A Day in the office

I cannot count the number of times I have gone this way. A dozen, roughly. The phone would ring at any one moment during the working day. Whether I'd be alone and working or in an internal meeting, I would wrap up within 5 minutes and be on my way down by elevator. Somehow I have never been summoned during a meeting with a client or clients. Whether this has been chance or intelligence on the part of my masters I cannot tell. But I would go, regardless.

It is seven floors down. Sometimes I would be alone in the elevator, at other times there might be people in already, or getting in and out at intermediate levels. Only once I was accompanied all the way to my destination. The man was a manager I knew vaguely and I had greeted him when I entered the elevator, not knowing that he would join the proceedings and ruthlessly penetrate my rectum within minutes. I had noticed, though, that he noticed the jade Chinese armband that they had applied as a permanent adornment during my first session here.

As always when I enter the archive area, I am struck by the mood of the environment. The enormous shelves filled with thousands of anonymous files, the very local lighting at the place where I am expected, the remainder of the basement lit only by green emergency lighting, the marginal temperature, the vaguely dusty smell... There are five men waiting for me, all dressed down to shirtsleeves. I know them all. One is my boss one removed, the lowest level of management that joins these rituals. Knowing my organisation, that level and up counts approximately twenty. I know of some that have not yet joined in. By choice or by design? Do they even know? Who knows?

I position myself in the centre of the light, three, four armslengths away from their group. They have stopped their chat and all look at me. I know what is expected of me, but stretch their patience a little. It is still not easy for me to submit to them here at work, which was and is to a degree the centre of my considerable ambitions. But the sex machine that I have become in Shanghai is within me and more than ready, so I don't need to be forced. Thus I strip efficiently, facing them, fold my clothes up neatly and place them aside. I then use the controls to lower the hook from the lifting beam that runs along the aisle to just above my head. I tie my hands with a looped sling, which I then attach to the hook. I have prepared myself and now stand facing them, naked. They have remained silently looking at me.

And I at them. It is so strange. I work with these gentlemen. I have meetings with some of them, will have again. I negotiate with them, am tough and compliant, execute strategies, often win. Then how can I tolerate these ordeals here? I will be beaten, my three orifices ravaged, pissed upon, then I will have to clean up. It is the delicatest of balance. What keeps it going is that neither they nor I ever refer to these scenes here. If they ever will, the balance will fall. As for me, I am proud in both of my existences. That of body, that of mind. I would say I am trying to lose myself during these ordeals, but I am really not sure whether that is the right expression. Losing conscious thoughts, yes, but finding my essence in an overdose of physical sensation...? I am being an inverse ascetic.

Then the action follows. One of the men hoists the hook with my hands up to capacity, stretching me and just leaving my toes on the floor. My wig is removed. Cries of amazement by the newcomers, and of pleasure by the rest. I am looked and felt over. A helpless female shape, pale, devoid of hair, belly drawn in and ribcage raised and extended forward, breasts stretched, but nipples proud - not a fellow human being, but a carcass in the slaughterhouse? - a body still, with sexual powers, ready for the taking. The men talk about me and my details as about things. They bend over and look at me at close range, back and front. A whip is produced from a desk. This time they aim for my calves and the rear of my thighs. They are generally careful to miss any part of me that is visible when dressed. I hear them talk about this and how they have brought opaque grey stockings for me to hide the welts. Then they lash out mercilessly. Oh! The pain I hate! But start loving a minute or two in. Loving is not the word. Craving! The lashing on the back of my thighs hurts, but the pain on my tight calves is criminal. Yet the pain needs more pain, and more... and I canot help but rise above it.

During my sober moments afterwards, it amazes me that I can endure being treated like this. Or rather, that I can no longer endure not being treated like this. That I can sustain any kind of gaze, touch, hit and lashing. Any kind of probing and penetration. Any offering of the male fluids. Any talk about me, as a body or as a woman. Because I know - and this is crucial - that they need me and want me and admire me, obliquely or otherwise.

As it is, I hardly notice when they are done, readjust their clothing and go. I have ended this session with my torso flat on a desktop with my wrists and ankles strapped to its legs. My skin is burning in many areas and is soiled. One has remained behind, who - surprisingly - kisses me on the skull, very sweetly. He releases me and then gets seated. Today it is my boss' boss (as said, my boss is not of the rank that participates.) He does not need to tell me what to do. There is a janitor's cabinet in the corner with all that I need to clean the desk, the floor and so on. I am to do this naked, as I do, watched by the man that has stayed behind. This done, I place the aids and instruments they have used in an archive box on a shelf somewhere (marked 'Confidential - Human Resources'.)

Finally, I wash up at the janitor's sink, dry myself and, back in front of my manager, dress to a T. The stockings are different now, grey and opaque, as is indeed necessary because I bear the cane markings on my calves. They will be prominent for a day or two. It is he that completes the appearance by putting my wig back on. Then we enter the elevator together. There no word is exchanged on what just happened. In fact, we start talking about my work and a project I am running, which he is very interested in. We complete this conversation in his office, over a cup of coffee, as if nothing has happened.

A day in the office

by Vanna Vechian