was just the opposite. He had enormous empathy and concern for others, which was why he became the faculty's ex-officio student advisor. Dr. Whitman, or Whit to his friends, counselled hundreds of students on everything from poor grades, to the right major, to the many and varied personal problems college students encounter.

It was in this advisory role that Whit discovered "guilt."

For all his academic study and degrees, for all his insight into psychology, he had not fully appreciated how much guilt (or conscience) influenced behavior. When you stripped away the mental and social detritus, what remained was often a profound depression over some perceived or real failure. This depression mentally crippled or disabled many of those he counselled.

At first, he tried to address this by convincing his students that "they were exaggerating their [real or perceived] failure," but this advice rarely worked. Their self-recrimination was not rational; it was a way of mitigating their failure by showing how much it affected them. Slowly, he began to realize that the most effective way to deal with their guilt was not to try and minimize it, but to find an appropriate punishment. Punishment provided the mental quid pro quo that the guilty, or those who perceived themselves guilty, needed to reset their minds and move on.

Punishment...

He began to experiment with this idea, urging faculty and parents to meet out appropriate punishment, and convincing students to accept this as the right way to address their guilt-induced dysfunction. It worked. Even those who tried to avoid or railed against their punishment seemed to do better.

His success prompted him to seek out ever more serious offenses and punishments. There were practical limits of course to the severity of the punishment, but typically if it fit the offense, it expunged the guilt, and the student's performance and disposition improved.

Whit marveled at the simplicity of his "cure" and considered authoring a book. In the end, he decided he needed to do more research to discover how far the effect extended. This wasn't as easy as he imagined: first, because many areas of society, such as the criminal justice system, were already applying the principle of crime and punishment; second, because society was queasy about harsh punishment, especially corporal, it was difficult to test limits.

The answer came to him in a dream: BDSM. People, especially young people now free to experiment with all forms of sex, were fascinated by BDSM. If he could find examples of severe guilt and address it with BDSM means and methods, he could turn his research into an academic tour-de-force. Excited by his plan, he refurbished the farm his parents had left him upstate, outfitted it with all sorts of BDSM paraphernalia, and spent months learning about BDSM methods and techniques.

Now all he needed was to find guilty test subjects.

 

Chapter 1 - Washington Square Park

 

"You look sad," the man said quietly.

"What...?"

She wasn't sure she had heard him correctly. She didn't normally talk to strangers in the park, but he was handsome, looked sane, and spoke with a normal, pleasant voice.

"You look sad, like you have done something terrible and need to make amends."

"Get lost, asshole."

"The best way to make amends is with penance, punishment."

She just stared, stupefied. She thought she had heard it all, but this jerk's pickup line was so outrageous, so off-putting that she was literally at a loss for words. He nodded his head and smiled.

"I'm sorry. I just hate to see someone so young and beautiful in such distress."

He was certainly handsome. Her moment of confusion had given her a chance to look him over. He was no freak, no common street hustler, no crazy of any sort. He was well-dressed, well-groomed, and, notwithstanding his statement, well-spoken. He also had the most piercing blue eyes, commanding eyes. She felt like a deer caught in his hypnotizing headlights.

"I am not a pervert," he said quickly. "My name is Sinclair Whitman, Whit; I am a professor of psychology at Hudson Bay College."

"I'll bet..."

She looked around, defensively. She wasn't going to be scared off by some outrageous stranger. The park was full of people enjoying the Spring weather, the flowers, and there were two cops standing at the MacDougal Street entrance. There were at least a hundred people within shouting distance. She felt secure enough to process what he was saying.

"I ... I don't understand what you're asking me."

Her voice was tentative, still unsure that he was not a psycho.

"I'm interested in emotions, in the way people process their feelings. I study people ... psychology ... you know," he smiled pleasantly again.

"What makes you think I've done something terrible...?"

She couldn't believe she was speaking to a stranger about her feelings, but there was something about him, something that made her want to talk.

"Pardon me for saying this, but a decent girl often expresses anger at herself by dressing like a whore."

She lowered her eyes. She knew exactly what he meant, and it was true. She was showing far too much skin for a city park. Her thin yellow top pressed too hard on her pointed tits and her large nipples. Her black skirt was too short; it showed her ass barely hidden behind G-string panties. The outfit was outrageous, an expression of her terrible mood.

"...And you think I should be punished for wearing this? Is that what you're saying?"

"Not at all. I think it's lovely. I think you need to be punished for whatever it is that made you wear such an outfit, for whatever it is that's weighing you down. Your clothes are just a reaction to the way you feel, to your guilt. I'm just guessing now, but I would bet it's about a boy ... a boy you have recently ... separated from...?"

She blinked. He clearly had skills.

"If it's any of your damn business, yes, I just broke up with my boyfriend. I dumped him for no good reason and I'm feeling bad about it. My friends have all sided with him. Okay...?"

She was astonished at her declaration. Why was she telling him this, why was she telling him anything?

"Guilt is a heavy load for anyone," he said quietly.

The sincerity in his voice made her blink again.

"The best way to shake it off is to admit your fault and accept your punishment."

She stood quietly for a moment. There was something vaguely interesting in his words. She was feeling terrible for what she had done to David, for what her friends had done to her, but it wasn't his words that gave her pause. It was him. He seemed like the kind of person who knew things, who could solve problems, ease pain, like a good priest.

"What right do you have to judge me? You know nothing about me."

He shrugged.

"It's not 'what,' it's 'who," he answered. "It's up to you to judge yourself, to decide if punishment is appropriate."

She just stood there. This was crazy; she was almost taking him seriously, almost considering his outrageous offer ... a total stranger, someone she knew nothing about. Sure, she was vulnerable at this moment, depressed, deeply depressed and she wanted these feelings to be over. But punishment... Why was she talking to him? Was it boredom, curiosity? Was she just horny? Maybe it was all these things. Fuck it...!