



                  A GOOD STRIP-SEARCH STORY

                             by

                          Joe Doe          


Personally, I'm not that interested in "realistic" stories.  
For example, a story about a hooker given a routine search 
by a heterosexual police officer doesn't interest me. 

But, if the hooker is really an undercover police detective, and 
she is being strip-searched in front of a class of young male 
officers because of a paperwork glitch, and if a despised rival 
performs the search, NOW I'm interested.

I also don't like stories that are true accounts of real people 
being injured or harmed; this is about fantasy, not reality.

To me, these are the elements of a good story:

    1) The victim should be innocent of any crime that would 
justify her stripping.

[This is open to interpretation.  See my comments on this point 
in "Joe Doe: Master Storyteller."  -- C. L.]

    2) Events should conspire against the victim to gradually 
remove her control over the situation; she isn't strip-searched 
because she is a hardened criminal; she is stripped because of a 
series of trivial mistakes or unlikely coincidences. 

    3) Her predicament may be arranged by a rival, or by a 
malevolent authority figure abusing his power, or it may 
be totally accidental.  But, no matter how bizarre the 
circumstances, she is quickly powerless to resist.

    4) The victim may consent to some or all of her search, and 
she might become aroused by some aspects of it.  But she should 
also find the whole procedure deeply and intensely humiliating.

    5) The victim should be powerful, successful, and intelligent.  
She should fully appreciate the injustice of the outrageous 
indignities she is subjected to.  If the victim tries to use her 
superior power or intellect to avoid stripping, she'll be thwarted 
by her inferiors.

    6) The perpetrators should enjoy the search and go out of 
their way to make it as humiliating as possible.  They should 
be of a lower social class or be a rival seeking vengeance.  
In a way, the strip-search is a role reversal.

    7) The ending should imply that there are still more 
indignities to come.

		******************************

To me the gold standard for a strip-search story is "Marcy's 
First Time" by Dudley_3.  It contains an intelligent victim who 
is stripped of her dignity through a series of misunderstandings 
and trivial errors.

Marcy is a female graduate student who is unjustly strip-searched 
by a bunch of lazy and possibly malicious civil servants.  She is 
a journalist, not a criminal, and has done nothing to deserve the 
humiliating treatment she receives at the hands of 
the bureaucrats.

But events conspire against her: 

She isn't familiar with the procedures.

When the Orientation Officer drops Marcy off in the Reception Area, 
the matron is on the phone, so he can't explain what he has (and 
hasn't) told Marcy.  (Tough break, Marcy!)

Marcy gives the wrong answer to a seemingly innocuous question 
about seeing the prisoner alone.

The matron is too lazy or indifferent to explain the ramifications 
of Marcy's careless answer.

Marcy sits in the room for some time, but no one bothers to let her 
know what she is waiting for, or what is about to happen to her.

The matron forgets about her until the last moment, and then hands 
her the box "almost as an afterthought" and without the slightest 
explanation.  The matron's negligence cuts off Marcy's last 
possible escape route.

A confused Marcy accepts the seemingly innocent plastic box and 
follows the other inmates.  With this action Marcy accidentally 
triggers the commencement of her own strip-search.  Marcy doesn't 
comprehend the box's sinister purpose until it's too late (a nice 
touch). 

The matron seemingly neglects to tell the other guards that Marcy 
is not just another powerless prisoner there to be strip-searched.

This last point is crucial because it seals Marcy's complete loss 
of control.  Even if Marcy tries to back out at this point, it is 
likely that no one will believe her and she will be strip-searched 
anyway.  Accidents, miscommunication, and bad luck conspire to form 
a chain of events that gradually strip her of control.  She is 
quickly trapped in a situation where resisting just makes it worse.

Marcy is a beautiful young professional woman searched by blue 
collar civil service employees.  The story hints that the guards 
don't help Marcy because they don't want to: they taunt her about 
"wanting to go first," then they strip her, yell at her, make 
sarcastic comments, and leave her naked and in embarrassing poses 
for an extended period of time.  The guards clearly relish their 
power over her, and they use it to their advantage.

Although excited, she is also keenly aware of the injustice of the 
situation; these people didn't explain the rules, and she hasn't 
committed any crime.  Marcy is an innocent woman who is paraded 
through a series of indignities for the amusement of others.

The degree of consent is irrelevant; the key element is not 
consent, but power and humiliation.  Although Marcy has toyed 
with the idea of exposure, the game gets quickly out of hand, 
and Marcy realizes she is going to be strip-searched whether 
she likes it or not. On one level, Marcy is excited by her 
exposure, but she is also fundamentally helpless and deeply 
humiliated.

Marcy savors her loss of power.  She lets her boyfriend decide 
whether or not she will be strip-searched in the future, and 
leaves herself totally at his mercy.  (Fortunately, he has no
mercy.)  It is a resolution that allows the author to hint at 
other humiliations yet untold. 

By the way, I don't mean to imply in any way that these events 
didn't really happen; all I'm saying is that, like all good 
writers, Dudley_3 arranges the facts in such a way that he 
creates a masterful story.  Also note that, although Marcy is 
a real person, she was not really hurt, and indeed "the victim" 
eagerly goes back for more.

Although it may be a true story, the facts themselves are less 
relevant than the way the story is told.  The story is about 
a series of bizarre circumstances leading to a successful 
professional's transformation into a helpless victim.  This 
is a perfect strip-search story.

Strip-search stories are more about the victim's feelings than 
the search itself, for the search is just a mechanism.

Another example I'd highly recommend is Marlissa's 2-part story, 
"Wages of Sin," about a Yale-educated yuppie art dealer who is 
forced by her enemies to become a stripper and a prostitute at 
a seedy club.  It doesn't contain a strip-search per se, but 
there is plenty of non-consensual stripping and humiliation, 
and it contains all of the elements I've described. 
 
I also like Cole's stories. A malevolent force (the coach) uses, 
creates, and combines unlikely situations (a closed locker room, 
no towels, the arrival of the janitors, student interns, missing 
keys, the need for physical exams) to totally humiliate his 
victims.  The victims should NOT be minors (that is 100% WRONG), 
but otherwise the story is nearly perfect.  I tried a variation 
on some of Cole's ideas in one of my stories, but his version 
turned out better!

Here are some other story ideas I have.  I don't know when, if 
ever, I'll get around to them.  [In fact, he did all of them.]

BREWBOTTOM: A plucky new warden decides to go undercover as an 
inmate, but she is quickly exposed and....  [This had several 
sequels.]  

A COMPLETE DEMONSTRATION: High school principal Debbie volunteers 
to help her husband by working at the police convention trade 
show.  She finds herself strapped down, half-naked, over a bench 
as a "demonstration model" for a company that sells strip-search 
products.  Just when she thinks it couldn't get any worse, one of 
her delinquent seniors arrives and decides he wants a COMPLETE 
demonstration.

HOUSE CALL: He was a janitor when she fired him, so, when he showed 
up at her house claiming to be a medical technician sent to perform 
her insurance exam, Louise was surprised.  But there were more 
surprises to come....  

TREATED LIKE AN ANIMAL: When major celebrity (you decide who!) 
decides to pose for a PETA ad campaign, she knows there will be 
some small amount of tasteful nudity involved.  But, because of 
a clerical error, she is accidentally dropped off at a photo 
session for "SPREAD BEAVER" magazine.

MAULED AT THE MALL: She's the new head of security, and she catches 
a shoplifter on her first day.  But the idiot mall guards end up 
strip-searching HER while the CRIMINAL watches.  [Joe eventually 
did this story and posted it as "Mall of Justice."]

MARCY'S BAD STROKE OF LUCK: When an errant keystroke on a computer 
terminal transforms her into "Marc," poor Marcy is turned over to 
MALE guards for her strip-search.  She tries to explain the 
mistake, but, rules are rules.  

If you are looking for a story heavily inspired by Marcy's 
adventures, try my story "One Question Too Many."  I borrowed 
some of my favorite elements from Dudley_3's story to create 
a new tale of an "accidental" search.  The milk carton, for 
example, is practically a character in the story.  The story's 
ending emphasizes the journalist's feelings of helplessness 
and anxiety as she carefully inspects each humiliating detail 
of the exam area that will soon be used to degrade and expose 
her.

But, as I said, a good ending should imply that there are more 
indignities to come.



Edited by C. Lakewood
