SINGAPORE — “Is this art?” the woman beside me whispered.

It was the first time someone had asked me that dreaded question — and not with a sarcastic smirk or a disdainful look. She really, really looked perplexed. And completely shocked.

Chapter IV had given a tourist from Indonesia an experience she will never, ever forget.

I mean, if you were just there on a whim, having passed by The Substation and, seeing people milling around, decided “Okay, why not?” — and end up seeing men in drag, simulating S&M, moaning with gusto, and going into “orgasms”…

But I have to give it to her. She stayed. She laughed nervously. She tried not to look. But she stayed. And gave her verdict with a grimace: “This is madness. This is disgusting!”

And she’s right on both counts. It was quite a WTF night.

There’s no getting around it, Chapter IV (aka How To Dance Badly And Cock One Eyebrow When You Feel The Rumbling In The Ground, Burping As You Sneeze) was all sex.

Obviously, since it’s about “four darlings of the adult entertainment world” (aka ex-porn stars).

There’s Toshi GoHeadGoStun (Bani Haykal like some kind of blueskinned Nightcrawler-meets-Bilbo Baggins-with-a-pipe-in-lederhosen), Da’Wood Brutal (Noor Effendy Ibrahim in a red dress), Rina Hangat (Rizman Putra wearing this strange Esplanade-ish headband/bra), and Double D/Djilat Djari (sole woman Suhaili Safar in dominatrix mode). Oh, yes, there was BDSM (Farez Najid as perennial whipping boy—literally.)

(I have to say that from this point on, double entendres, intentional or otherwise, will be quite unavoidable.)

Chapter IV whets your appetite with an Amsterdam-type peep show before you enter, erm, the land of debauchery. Everything got sex. Everyone squeezing wet towels into bowls while moaning “Abang” to orgasmic levels; Toshi undergoing therapy, frankly describing his sexual exploits (and revealing a strange obsession with Careless Whisper); BDSM getting ear sex or wedgie sex; Da’Wood shining the spotlight on his (her?) “down there”; Rina orchestrating a chorus of moans; and Double D actually doing a beautiful, tender rendition of a Javanese song (while the guys become an orgy of limbs on the couch).

They push and push and push, and there are points where you shake your head in disbelief or, really, just need to laugh it out.

Because it’s so in your face. Especially the ending. For BDSM, quite literally.

Told you it’s unavoidable.

Of course, by now, you probably get that shock is integral to the whole thing. But also, that for all its explicitness, it’s not gratuitous. Or, to be more precise, the gratuitous bit is the point.

Chapter IV is framed by this spectre of the Abang or Big Brother. He haunts their dreams, his presence is unavoidable. You can take it as a political allegory or at the level of spectatorship. How do social outsiders — here, of a sexual nature — thrive and exist in a panoptic society, with us being its very embodiment as we look and look.

But the show itself is the response. As the epilogue part asks. After all that, “does Abang still want to sleep with each of them?” Can Abang tahan?

You can try to be puritanical, but when a primal urge comes knocking, you just have to let it in.

Erm, or let it out.

Damn. Told you it was unavoidable.

Chapter IV runs until Sept 21, 8pm. Tickets at S$20 from the box office, 6337 7800 / boxoffice [at] substation.org. Rated R18 (With strong sexual reference). No kidding.