I was past the point where I wanted to tell JJ to stop. Only my need to prove myself to JJ kept me from saying anything. And then, suddenly, JJ adjusted the camera again and came back. He reached up for the rope above my head. I thought he was going to let me down, I thought this was the end of our session.

JJ is not much of a talker when we're shooting a video. He doesn't like to direct and he thinks that everyone is going to read his mind. Somehow, I manage to get through his silence and just go along, but it can be annoying for someone just starting out. Of course, this type of non-verbalism was effective for this video, because it was training. I thought he was training me to be Camille. That impression has never quite left me.

JJ turned me around and pushed the rope lower on the post and tied it tightly again. This wasn't the end. There was more to come. This time, he was going to whip my back. I hated that. I prefer the whip on my front, somehow it hurts more on my back. But, hey, I was going for a personal record here. I had to show JJ I was the best.

In New York we spent some time in my Chinatown refuge, the loft of my ex-wife, but most of the time we were at my temporary office in Queens, where surrounded by filing cabinets and computers, we continued our game. She was very much into it and in some weird way it was scaring me.

She was tied up to the filing cabinets in front of my, I was hitting her with the whip, leaving red welts on her belly, she was looking at me intensely. She was resisting.

All this time I told her about RFPIX, about oh courageously divine Camille, about enigmatically beautiful Gabrielle, about Margot, what they all meant and will always mean in my life and work. She listen without saying a word. I never connected her willingness to go far into her pain to what I was telling her. I was being honest. That's all.

But I was testing her. I was testing her limits and they didn't appear. What was I going to do, beat her until she bled?