by Mark de Rond
WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT
Too much thinking made him sad. Like when he thought of how he and his girls used to visit the Zoo every other Sunday and how excited they were at special exhibits put up for the holidays. There was Sherman’s Shop of Curiosities at Halloween and tinsel on trees and fairy lights at Christmas. Pigmy goats would eat through the electrics, and so God knows how they stayed alive, and then two weeks later the trees would be stripped bare by the tigers.
It rained in winter and so they took their sandwiches inside before doing the rounds. First up and past the water dispenser were penguins making vapour trails in a salt-water pool, and as the cold winds came, keepers in duffel coats got cracking with the sardines. Seagulls meanwhile photobombed the affair by dropping headfirst into the spaghetti, and he suddenly felt sad because he didn’t know why he was here.
On the other side of the glass were people looking back at him, and he thought them gruff and a little impatient. Some arrived even as the exhibition hadn’t yet opened its doors (he had heard their shuffling on the gravel outside) while others joined at intervals. Most walked around the enclosure once before pulling their kids into what he assumed must be other exhibits in other rooms. A few stopped to face him as if to say something important, but then thought better of it.
From their conduct he inferred that he must be part of an experiment or maybe an exhibition, he couldn’t be sure, but whichever it was, he failed to see the point. After all, he had never been one to draw attention to himself and by all accounts had a fairly mundane existence: his job hadn’t been more nor less exciting than that of anyone else he knew; his house and car were no bigger nor smaller than others in their suburb; his few hobbies no more nor less expensive than theirs; his appearance no more nor less remarkable than anyone here. One thing he did know: he hadn’t any beef with anyone and not the foggiest how to negotiate the end of his confinement.
That they had taken all his clothes was a source of embarrassment for him. He measured his enclosure at twelve-by-twelve feet and made entirely of glass. It had been placed in the middle of an oval exhibition hall such that visitors could observe him from every conceivable angle. An off-white light switch near the entrance, a couple of rusty screws in a grate and a fire escape sign were the only features not chalk-white, and the brilliance of the space played havoc with his depth-perception. He had to work very hard just to make out where the floor met the wall and the wall met the fan-vault ceiling and were it not for the entrance and exit being without doors, he couldn’t have guessed how big the hall was.
Inside his enclosure was a see-through water dispenser on a wire stand, a drinking glass, transparent bucket and roll of toilet tissue. For his entertainment, there was a Rubik’s cube, deck of cards and a recorder. Underfloor heating kept his space at a comfortable temperature so that at least he wasn’t cold because he disliked being cold. For the first few days of his confinement, he wrapped himself in toilet paper but found that it tore easily when he moved, and so before long he decided he should simply no longer care.
Yet a modicum of modesty remained and because of it he learned to time his bowel movements to be outside opening hours, though he felt it humiliating for the morning crew to have to clean up so soon after. And as his stomach was still getting used to new and strange foods. But his incredulity at his circumstance was again greater than his shame and soon enough he shat wherever and whenever he wanted and even took some small enjoyment in doing so.
She was asleep by the time he woke up and he thought they must have brought her into his enclosure under the cover of night. When she finally woke up in the early afternoon, she bolted upright at seeing so many strangers looking back at her and looked to him for answers. He simply shook his shoulders, said he had been here for a while, maybe three months even, and had given up asking himself why he was here at all. Occasionally a visitor would smile not unkindly, or something funny would happen, like when one of their children kicked hard at the glass and promptly fell backwards, but then there were also days when hardly anyone came at all. He told her all this and she said how thirsty she was and so he filled the glass with water. As he gave it to her, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a while that made him flush red in shame. Because just as she had pushed back from the people looking in, she had tipped the bucket at a dangerous angle and as she moved forward, the bucket fell back noisily into its original position and the sloshing disturbed his deposit. She hadn’t noticed yet but soon would and he felt self-conscious at the prospect of it and damned the cleaning crew for failing to show.
He didn’t know why they put her in his enclosure but was glad for the company. Before the day was out, they had talked logistics. Seeing how he tended to wake up just before the cleaners arrived, he would have the bucket first and then wake her so she could have it next, and that way they would have a fresh enclosure for most of the day once they got their bodies fully trained up. When it was her turn on the bucket, he always made a point of rearranging items in the opposite corner and sing to himself.
They watched the crew remove their bedding and towels before opening hours only to return them after closing so that there was never anything to cover themselves with. Having cleaned out the bucket, they refilled the water dispenser, picked up the plates, cutlery and leftovers from last night’s dinner and deodorized the space. While this was going on, she and he would sit with their backs to the glass. They daren’t speak to the crew because when they tried this previously, they had been refused food and nor given a water refill.
Once the crew had left, they took their breakfast in the early light from a dome-shaped skylight. Food was had in the corner nearest the entrance and their ablutions in the corner opposite while the central area was where they slept, socialised and exercised.
It was inevitable that they became as familiar with each other’s ways and bodies as their own, and skilled at keeping irritations at bay. While the audience seemed respectful of their privacy at first, they had begun to grow restless and more entitled, and the couple increasingly certain that many of them were in fact regulars who made the exhibit a major feature in their daily schedules. These regulars felt no obligation to look away when she needed to relieve herself, had no sense of etiquette and nor felt any duty of care as they moved ever closer until it was as if the protective glass had itself capitulated.
Then one day, as the exhibition opened for a new week, visitors were met with passionate lovemaking. He was the big spoon, she the little, and there was no mistaking what they were up to. They looked up every so often as if to tell the public that, Yes, it was fine to look, and as the news of this new development spread, it profoundly changed the audience. Suddenly there were more of them but fewer with kids, for while parents had no reservation to children watching the man and woman use the bucket, they very much did not like them witnessing that other most natural of acts. Also, as she and he grew accustomed to a larger crowd, they suddenly noticed that what had seemed like an indistinctive mass was made up of three groups. Nearest the exhibition entrance were people holding placards with admonitions and verses and even a life-sized cross. Some sung or prayed heavenward while others looked reproachingly at the couple. Then, closer to the exit were feminists, colourful and likewise armed with placards. They were shouting at the man giving the woman a good going over. Between the two groups was a third made up entirely of men. Unlike the other two groups, this manosphere didn’t seem angry at all, to the contrary, and were egging on the man with instructions that I dare not repeat here.
Over the next few days and weeks, the lovemaking became messy and more audacious. Visitors would walk in to find the woman on her knees or astride his face or sucking his cock or pressed up against the glass. As the sex became more enterprising, visitors took to calling out positions as if this were a bingo: Cowgirl or Captain, the Bicycle or Lap Dance or Pearly Gates or the Socket or Pretzel or whatnot. Most days began with him going down on her to get the machinery cranking and as she responded, he would push a finger up her hole and then two, and she’d sigh. Using saliva to grease himself up he then buggered her as she took to playing with herself and, with the Christadelphians now in tears and the manosphere ecstatic, flipped her around and, to the beating of fists against the glass, entered her again and again. Though it must have hurt a little, she never lost eye-contact with the audience and instead called for harder and more, and though she may have been faking it, no one was in doubt as far as him shooting his load was concerned.
Sometimes, and as a special treat, she would bugger him with the recorder while he groaned and made himself come, and if the cleaning crew minded having to clean up after, they never complained. As the days and weeks passed, the man and woman got more skilled at sex, and things became easier and less painful as their muscles loosened and he learned to delay his orgasm.
As always when visiting hours came to an end, the audience left disappointed – the Christadelphians for having failed to put a stop to the sacrilege, the feminists for having failed to stop the chauvinism, and the manosphere for having seen all they came to see only to realise that theirs wasn’t the craving that could be satisfied. Yet back they came until there was nothing left to the imagination, nothing left to be discovered except of course whatever they themselves were.
As for the man and woman, after the crowds and cleaning crew had disappeared, they learned to settle down into a homely routine where he made the table and she their bed, and where, after dinner and over milky tea, they would make up crazy stories.
