by Sasha Grey
In the same way, there are Middle Eastern villages located in the ass-end of Louisiana and North Dakota populated by actors dressed as natives, selling cans of cheap knock-off Coca-Cola. Everything there is recreated down to the smallest detail, just so it can be blown sky-high by the latest technology; a means to test and refine new military strategies, minimizing the risk of casualties, before they are used in the field of war.
These hotels work on the same principle. Minus the guns, ammo, and fake blood. They provide a means to make mistakes so they don’t get made in the real world.
TWO
HIS HANDS WHISPER UP MY thighs, easing me awake like a secret he tells my body with his own, and I lie still, feigning sleep so he’ll continue his gentle violation. If I wake up his touch will turn demanding, but not quite demanding enough, and right now all I want are Jack’s unhurried hands.
With his schedule, lately we communicate in gropes, hungry hands that devour in a utilitarian way instead of giving. We use each other to get off, our connection frenzied like we’re always saying goodbye before we both slip into unconsciousness. For once, I want this tender, tentative hello.
He teases my hair back over my shoulder, kissing me on the soft skin where my neck meets my jaw. Through my eyelashes, the angry red numbers of the alarm clock stare back at me. 2:37 a.m. It’s the middle of the night when Jack steals into our bed, stealing kisses like he’s someone else—or I am.
The thief of pleasure is mine for the taking. My hands itch with the sudden need to cup his balls and see if he’s already hard, or if he’s only flirting with the idea of making love to me before giving up completely and passing out.
Then I feel it sliding up my thigh, warm from sleep. Jack’s hard cock. Men’s cocks are hard but so damn smooth. Maybe the friction of masturbation helps exfoliate them.
I sigh and tip my ass back to invite him to come a little closer and enjoy the burn of my skin and the wet heat between my thighs.
His touch meanders up the back of my leg, grazing, teasing, almost burning me with its lightness. Just once, I’d love for him to fuck me awake. No gentle fingers waiting for permission, waiting for me to be ready. I want him to take me hard and fast and deep so I wake up already speared by his cock, surprised by what’s happening before knowing it’s him.
But Jack’s too nice, too good not to be shocked by that fantasy, so I locked it down when he asked, “What if I hurt you?”
Sometimes I want it to hurt, I hadn’t said, not wanting to see the shock on his face. He thinks I got all “that” out of my system years ago.
“Cath,” he sighs now against my earlobe before taking it in his mouth.
I moan.
“Are you awake?”
Fantasy already ruined, I nod and press closer to him as he spoons me from behind, pinching a nipple between his fingers.
I’d wanted gentle Jack, but as soon as I had him I wanted more. I always want more of Jack. Suddenly filled with an acute awareness of how much I love him, I turn and pull his lips to mine, kissing him deeply as he eases himself down onto me, stiff dress shirt lightly abrading my nipples. I like it but want to feel the warmth of his skin against mine.
He kneels and shrugs out of his shirt, then moves down my belly, leaving kisses all the way to my Velcro, nudging at my thighs.
I spread for him, eager to feel his hot tongue lap at my clit, and he slings my legs over his shoulders and gives me a long, slow lick that makes my heels dig into his back, wanting him to do the same and go harder.
He surprises me by shoving a finger inside my wet sweet spot, curling the tip and pressing into my G-spot. I twine my fingers through his hair, gripping him tighter, trying to lock him in place as I grind my hips like a dance-hall queen.
He enters me with his tongue, working my clit with his fingers now. I moan and groan with pleasure because I want him to know how good it feels, how glad I am he woke me up this way. That all I want is more and more of him, of us, of this.
“Fuck me, Jack. Fuck me hard.”
He licks a long line from my pussy all the way up to my mouth, sucking my tongue into his, blending my desire with his kiss, and thrusts home in one hard, deep motion.
My head falls back, and I feel myself spread open like a flower— the better to pluck you with—and I wrap my legs around his back and squeeze.
I want him to take me over, wear me as a costume, make me do things he’d want if he were able to be me for a night and I were a disguise made of flesh designed for his amusement.
What would I do if I were Jack for a day?
Everything. I’d fuck me to see what I felt like on the inside.
I’d piss standing up.
I’d jerk off, milking my cock for every last drop of come to see who has better orgasms—men or women.
I’d eat the insanely spicy wings he gets from time to time that sizzle a layer of tissue from my tongue, to see how it is to enjoy something I normally hate.
I’d walk around feeling powerful and masculine, broad-shouldered and tight-assed, and no one would fuck with me.
I’d grow the stubble on my jaw as long as I could, then shave it to see if it made my face feel different.
Would Jack do things equally random if we switched bodies?
I grind against his cock, frantically turned on at the idea of Jack using my body to explore the impossible.
What would he do with me?
If we made love in each other’s bodies, what would that reveal, or even change? What if being him was so much better during sex than being me that I could never forget it? Would I come to resent him, or him me, if the reverse was true?
I want to ask him what he’d do if he were inside my body for a day, to hear the things he’d do and see if they match mine. My lips part to ask, but he takes my mouth, deeply in sync with his cock, and it no longer matters.
Regardless of the bodies we were in, Jack would make my body sing.
He twists his fingers through mine and pins my hands above my head, pulling back to watch my tits bounce as he pounds at me like John Bonham hit the snare drum. No one hit it harder than he did.
His balls get coated with my come and slap my ass with every thrust, and I want Jack in my ass, too, but he does a funny little sideways hitch with his hips that takes me by surprise, and it feels like my head spins around from the way an orgasm sneaks up on me and makes my pussy clamp down on his cock, slowing his thrusts.
It’s sharp and sweet and almost fucking hurts, cramping my belly, but damn if he doesn’t draw it out and make it last longer than it should, forever, and while I’m still shaking beneath him he fills me with a giant load of come so hot and thick it’s almost heavy, shooting into my body like a Super Soaker.
I want him to use it as lube to fuck my ass next.
My favorite kind of recycling.
Like so many others, I’ve gone green in my mid-twenties.
Afterward, I take my deliciously sore ass into the living room to watch a movie without disturbing Jack’s sleep. Sex is strange like that, as though humans are batteries with give and take. Sometimes you can throw your body into it more than with a workout, but still come out of it with more energy than when you started, feeling like you could run a marathon. Other times, you can slip into some afternoon delight with all the energy in the world, and crash afterward like it’s been days since you slept. Maybe we do transfer energy to each other through our touch, through pleasure given and received.
Either way, I know I won’t be sleeping for a while, so I peruse the shelf of movies, our eclectic tastes pressed together into a strange collection. I like to think my foreign film collection is slumming it with his action movies, but I like the things Jack watches, too— testosterone-filled adventures that feature bromances and aging heroes.
Besides, I pollute the shelf with a few romantic comedies as well, though mostly classics from the nineties. Junk food for the mind.
Right now I don’t feel like something light. I’m craving somethi
ng meaty and substantial, something new that I can savor, but nothing jumps out at me until I see L’Amore in Città—Love in the City, a collection from the fifties where seven Italian directors each contribute a segment. I haven’t seen this film before—Jack bought it for me for Christmas, but I’ve been saving it for a rainy day. Maybe I’m a little sadomasochistic at night when it comes to my film predilections, but I have to believe that some of the filmmakers I love best are—or were, as well.
But patience only goes so far, and I’ve waited long enough.
I tear through the cellophane and pop it in, settling on the couch with a glass of water.
The music is a little jarring, the opening credits set on what looks like concrete—a nod to the title.
I skip ahead to Antonioni’s entry, Tentato Suicidio—Attempted Suicide. I can’t not watch it first—if I wait, I’d only be speculating about Antonioni’s upcoming episode and how it would relate to the others, and I wouldn’t be able to focus on the rest. So it’s best to savor his first, then go back and watch the whole thing again.
I don’t know what it is about his work that grips me so intensely as of late, but something I love about black-and-white movies is that there’s not as much to distract the eye.
We’ve all got predilections when it comes to shades, clothes, walls.
Carpets matching drapes.
The right shade of blue can feel like the sky on a clear day, make us breathe deeper in delight and imagine puffy clouds. We’ve all got that favorite outfit that brings out our eyes and puts some swagger in our step.
The wrong shade of green can bring to mind hospital walls where we spent a hellish twenty-four hours when we were a kid, our parents worrying that the fever wouldn’t go down.
In black and white, there are only shades upon shades upon shades. Textures become more important, patterns. It’s harder to be distracted by garish or gorgeous colors in the background.
But it can also be harder to catch the eye. The props directors had to work harder back then—but they didn’t have to make sure the colors were harmonious.
They didn’t have to find a pillow the exact shade of the leading lady’s lipstick to give a subtle background echo.
The characters walk along a huge, curved, white wall, and for a few seconds their numbers grow as actors and shadows become nearly indistinct. You can’t tell which is which, and I know Antonioni didn’t do that accidentally.
Every choice he made was deliberate. We can’t have control in life, yet somehow, he controlled his canvas so fluidly. I admire that.
The story is about bringing people who have tried to commit suicide together to talk about their motivations. The narrator says that no matter how different they are, all of the people seem to really have a need to talk about their experience that seems contrary to the way suicide was handled back then, so taboo and unspoken.
Maybe that’s why they had a great need to talk to others about it. Express their feelings to others who wouldn’t look at them as histri onic or crazy. Unstable. They think maybe this gathering could help themselves, but also others, to deal with things.
They’re so somber, dressed well in suits and jackets, put together in a way only the Italians are. The musical lilt of the narrator’s voice makes me again wish I spoke more Italian, but that’s something I always idly regret. It’s surprising how much I’ve picked up just by watching foreign films.
The narrator says that suicide is the only truly irreparable act in life.
Everyone gathered for Tentato Suicidio has their reasons for wanting to escape. Some of them gaze at each other with such passionate sympathy, move to almost hug one another, then stop themselves, as though a kind touch would blow them apart.
Maybe it would.
I can understand wanting pain to end, but he’s right—it’s irreparable. Whether there’s a God and pearly gates, or nothing at all after we blink out of existence, why take a shortcut to the end of what might be the only life we get? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to feel as much, cram as much experience as humanly possible into the time we have?
I think it is truly selfish, as escapes go. Everyone has someone who loves them. But maybe that’s the only point of view we can have, if we’ve never attempted the “irreparable act.”
I’ve researched suicide for stories before, an unpleasant task because of the amount of pain and raw emotion it’s steeped in. I can’t help but recall the several suicides and disappearances that shook my college campus, and America, to the core. Most people would be surprised to learn that the majority of suicides don’t leave letters for their family members or friends to read when they’ve gone. There’s no letter to explain the pain away, for those still alive to read and feel a little bit better without the huge “why?” hanging over their heads.
I don’t know if an explanation would make things better or worse. I can’t imagine a suicide letter being very accusatory, but what if it was, and you were the cause of the hurt? How bad would that feel? In most cases, I can’t see it being a good thing to leave a note. Nothing you say is going to bring you back, and nothing will make your loved ones feel better. The guilt simply sets in, leaving them feeling like if they’d said something more, done something more, you’d have stayed, pushed through, kept fighting.
Hearing “I love you” one more time would be good, but it would still be tainted by what came next. It’s hard to believe that someone truly loves you when that person chooses to take their own life—not that that’s a reflection on you, but we humans tend to internalize things, and in this case, it’s impossible not to. But it’s not about us.
Suicide isn’t about your feelings. People who do it are more than likely not thinking about you at all. They’re not thinking about much.
They’re so focused on the pain, on the act of release from the pain, that all else fades away. It’s selfish in the least malicious way. It’s not about causing others pain—it’s about ending their own.
And yet, it’s devastating to those left behind.
Pain is energy. Energy can’t be destroyed—suicide doesn’t kill the pain. It only gives it to those left behind. Newton was right about that, at least.
The actress playing Rosanna is so halting and sincere, almost shy, that it’s easy to believe she’s not an actress at all, but someone who this happened to. Her story is brutally sad.
I pause to look her up online, and it turns out that she wasn’t an actress—that these are real people who tried to kill themselves, although they have been directed by Antonioni, and in that sense have become actors. Some were real actors—or went on to become actors, which means this was their big break, coming off the back of trying to kill themselves.
I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
But that’s the great thing about Antonioni—that it doesn’t matter if they were actors before, after, or not at all. The story itself is what matters. How it makes you feel. Art should make you question, make you wonder, make you feel something.
They’re not just talking about their experiences—they’re acting them out to show the audience exactly what happened.
What must that have felt like, reliving some of the worst emotional moments of their lives? I shiver.
Another woman is almost militant in her descriptions of multiple suicide attempts and the ways people stopped her or she failed.
Another seems like she still wishes she were dead, but when asked if she is happy now, she says yes.
But in the back of her mind, is there always that escape hatch with the door swinging half open, invitingly, beckoning to her, soothing her while at the same time depressing her that it’s there at all?
These films make smoking look so goddamn elegant, my fingers itch to pinch a slender white cigarette between them, exhaling warm smoke to make my breath visible to others. Another secret fantasy I’ve yet to explore with Jack. He hates smoking.
Is it impatient, languorous? Shallow, deep?
One woman has sleepy eye
s like Lauren Bacall, and she talks of wanting to become an actress, but to do it properly through training.
The arts attract a great number of unstable types—some of them just hide it better than others. Maybe it’s because, for those who feel things so deeply, it’s easier to pretend to be someone else. They keep things clean and sober while on set, and it’s only while they’re at home, between parts, that the sorrow swells again, the doubt, the emptiness, and they try to drown it out with addictions and recklessness.
When you’re being someone else, it’s easier to look in the mirror.
In the crowd of people who initially filed inside to speak of their experiences, there were both men and women. But the only ones telling stories are the women. Why? Was it an intentional choice on Antonioni’s part to only share the stories of a few of the people, and only the women, or was that just the way it worked out? Were women the only ones who replied to his call when he put out what he was looking for?
Was he trying to show the way the weaker sex reacts to love gone wrong? Was he making a statement—not necessarily a good one— that men aren’t as affected by emotion?
He was said to have admired the authenticity and spontaneity of working-class women, and he loved and respected his mother. He wasn’t exploitative.
And who were the men there with the women? Friends, family, lovers? Were they real people, too, or actors? A mixture of both? Did the women bring them along as plus-ones when they were told they could bring someone along, were they trying to impress the men in their lives by taking them to be a part of cinema? Come watch me while I talk about the time I tried to kill myself.
Hell of a place to take a date.
I restart the film from the beginning.
THREE
