So You've Been Publicly Shamed (13 page)

Max felt like he'd been fighting not only for himself but also for the dead who preceded him. He meant people like Ben Stronge. “He was an English chef living in northern France, divorced, and he was a swinger. A man and a woman from the
News of the World
swung by his place. He gave them dinner, disappeared upstairs, and apparently came back down wearing nothing but a pouch.” Max paused. Then he said, softly, “Pathos.”

That was June 1992. When Ben Stronge discovered that the people looking at him weren't swingers but
News of the World
journalists, he started crying. He telephoned the paper's editor, Patsy Chapman. According to Max, “He said, ‘Please don't publish, because if you do, I'll never see my children again.' Well, they published anyway. They didn't give a damn. So he killed himself.”

Then there was Arnold Lewis. In the spring of 1978 the
News of the World
decided to infiltrate sex parties in caravans in the forests of Wales. The journalist Tina Dalgleish and her photographer, Ian Cutler, answered a small ad in a swingers' magazine. It had been placed by a lay preacher and teacher, Arnold Lewis. They met in the local pub.

The turnout was small. Five people showed up, three of whom were Tina Dalgleish, Ian Cutler, and Arnold Lewis. Arnold left a coded note for potential latecomers with an arrow pointing in the direction of the caravan and the exact walking distance: “3.8 miles.”

At the caravan they drank sherry and ate biscuits, and an orgy occurred (which Ian Cutler and Tina Dalgleish witnessed but didn't participate in), and then a few days later Tina Dalgleish telephoned Arnold to reveal her identity.

Later, after I left Max, I managed to get Tina Dalgleish's photographer on the phone. Ian Cutler was recovering from a major stroke, but he wanted to talk. He'd never stopped thinking about Arnold Lewis, he said. For thirty-five years it had plagued him.

“Arnold told Tina that if she published the story he would kill himself,” Ian said. “He was a preacher. Fucking hell. He was a preacher in a small Welsh village.”

The
News of the World
published and Arnold Lewis killed himself. He inhaled exhaust fumes. His body was found in his car the morning the story appeared. The headline read “If You Go Down to the Woods Today You're Sure of a Big Surprise.”

•  •  •

M
ax and I spent the afternoon trying to work it out. There was something about his behavior in the aftermath of the
News of the World
story that made the public totally uninterested in annihilating him. He just naturally seemed to get the formula right. People melted. But what was it?

At one point he raised with me the possibility that he might be a sociopath. Maybe he'd survived it all by drawing on special sociopathic powers. Maybe his instantaneous “whoosh” of resilient fury at the newsstand was a sociopathic whoosh. Maybe that was what we liked about him—that resilient fury. He told me that in 1991, two years before getting the job as president of motor racing's governing body, they “commissioned a psychiatrist to analyze me, and the man concluded I was a sociopath.” As he said this, he gave me an anxious glance.

I sighed.

“Do you feel empathy?” I asked him.

“Yes!”
he said. “The motive of most of the main things I've done in my life is feeling sorry for people. And the psychiatrist never met me. He just did it from the outside.”

“Well, I don't think you're a sociopath,” I said.

“Phew!” said Max.

“Anyway,” I said, “a psychologist once told me that if you're worried you may be a sociopath that means you aren't one.”

“Thanks, Ron, another phew,” Max replied. He paused. “Jon,” he said, “I meant Jon.”

“More proof you're not a sociopath, because sociopaths wouldn't care about calling me Ron,” I said.

“Another phew!” said Max.

•  •  •

I
t was getting dark by the time I left Max's house. We both felt we hadn't quite managed to solve the mystery, so we agreed to keep thinking about it.

“Oh, by the way,” I said, on my way out. “Have you heard of an S&M place in America called Kink? I think I've got an invitation to visit them.”

“Kink?” said Max. His eyes widened. “That is
the
place! I've only seen it on the Internet. They've got machines. They've got electrics. They've got water. You name it, they've got it. I'm quite envious!”

“Exciting!” I said.

—

My invitation to Kink.com had come about after I'd mentioned on Twitter that I was writing a book on public shaming. One of my followers—his name is Conner Habib—asked me if I was going to meet people who derive sexual pleasure from being publicly shamed.

“No!” I replied. “That hadn't crossed my mind at all.”

He said that as it happened he was a gay porn star and if I wanted to know more about his work I should google him. I did and immediately saw many close-ups of his anus. I e-mailed him to ask how he managed to do that kind of work without feeling embarrassed.

“I do think there's lots to learn from porn stars about how not to be embarrassed or feel vulnerable,” he e-mailed back. He added that a lot of sex industry people go on to become hospice workers: “They're not freaked out by the body, so they can help people transition through illness and death. I'm not sure what would humiliate me at this point. If you want to talk at length about this, I'm open to it. Just don't make me seem any goofier than I already am. Maybe that's what could humiliate a porn star—a Jon Ronson essay?”

I frowned.

—

Conner's e-mails got me interested in journeying into the porn world. Was it really populated by people who had learned how to be immune to shame? It suddenly seemed like a good talent to have.

He put me in touch with a famous porn impresario—Princess Donna Dolore of Kink.com studios. We swapped e-mails. “Growing up I was ashamed of everything,” she wrote, “and at a certain point I realized that if I was open with the world about the things that embarrassed me they no longer held any weight! I felt set free!” She added that she always derives her porn scenarios from this formula. She imagines circumstances that would mortify her, “like being bound naked on a street with everybody looking at you,” and enacts them with like-minded porn actors, robbing them of their horror.

—

Donna and I arranged to have dinner in Los Angeles. That morning I e-mailed her: “See you tonight at 7 p.m.!”

At 5:40 p.m. I e-mailed her again, “Don't forget we're supposed to be meeting in an hour and twenty minutes!”

“Sure!” she replied.

I arrived at the restaurant at 6:50 p.m. Two hours and ten minutes later, still sitting there, I checked her Twitter feed. Her last message, written four hours earlier, read: “Somebody please tell me what the fuck I am supposed to do at 7 p.m.! Why the fuck don't I write this shit down?!?”

I trudged miserably back to my hotel.
If keeping people waiting in restaurants for hours is what it's like to live in a post-shame world,
I thought,
give me a bit of shame
.

At midnight Donna e-mailed me: “FUCK! I'm SO sorry.”

“That's FINE!” I e-mailed back.

“There's a public disgrace tomorrow if you want to come,” she e-mailed.

•  •  •

I
t was midnight outside a sports bar in the San Fernando Valley. From the front, the place looked dark and empty—all shuttered up. But Donna had told me to go around the back to the fire door behind the bins. When Max had told me how impressive Kink.com was, he didn't mean the sports bar. Kink.com headquarters is a giant, ornate 1914 armory in San Francisco, equipped with all sorts of dungeon and torture equipment. I knocked on the fire door. A security guard ticked me off a list.

I scanned the barroom. There were twenty people in there—middle-aged men sitting alone, some young couples. Everyone looked nervous. A man walked over to me.

“I'm Shylar,” he said. “Shylar Cobi.”

“Are you a porn person?” I asked him.

“Twenty-three years,” he said. “It's all I know.”

He had a sweet, melancholy face. He reminded me of Droopy.

I asked him a bit about his life. He said he didn't just work with Donna. He was a producer for hire, averaging fifty porn shoots a year. Which meant he had a thousand credits in all, including—I later discovered on IMDb—
Orgy University
,
Wet Sweaty Boobs
, and
My Slutty Friends
.

“So what's the plan for tonight?” I asked him.

Shylar shrugged. “Same as always. They fuck, he finishes, we clean up, everyone goes home.”

He gently squeezed my arm to make sure I was okay. He wasn't the only one. Various members of the production crew kept doing it to me all night—rubbing my back, squeezing my arm. I suppose, being tweedy and owl-like, I just don't look like the sort of person who normally hangs around extreme porn shoots, and I think everyone wanted to ensure that I was not feeling intimidated or about to faint. It was sweet. Porn professionals were being so nice and considerate toward me that it was almost as if
I
were the person about to have his genitals electrocuted. But it wasn't to be my genitals. It was to be the genitals of the porn actor Jodi Taylor, who was sitting in the corner of the bar discussing logistics with Princess Donna, who now stood up, hushed everyone, and made a speech about what was expected of us.

“So,” she began. “The name of the site is Public Disgrace. It's a site about public humiliation. You guys are all just people drinking and having a good time, and you have no idea that we're going to be turning up at this bar. When we come in, you're all invited to participate to a certain extent. You can grope the model, assuming you have clean hands and short-filed fingernails. We have nail clippers and nail files if anyone thinks they're going to need them. You can smack her ass, but this is not about you showing us how hard you can smack someone. I don't want to see anyone take full swings. Sometimes people try and show off with their spanking. I'm sure you guys can all spank very, very hard, but I don't want to see it. Other things you can do. You can spit on her body. You can pour your drinks on her. You can pull her hair. You can gently smack her in the face. But try not to be too obnoxious. You are totally welcome to shout things out and verbally degrade her. That is encouraged. But just don't be
that guy
.” She summarized: “So. Don't get shitfaced, don't fist her ass, enjoy.”

Donna and Jodi Taylor disappeared to a corridor outside, where Donna attached a ball and chain to Jodi. Donna gave a signal to the cameraman. He pressed record. And it began.

—

The drinkers feigned surprise at the sight of Donna pulling a shrieking Jodi Taylor into the bar. “What
IS
going on?” said a man in a beanie hat. He slammed down his drink in “outrage.”

Donna ripped off Jodi Taylor's clothes and attached electrodes to her genitals.

“What are you DOING?” said the man. He seemed to be the only crowd member daring enough to improvise dialogue or simulate emotions of any sort.

“It's electricity,” Donna said. “Do you want to shock her?”

“Do I want to SHOCK her?” he said. “I just came in to get a drink. Oh. Okay.”

Donna handed him the remote control. He pressed the button. Nothing happened.

“Turn it off and turn it on again,” said Donna. He did. Then he pressed the button. Jodi Taylor screamed.

(Later, during a break from filming, a few crowd members expressed doubt that there really was electricity coursing through the pads into Jodi Taylor's genitals, so one of them placed the pad against her hand and pressed the button and shrieked. Later still, I got an e-mail from Jodi Taylor: “Obviously if something like public disgrace happened to me in real life, it'd be extremely intense, horrifying and awful. But that's the beauty of porn. You can actually do these crazy things without actually doing them. It's all make-believe. It's pure fantasy and a fantasy is never humiliating or scary. It's awesome. Princess Donna is all about making the PORN GIRL'S fantasy come alive far more than the fantasy of the people viewing it. Only with her can you have a fantasy as taboo as gangbang or public disgrace and actually get to live it out while being completely safe and comfortable.”)

Shylar Cobi had told me that the crowd was composed of friends and friends of friends, with one exception. A hired porn actor was mingling among us. And now he emerged and started having sex with Jodi Taylor. At this, everyone became a bit bolder, if still slightly stilted. “Put ice on her tooth,” a man shouted. Someone poured beer over Jodi Taylor's head. I tried to maintain a respectful distance, but from time to time, when needing to ensure that I was accurately chronicling the minutiae of it, I think I drifted into shot. And so, if you are a Public Disgrace viewer and the erotic ambience was ruined for you by the sudden emergence of a bespectacled man peering in close and writing things in a notepad, I'm sorry.

Then they finished and cleaned up, and everyone went home. Later I spent a little time with Donna. I told her I thought she'd definitely created a more mindful working environment than most regular offices. There were no bullying bosses stalking around shaming the employees. “Are other corners of the porn industry more frightening and exploitative?” I asked her. “And that's why everyone here was making a special effort?”

Donna nodded but said she didn't want to talk about other parts of the porn industry. She wanted to talk about what she was trying to achieve with Public Disgrace. “America is a very puritanical place,” she said. “If I can help one person feel less freakish and alone because of what they like, then I'll be a success. But I know I've already reached more people than that.”