Punish Me, Please Me Read online

  “You weren’t raped. You said that yourself. You could have walked out any time. Everything we did was consensual.”

  “I didn’t consent to being filmed. I didn’t consent to the sex, either. Not as far as the law is concerned. I was coerced by your threats against my career. That makes everything non-consensual no matter what you or I said. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “When I saw your video of those two men banging me, I felt like I was being raped all over again. Even if it didn’t feel like rape at the time, it feels like it now.”

  She stared at him.

  He hung his head. “I didn’t show those videos to anyone. Those files were password protected. Nobody was supposed to see them.”

  “You typed the password every time you opened them to watch them yourself. The keystroke logger gave me the password and I watched them all from beginning to end.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I can recognize members of my own staff, you know. You arranged for me to be raped by two of the men that I supervise.”

  He said nothing.

  “And you let the other two sneak in and get a good look at me while I was splayed across the desk, completely blind and half deaf. They’re on the video, too. Those other two men report to me, too, now that I’m VPO.”

  Eli looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. “I didn’t tell them who you were. They still think you were a stranger.”

  “There’s no way that I can have them working under me any longer. There are security guards waiting outside that door to escort you out of the building. As soon as you’re off the premises, they’ll be coming back to escort your four buddies to the street, too. I’m cleaning house around here today. Now get the hell out of my office.”

  He opened the door and walked into the arms of the two uniformed guards who were waiting for him.

  She savored the moment. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a humiliation for a humiliation. Justice felt good.

  She turned her thoughts to her new job. She was going to be a great vice president.

  When it came to managing difficult people, she had the right stuff.

  Private Performance

  The Commission:

  Catherine was trying to give Adele’s work the consideration that it deserved, but failing. Her attention was distracted the inane conversation behind her.

  “What does it mean?” a man’s voice asked.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” a second male voice replied. “It’s abstract. It’s just a design.” The second voice had a whine that grated on Catherine.

  “The tag says that it’s called A Cry in the Urban Wilderness. That has to mean something.” The deeper voice sounded genuinely puzzled.

  “That means that the artist spent more time thinking about a catchy title than about what to paint. Look at it. It’s just a jagged red circle on a black background. How much thinking do you have to do before you paint that?”

  Catherine knew that Adele agonized for hours over every piece she painted. That piece was her cry in the dark. A raw, red howl of anguish made visual and frozen on the canvas. She was begging for someone to understand her fear and loneliness.

  “It’s just a design,” the second voice whined.

  Adele’s genius was wasted on these philistines.

  “I don’t think I like it,” the first voice replied.

  “It might look good in your living room. The red matches your drapes.”

  Now it was Catherine who wanted to howl in anguish. Or to shriek in anger. Adele didn’t make decorations; she made art.

  “I don’t think so,” the first voice said. “If I’m going to buy a painting, it has to mean something to me.”

  “Maybe we can find a nice landscape around here somewhere. You know. With leaves glowing in the setting sun. Or maybe a stone cottage in the evening with a nice flower garden.”

  They weren’t going to find any Kinkades in Hon’s Gallery of Urban Visions. Jacques Hon sought out pieces that he thought contributed to a new industrialized primitivism. His interpretation of primitivism was as a sophisticated, highly-developed expression of the semiotics of oral cultures; not the naive, patronizing primitivism that the abstract expressionists like Picasso tried to ape.

  Catherine was not entirely certain that she understood the intellectual implications of Jacques’ vision, but she had been to this gallery often enough to have a good gut feeling for what fit and what didn’t. She knew for a fact that the two naïfs standing behind her would never find what they wanted in here.

  As though he were reading her thoughts, the first man said exactly that. “I don’t think that they’d sell anything in here that I’d like.”

  “So let’s go somewhere else.”

  “I think we should give this place a chance first. Marius said that this is one of the most sophisticated galleries in the city.”

  “We looked. We didn’t find anything that we liked. We can leave now. Vidi, vici, vamoose-i.”

  There was a long pause. Then the first voice said. “I’m lost. I need to talk to someone who can tell me what good art is.”

  “Talk to the owner again.”

  “That didn’t do any good before. I’m not going to waste more of his time.”

  Catherine felt a twinge of sympathy for the man. Even she found talking to Jacques akin to listening to someone speaking a foreign language. His convoluted thought processes were even less accessible than the art that he exhibited.

  She turned around and found herself looking into a pair of deep blue eyes. The man frowned and said, “Do you like these paintings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they’re any good?”

  “Yes. They’re terrific.”

  “If money was no object, which one would you buy for your home?”

  She looked around the gallery. “None of them,” she confessed.

  The man looked puzzled. “But you said that they were good art.”

  “Yes. They might even be great art. But that doesn’t mean that I could live with them. David’s painting, The Death of Marat, is a wonderful example of eighteenth century French realism but there’s no way that I could live with a picture of a murdered man bleeding to death in his bathtub. I couldn’t live with The Scream by Munch, either, or almost any other well-known piece that you can name. A work has to be very special to be both fine art and something that you want to live with.”

  “What would the right painting look like?”

  “I can’t tell you that. It’ll be different for everyone. I can’t live with these paintings because I know the artist too well. You might not be able to live with them for a different reason.”

  When the man and his friend turned to scan the gallery once more, Catherine took the opportunity to scan the man. He was older than her, in his mid to late thirties. He looked athletic, healthy, prosperous. He had dark hair and a strong jaw. He wore a black tee shirt, tight blue jeans, and no wedding band.

  Most people would call him handsome. Catherine’s single friends would call him a good catch. Catherine would reserve judgment.

  “This artist is well-known?” he asked when he turned back to look at her again.

  “Not as well-known as she should be, but that’s not what I meant when I said that I know her too well. I meant that I know her personally. She’s a close friend of mine.”

  “She’s a close friend, yet you tell me not to buy one of her paintings.”

  “No. I never said that. I said that I wouldn’t buy one of her paintings. She’s not a happy person and she pours her pain into her paintings. I couldn’t live with my friend’s pain hanging on my wall.”

  “I see.” She let him think for a minute. Then he said, “So what should I look for in a painting?”

  “Look for an experience. Look for something that affects you emotionally or intellectually. If you look at a painting, walk away, and then get an urge to come back and look at it again, that’s a good si
gn. That says that it affected you. If you feel something different the second time that you look at it, then that’s another good sign. That says that there’s more to it than you saw at first glance. Buying a painting should be like getting married. It’s not a one-night stand. You want to develop a long-term personal relationship with the piece. It’s more than an illustration or a decoration. You can look at an illustration once and know everything you need to know about it. You can live with a decoration because it doesn’t mean much to you. Art should give you an ongoing experience that keeps growing and changing.”

  “That’s demanding a lot from daubs of paint brushed on a canvas.”

  “Good art is up to the task. That’s what makes it art.”

  The man’s friend spoke up for the first time. “How do you know so much about art?” He was short and dumpy, wearing a yellow tee shirt with an ad for beer blazoned across his chest. “Do you work here?”

  “No. I’m an artist.”

  “Are you any good?”

  “Some people must think so because I’m starting my second year of my MFA at Stanford. It’s hard to get into that program.”

  The handsome man spoke again, “Maybe I should have a look at your paintings. I might like them better than these.”

  “Or maybe you can commission something nice from her that matches your carpet,” the short man said to the handsome one, cutting Catherine out of the conversation.

  She couldn’t tell if he was being deliberately insulting or was merely obtuse. She addressed the handsome man with a smile, “You can’t buy my work because I’m not a painter. I’m a performance artist.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My art consists of public performances.”

  “Like an actor?”

  “No. An actor plays a role. She represents a character by pretending to be that person. I don’t represent any character. Or any real thing, for that matter. When I perform, I am the art. Directly.”

  “Do you sing? Dance? Recite poetry? What?” the short man asked.

  “No.” She paused then revised her answer. “Maybe. I do different things, depending on what the piece requires. I don’t have a good voice. My singing is terrible. But I would sing if I designed a piece that required bad singing.”

  The two men looked confused.

  She tried to explain again. “I give people an unexpected experience. I try to do something special. Something so special that it might even change them in some small way. When I finish the performance, the person who viewed it might see himself and his world a little bit differently than before I started. That’s what any piece of art is about, really. An experience that is so profound that a person can be changed by it. It doesn’t happen often but it can happen on rare occasions and, when it does, it’s magical.”

  The two men stared at her for a few moments and she felt a flush of self-consciousness. “That sounded pretentious. I’m sorry. I get carried away when I talk about art.”

  “No. No, that’s all right. I think that I know what you mean,” the handsome man said. “I had a friend who went to Rome and he said that when he looked up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel he was so moved that he felt like God was in the room with him. He claims that he will never forget the feeling. I thought that it was just bullshit, but if you say that it can happen, then maybe I should take him at his word.”

  Catherine nodded and said, “You should believe your friend. It can happen. The ultimate purpose of art is to give a person that quality of experience. Not necessarily of God but some kind of insight. It can happen the instant that you see the piece or it can take years of exposure to it. Like I said, it’s rare but it happens. It’s worth looking at a thousand pieces of art in the hope that just one of them will be the one that transforms you. If someone tells you that they have an epiphany every time they see a painting or a sculpture, then they are bullshitting you. Epiphanies are rare. But they do happen on occasion and that’s what makes looking at a thousand pieces of art worthwhile.”

  “So how do your performances accomplish that? Give people such an experience?”

  “I wish I had an answer to that question. I just do what I can and hope that I manage to give someone a significant experience. The first step is to give people an experience that they’ve never had before. That’s obvious. After that, I use my knowledge and intuition to try to make it as important an experience as possible. I have succeeded well enough on some of my past performances that Stanford University admitted me to their program. They don’t admit many. Now, I keep trying to do better.”

  The handsome man looked intrigued. “Can I hire you to perform one of your pieces?”

  Catherine shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t think so. My best pieces take too much time and effort to set up and perform. I’ve got to produce a set of performances for my thesis before I can graduate. I don’t have the time to rework an old piece.”

  A frown furrowed the man’s face. “If you’re making a new pieces for your thesis, then you can perform them for me.”

  It was Catherine’s turn to frown. “I’ve just begun. I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet. It may not be suitable for you.”

  “I’ll pay you,” the man said.

  “You want to commission the series?” the artist asked.

  “If that’s what an artist calls it when you pay her, then yes.”

  “A commission means that I’ll design the series specifically for you.”

  “I thought that you had to design it for your thesis.”

  She shrugged. “Just because I design it for you doesn’t mean that I can’t submit it to my thesis committee. It just means that I’ll have to document the entire process.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Wait,” the short man said. “Not so fast. How much is this going to cost?”

  The handsome man grinned. “Marty’s my money man. He needs to know the cost of everything.”

  “Five thousand dollars for each performance. There’ll be three of them so that’ll be fifteen thousand dollars total.” Catherine held her breath, hoping that he wouldn’t balk as such an exorbitant sum for art that hadn’t been created yet by an artist whose work he didn’t know.

  “I think we can afford that,” the handsome man told the short one with a smile.

  “What will we get for our money?” the short man asked Catherine.

  “Three performances, to be presented at two months intervals at a time and location suitable to you. I’ll include a video recording of the performances afterward so that you have a permanent record of them.”

  “That sounds fair,” the handsome man said.

  “But you have to understand that the video is not the art. The performance is the art. You can only use the video recordings to remind you about the art.”

  “Okay. I got that.”

  “You can’t publish the recordings or use them for commercial gain.”

  “Okay,” the handsome man said. “But let’s change the price. I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars for each performance, for a total of thirty thousand dollars.”

  Catherine smiled with her eyes. “I appreciate that.”

  The short man, Marty, spoke up again. “But the contract can be terminated after any performance if we don’t like the work.”

  The sparkle in Catherine’s eyes dimmed slightly. “You can terminate the commission whenever you like but I’m not going to tailor my artistic vision to fit your taste.”

  The handsome man looked at Marty with annoyance. “Don’t worry. I won’t be quick to cancel the commission. Just make the best art that you can and I’ll try to appreciate it as best as I can.” Then he added, “What about materials? Do you need to buy props or anything?”

  “Probably. I don’t know yet.”

  “How about a budget of five thousand dollars per performance for materials in addition to the fees for the commission?”

  “That’s generous. Thank you.” She had expected to pay for materials out of her own p
ocket. Her vision was already expanding to fit the budget.

  “I want your best effort. I don’t want you to feel constrained by a lack of resources. If you need more than five thousand dollars for materials, you can explain your need to Marty.”

  “You’ll have to submit receipts, documenting your expenditures,” Marty said, darkly.

  “Good,” the handsome man said. “Marty will draw up a contract for the commission. You can talk to him directly.”

  Marty handed her a card.

  “I’m Catherine Dicksen.” She gave each man her own card in return.

  “I’m Jeff Lawrence and this is Marty Palmer, my CFO.”

  “The contract will be between you and Elegant World Apps. We need to write this off as a business expense to get the tax advantage,” Marty said.

  Catherine didn’t care about anybody’s tax advantage. She was already busy thinking about possible designs.

  As the two men turned to leave the gallery, she said, “Wait. Jeff. There are a few practical details that we need to work out. Where will I be performing? Who will be in the audience?”

  “At my house, of course. The whole point of this is to have some kind of art in my house. Should I invite friends over to see you? Make it like a party?”

  “Whatever you want. I just need to have some idea about the venue.”

  “How about you come over for lunch sometime and you can see the house?”

  “Okay.”

  “I live down in Palo Alto. I’ll send a car to pick you up. One of Marty’s guys will arrange the details when you’re ready.”

  Catherine was getting excited. She was certain that she could design an interesting sequence of performances in a private, intimate space for a controlled, pre-selected audience. Interesting performances indeed.

  The First Performance:

  “Hello. I’m Catherine.” She smiled at the woman in the red dress. Like everyone else at the party, the woman was wearing a gold badge on a gold chain around her neck. The guests not only had to be invited to the party, but they had to wear their invitations while they were here.