The second workshop was entitled Resistance is Futile: Interrogation Scenes, and it was conducted by the soft-spoken Ingrid, certainly one of the scariest people I've ever laid eyes upon. "When it comes to interrogation, there are no right answers," she grinned. A girl named Anna was tied to a chair, sobbing. Ingrid slapped her and asked, "Where is your bank?" Anna just kept sobbing. Ingrid took out a knife and teased Anna's nipples and pussy, then threw a pillow case over her head and continued to teach the class, which consisted of 24 women and 7 men. Why, I wondered, are women drawn to the concept of interrogation? Is it because they are naturally nosey?
Ingrid started the discussion by asking us to determine if things were Hot or Bad, for example Abu Garib. Can something be both? She talked about how some people enjoy trauma. "If it doesn't end with blood or tears, then its just an argument," said Ingrid. There was all this shit about religion, politics, race, class, yawn. There was also lots of talk about negotiating boundaries (i.e., no hair pulling, or no using racial slurs, etc.), and how to choose a safe word or a safe gesture. But fear is the most important element. "There is nothing worse than fire play with someone who has no fear of fire. You might as well have been playing Scrabble."
Ingrid then told us a story about a woman who arranged to be kidnapped in public, but some passers-by panicked and tried to intervene. "Why are you doing this?" screamed one woman. "Because it's her birthday," replied Ingrid. "You mean she wants this?" asked the woman incredulously, which lead into an impromptu seminar on BDSM. I'll bet that poor woman wished she had just stayed home that day. Ingrid suggests that if you want to commit a criminal act, real or fake, just arrange for one of your number to shoot (or even just pretend to shoot) the whole thing on a mini-cam. Everyone will just think you're making a student film.
At the end of the session, after talking about the appeal of torture, power play, submission, trust issues, and even 'top drop' - meaning the torturer gets all fatigued after torturing someone - Ingrid finally untied Anna and took the pillow case off her head. Anna positively glowed. She had obviously been having the time of her life.
