It’s 7 PM when I step out of the taxi.
As I stroll the up-market pedestrian precinct, I hear the chugga-chugga beat of dance music. It’s coming from the gallery up ahead, with its big neon GIRL BOSS sign.
Bloody hell! Nerves.
There’s a mirror in the window of a posh furniture shop. I stop to check myself.
The chaste boy toy has gone!
Business jacket, black turtle neck, khaki chinos, no bling: very much “up-and-coming designer with a side-order of Steve Jobs”.
Mariella appears behind me, all crinkly white-toothed smiles and neat bobbed blond hair. “Oh hello, Bradley,” she drawls in her throaty upper class accent. “Are you going to the exhibition opening?”
I have a vision of the older woman’s flushed face as she arched her back and chanted “Nothing!” all the way to an orgasm. My hips twitch and my cold penis wakes in its cage. “Um,” I say turning to face her. “Actually, I’m the exhibition designer.”
Mariella grins and slips an arm in mine. “I hope the title wasn’t your idea.”
I shake my head. “Ironic call back to the 2010s, apparently.”
“Hah!”
We walk along, arm in arm, while I enjoy the clip-clop sound of her boots. We must look like a proper couple, though the age gap draws glances from passers-by.
As we queue to get in, I ask “What’s your connection?”
“You mean,” she drawls, “how did a nobody like me merit a ticket?”
I blush. “I meant...”
Mariella laughs. “A neighbour works for the sponsor.”
The doorwoman waves us through and --- Bloody Hell!
“Well, fuck,” says Mariella, and vanishes into the crowd.
The place is crammed with women, mostly in their 30s and 40s, most in fashionable winter boots, some with chastes in attendance...
And there’s a stage with a strip show going on...
A male strip show.
As I watch, a 20-something blond dude rips off his boxers to reveal a very big Chaste Maker cage around his groin. He’s got no collar, so he’s a neuter signed up for the terrifying ten-year long haul.
And a hundred women cheer... an animal baying that goes straight to my caged groin. Suddenly I’m aware of a background aroma; the perspiration of all these women crammed into the small venue.
I know it’s a bad idea but I can’t help slipping out my mobile phone. I open HrLckr and set it to Live.
Somebody tugs at my arm.
My boss Lydia contemplates me with her twinkly eyes. She’s wearing a silvery sequin dress that hugs her hour-glass figure. She cocks her head in the direction of a side room, which turns out to be a quieter bar area. “You’re on in ten,” she says.
I nod.
“I...” she trails off and stares past me.
I turn and see Caroline the scary lawyer in an argument with square-jawed Roger, my university nemesis.
He pivots and marches past me without a look.
Caroline does look at me as she passes; a fierce glare that makes my pierced cock flex in its prison.
And now Lydia has gone.
I shrug and wonder over to the bar for a lemonade. It’s hot in here. The jacket and turtle neck were a mistake. I shed them and settle to going over my speech on my phone.
“Excuse me? Gosh, this is forward of me, but are you a... chaste?”
A 40-something woman I’ve barely noticed has turned from her gin-and-tonic. She’s wearing a slightly frumpy dress and an Alice band contains her long mouse-brown hair. Nice boots, though; knee length and tight around her dancer’s calves.
I smile at her, and finger my glass collar. “Yes, I am indeed a chaste.”
The woman offers me her hand to shake and I spot the wedding ring. “Sarah Liemann, accountant. Mrs Sarah Liemann.”
I laugh. “How can I help you, Mrs Liemann?”
“Well, I’m just finding out about all this um chaste stuff and I wonder if it might suit my husband. So, may I ask you some questions?”
There’s something mesmerising about her eyes: wide and innocent but with a kind of fanatic light burning behind them. “Go on...”
And we have The Chat. She’s stumbling over herself to be polite and delicate, but it comes down to:
*Does it hurt? No.
Am I horny all the time? Yes, but you get used to it.
Porn use? Self punishing.
Vibrators? Don’t work. No, really they don’t work. (Ass play doesn’t come up, so I mention it as not working either.)
Is it better to be a chaste or a neuter? Um...*
Lydia sweeps in and rescues me from Mrs Liemann. I just have time to pull on my turtle neck, and then I’m at the edge of the stage. Two chastes are dirty dancing with each other, while an older woman in a ringmaster costume uses a whip to direct the action.
The dancers end on a kiss, flit off the stage past the hawkish gallery owner who slaps a passing buttock --- she keep her hands to herself around chastes, by the way --- and then Artemis herself, who waits behind a screen on the other side of the stage. She’s a striking sixty-year-old Iranian woman who looks exactly her age, and comfortably sexy with it. Her amazing braided suit could be ethnic, or very expensive, or both, and she just oozes power --- and that makes her ultimately hot.
Her husband clearly thinks so; a balding man in his fifties, he’s flaunting a collar with a holographic gold spiral running round it. Mr Artemis is something of an icon amongst chastes: fitted with a unique device that even surgery can’t remove without making a mess.
I’d call that the ultimate sacrifice for the ultimately high status and thus hot wife.
Lydia gives me a shove, and I’m up in the spotlight.
I put my phone on the podium, open my speech and look up.
A hundred women... powerful women --- the main guest list is all directors and CEOs --- are look back at me.
My hips twitch reflexively. There’s a wet pulse in my groin.
Crap. Those khaki chinos were a bad idea!
I really, really need to check my groin for a damp patch. Instead, I opt for diversionary tactics. “How can I follow that?”
They laugh. The women actually laugh... probably because they are all a little drunk.
And suddenly I want to wallow in that laughter. “Token man,” I say.
More female laughter. Female, not feminine. Something primal is going on here.
I shuck off my turtle-neck. “Or perhaps a half man...” I raise my hands and do a few hip thrusts. “Make the most of this, laides. That’s as far down as I get... unless you get me in private.”
That only earns a few laughs, but they are deliciously knowing ones that tighten my groin. A wet pressure builds up.
Time to be serious before something embarrassing happens.
“OK,” I say, and read from my phone. “They picked me to introduce Artemis, because if she’s Frankenstein, then I’m one of Frankenstein’s monsters. Or maybe she’s Dr Moro, I’m one of her creatures, and the UK is her island?”
Nobody gets the joke.
“Movie nerd humour,” I blurt. “Sorry. There’s a reason why I ended up a chaste - it’s hard to talk with your mouth full.”
Now everybody laughs, and I feel my brain spiralling into my caged groin.
I take a breath to centre myself. My voice wobbles slightly as I continue. (Shit. Why did I agree to this?)
“They asked me to talk about Chaste Pride. But what is there to be proud of? I once made the mistake of telling a devastatingly intellectual and high-powered lady --- who happens to also be stunningly tall (I add) --- that I liked empowered women. And she looked down her elegant nose on me and pointed out: women don’t need men to empower them.”
Nods and yesses from the audience.
“Also, why not just focus on being a decent human being? How dare I fetishise female emancipation?”
That actually creates an awkward silence. I need to get the next part right.
“Well...
My phone pings and the screen fills with an image of RedRunner’s crimson-furred pussy. Worse, it’s an animated image, and she’s using her Mr Knighty dildo. Each time it withdraws, it draws out her rosy inner lips, which glisten with juices. The caption reads. “You can’t unsee this.”
The audience becomes restive.
I play for time. “To be honest...”
I try to swipe away the unsolicited pussy, but my fingers are sweaty and the phone doesn’t want to respond.
I look up at the audience and realise I must resemble a deer in the headlights. And the words just come out.
“To be honest, that roasting turned me on. Because, chaste.”
The tension breaks, and they laugh.
I mentally cringe, but I just can’t stop talking. “But... seriously... she made me feel like a dick... not that I’ve felt my dick for four years!”
Now the laughter is deliciously cruel. My caged penis throbs warningly.
“So I’m on the wrong end of a roasting from this amazing woman, and I’m turned on, and I can’t wait to get some privacy to...” I glance theatrically at my groin. “Well, damn.” (No wet patch. Thank god)
More cruel laughter.
“Well, it’s a funny sort of fetish which doesn’t give pleasure to the fetishee. Funnier still...”
I close my eyes, try to recall my speech
“...chastes who get married tend to stay chaste. Or ‘upgrade’ to neuter --- which, given I’m in my last year, scares the pants off me... but not the Artemis Futuristic cage.”
A woman shouts, “Get ‘em off, boy!”
I duck to speak directly into the microphone. “ArtBoy99 on LckHr, madam.
My app pings with a date request, and everybody laughs.
I wait for silence. “So, what I wish I’d said to that devastatingly lady is---.”
Another ping. And another.
“Men are a mixed bag. You don’t know who’s just going to --- as she so delicately put it --- metaphorically hump your leg and pee on the carpet...”
Shit.
Lawyer Caroline has somehow reached the front of the audience. I thought she’d gone home with square-jawed Roger! Instead, she’s glaring up at me. Her eyelids are flickering with barely suppressed rage.
And it’s actually funny, because I have the stage and the mic, and she hasn’t.
I look past her. “But you know who’s definitely not going to behave like an incontinent Labrador---.”
I finger my glass collar.
The women cheer.
But I can feel Caroline’s glare boring into me.
I look directly at her and our gazes lock. I could drown in her piercing brown eyes.
“Not only can’t we actually hump anything, but you can treat us worse than you’d ever dream of treating a dog... and we’ll worship you for it because, yes OK, maybe this is a fetish or paraphilia or whatever, but like a good bank error, it’s in your favour!”
The women laugh, and Caroline flinches her gaze away.
I raise my voice a little for the finale. “And I’m proud to be one of those reliable, reliably mistreatable, utterly disposable, chastes. And that, ladies and...” I make a play of peering into the crowd. “...gentlemen, is my Chaste Pride.”
Everybody claps.
I bow and add. “Now a big hand --- not that it will do me any good - for the Girl Boss Exhibition’s sponsor, the one and only Artemis!”
Caroline is back to glaring at me, and suddenly I realise all the things I’ve said. I flee the stage, past security, and through a door into the actual gallery containing the exhibition.
Safe now, I take a moment to calm myself.
As per my design, the partitions are arranged to make a ritual maze you have to wind through. I was here to watch the picture hanging, but somehow I’m seeing the portraits of powerful women as if for the first time --- perhaps because I was distracted by fending off the gallery owner.
There’s a PA system in the gallery, so I can hear Artemis addressing the crowd in her oddly sexy accent. “Twenty years ago, I realised I had a hanky hubby on my hands... always on the internet surfing porn. I thought to myself, fuck that! I’m a billionaire.(Laughter) I tasked my medical engineers to come up with a permanent solution, and here we are...
Girl Boss really was an ironic title. The portraits depict women like the ones in the audience --- some of them are the women in the audience --- high-fliers in their thirties and older... at work, resplendent in their mansions and penthouses, astride thoroughbred horses, climbing, skiing, yachting... all of them fabulous and formidable... and judging from my phone, I may soon have dates lined up with some of them.
Meanwhile, Artemis’s tone changes to something more serious. “Artemis Futuristic is proud to support Chaste and Neuter, but we’re truly thrilled to roll out a third CARGO identity based on the device piloted by my dear husband all those years ago and ever since... ‘Capon’, which I’m reliably informed means ‘domesticated cock’. This one is truly permanent, ladies. And, if you want to skip the NHS waiting lists, I’ll be handing out vouchers later on. (FERAL CHEERS)”
It’s as if somebody’s punched me in the groin. There I was, nervous about justifying being a chaste, and here’s the audience baying to virtually castrate their men, or any men. Or all men!
Caroline looms out of nowhere. “How dare you make a fool of me!”
Some instinct makes me hunch my shoulders. “I didn’t actually name you!” That comes out as more of a whine than intended.
“Positively everybody will know it was me you were getting off over!”
Suddenly her rage is funny. “If I was able to get off, I wouldn’t be here.”
Caroline’s hand lashes out, and for the second time today, a beautiful woman slaps me.
Her palm lands with a resounding thwack!
White pain flickers across my vision. The whole side of my face blazes. I stagger back.
My hips twitch. There’s a wet fire in my captive dick and my balls empty out in a joyless convulsion.
I fall to my knees, find myself staring at Caroline’s knee-boots.
“Oh my god,” she exclaims, bending to offer me a hand. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
I smirk up at her. “Don’t be sorry. It’s the closest I’ve come to an orgasm in four years.”
She sees the wet patch on my chinos, straightens. Her nose wrinkles. “You’re disgusting.”
I shrug and touch my cheek. “It still bloody hurt, and I still can’t bloody cum.”
Caroline contemplates me. The anger has gone, but it’s been replaced by a curious coldness, as if I were a bug in a laboratory. “Why don’t you have Masochism or Femdom selected on your profile?”
“My profile?” But of course. If she has a HrLckr account, she can tinker with her own choices to see what we match on.
There are footsteps. Lydia calls out, “Bradley?” She’s carrying my discarded turtle neck and jacket.
“Never mind,” says Caroline. She strides past me into the maze.
Lydia looks down at me. Her eyes twinkle. “Oh, Bradley. Was it all a bit much?”
I nod stupidly.
“You have to watch out with Caroline. She’s not a good person.”
“So I gather.”
Lydia contemplates my damp crotch. Her eyes become twinkly beads. “Now I realise why chastes wear dark trousers. Never mind, we’ll get you out the back entrance and into a taxi.” She crosses her booted ankles. “I’d see you home, but I need to hobnob with the sponsor.”
An hour later, I’m showered and tucked up in bed
Three hours or so after that, I’m woken by the doorbell.