Life was changing and not for the best, in my opinion.

I had before me a woman who had grown out of my very cozy embrace. I was losing her. I was losing the student, the lover, the young woman of my dreams. It was during those fateful days that we started a series of crucifixion videos.

My reasons were varied and many, her motivations too. I wanted to retain as much as I could of her within my reach and grasp, and she wanted to be free without losing me. That was tricky. How could we accomplish this?

I told her a while before about the script I had written years before. One that I had the intention of making into a film at one point in the future. But I had to know more about the character I created. I also had to understand the mechanics of a crucifixion.

Camille had already tasted the whip and had been placed in a cross-like situation, even nailed. Nothing new there. However, his time, I wanted to recreate the steps as they should be, or I thought they should be.

For years I wondered if I ever would find such a woman. Way back then I was happy to work on some images I found anywhere. Images that I would manipulate into a resemblance of a crucifixion.

Back in those days the miracle of the personal computer was still fermenting in some garage in California. It was strictly a pencil and paper exercise. With the arrival of the small video cameras, the possibilities to create some unique work were within reach. But that is another story which involves wonderful friends and lovers such as Margot.

Those baby steps were now the basis for what was happening and on this day, a sunny afternoon, in a yet to be named city of South America, up on a second floor, my bedroom, I was about to work on a crucifixion, and Camille was the willing participant.

A day or two earlier I had Edmundo, my loyal and trusted laborer put a wooden post in a center position of the bedroom. He didn't ask why, he's an Aymara Indian, a native of these parts who see the white man as an invader who has stayed way too long.

Edmundo did a very good job, the post was firm and there was no danger of an accident. The post was ready to hold the hanging victim. Still, not trusting my work, I decided to shoot the event with my personal VHS, not the professional camera I used for the film and mini-series. A VHS tape was certainly less expensive than a professional Betacam SP tape.

I designed a bikini-like outfit, actually a black t-shirt that I cut to shape the outfit for Camille. A top that would barely cover her and a loincloth. That was all she was going to wear. The evening was quiet and I didn't need to block the sounds from the outside, and even if I had wanted to I didn't have the means.

I had a couple of good lights to get the effect I wanted, which at that point didn't really matter. I covered the bookcases on the wall and left the big mirror to create a kind-of image within an image effect.

Camille found the mirror charming, she could see herself being whipped. At the base of the post I attached a small two-by-four where she could rest her feet, or at least her toes, the surface of the support was not wide enough to hold her entire foot.

She changed into her garments, which she found annoying, more to my taste than hers, but she put them on anyway. "It's your fantasy...", she said, sweetly.

I tied her wrists to the post, to a couple of hooks I screwed on the sides. She climbed on the support and began her struggle. "This is uncomfortable...", she said. Of course it was, that was the whole point. "What's the story this time?", she asked.

It was a few months since the last time we worked a session. There had been four sessions since we finished the mini-series. One, before we left for the US and Europe, the second in France and a third in the Jungle when we returned.

When we went to that tropical paradise where we had our first encounter, where later on I nailed her twice, or three times, there, where it all began, she told me that she wanted our relationship to end.

Her experiences in France, away from me all those months, had made her see life differently and she felt she needed to live beyond me. In short, I was suffocating her. Typical.

Camille insisted, kindly, that she would always love me and be with me. In fact, she accepted to work with me on this character as a testimony to her loyalty and dedication to my cause, whatever that cause was which she knew had to do with life and art and crosses.

"So...what story are we doing now?", she wanted to know. Ok, I said, "the story is simple, you are a noblewoman who is found guilty of poisoning her husband, a Roman Senator. Your name is Leticia".

The accusers have only one proof of Leticia's guilt, the confession under torture of her servant, who is the one who actually delivered the poisonous drink to her chambers that fateful night. Since the servant was the one that gave Leticia's husband the drink, she had to know who wanted to kill him.

Obviously, she was under orders from someone else, since she did not have any reason to kill him. Leticia was mourning the passing of her beloved, surrounded by friends, aristocrats, priests while her servant was in the dungeon, on a rack, under the whip and her skin bathed in hot oil.