by Sasha Grey
SOMETIMES THE BEST MOVIE SCENES happen after the lights have come on and the credits have scrolled out of sight. When you’re shuffling out of the theater, disoriented because your mind’s been shredded from the ride the director’s taken you on. Then the screen flickers back to life and there’s more, and you rush back inside, desperate to soak in a more complete picture of the message, but you’re too late.
You miss the key moment that brings realization full circle to unlock the last puzzle piece of the film.
And sometimes, the superheroes just sit around eating shawarma.
Either way, you won’t find out unless you keep your ass in the chair, business as usual, until the bitter end of the reel. And sometimes it takes more than one viewing of a film to pick up subtle changes in the story or character. Does the exposure change two stops when the character is happy? Or is the character spinning out of control, and her best friend is a symbol of her waning sanity?
Journalism is the same in a lot of ways. You’ve got to pay attention to things most people don’t bother looking at. Find the little details that connect dots others miss. Get to the heart of the story and make people care about strangers. It’s long hours fueled by a lot of shitty coffee—especially since I’m still at the beginning of my career.
And yet, there’s something about the brutality of it all, the pure exploitation of the facts that’s appealing. Freedom of the press is a fundamental ideal that’s always drawn me in. It gets you in, gains you access to things no one else sees behind the curtains.
And then it’s up to you to take that information and sell the shit out of it. Make the truth exciting—or bend the truth around a bit so it sounds more salacious and interesting. Facts are dry. You need to get people to give a shit—and these days that’s easier said than done.
Written media is different from film, but the goal is the same: Make people see what you want them to, and evoke an emotional reaction from them. It’s drier, as creation goes, but I’ve learned a lot. When you can’t always rely on a picture to tell the story, you learn to get creative. It’s not what I want to do with the rest of my life— ideally, I’ll be a filmmaker in a few years—but it’s relevant and a job related to what I want to do.
Maybe it’s not a straight jump into film, but it’s storytelling, and that’s what I care about.
Besides, a job title of “Amateur Filmmaker” doesn’t pay the bills. But one day I will get there—I’ve just got to hone my craft, make a few more contacts, and get more experience under my belt.
The late night finds me in the newsroom, discontent, stuffed into my crammed cubicle, staring at my computer monitor, scrolling listlessly through news articles hoping for something to widen my eyes and grip me. Work has actually felt like work for the first time in months. I’ve been searching for a story to write about for weeks, dredging up sources and past stories for possible updates when I should be looking for something new.
I probably won’t know it until I see it, so I skim too many reports, stories blending together into a tapestry of macabre listlessness that settles over my shoulders and weighs me down. And yet, I sift through every grain of detail.
It’s the same reason I’m meticulous with researching my articles. Film study taught me to look at things from different angles, to see the things I’m supposed to, and to focus on the things I’m not.
What subtext is hidden behind the subtitles?
The husband I knew was guilty when his wife disappeared, because of the way he kept trying to make any camera on him fade to black like he wanted to disappear.
The city planner whose corruption I exposed by focusing on the thing he refused to look at—his secretary.
I’m damn good at what I do, but lately there’s just nothing inspiring me. A malaise has taken over like cold air seeping beneath the door, freezing my curiosity with it. I live in a different generation. Writers can’t just build a career based on revolutionary reporting that brings justice or truth to the public. I constantly find myself having to fluctuate between the thoughtful and the trivial; otherwise, there is no respect.
For the past few weeks I’ve been more interested in my colleagues than in the next big story.
Offices are a strange microcosm of sexual energy, populated with people who should never have prolonged contact.
There’s Mike, the obligatory hypermasculine reporter, who wears too much cologne and sees Hemingway’s reflection when he looks in the mirror, but the closest he’ll ever get to a war zone is the sample table at Costco. He’s not-so-secretly writing a book (which no one will ever read because he’s never going to finish it) and is the type to jerk off into the anal-retentive accounts receivable lady’s coffee cup underneath his desk while thinking about his name on a Pulitzer. He’s both a dick and a pussy—the dichotomy fascinates me. He despises fame, ironically, and would be the type to sue an influential filmmaker based on a story idea he had ten years ago but, you guessed it, never actually finished.
There’s Sanders, the Ivy League graduate, one step above a dude-bro, who actually does want to be a serious journalist, but his perspective has been skewed by the flavor of silver on his tongue, and it will be another twenty years before that realization hits and he writes anything of value. In our limited interactions, he asks me probing questions with an earnest expression, but never seems to hear the answers I give. There are rumors that he has a fetish for flower flipping—that’s not a sexual term, but sex is definitely involved when he can keep up. Good ol’ boy Sanders has been heavily medicated on various antidepressants since his grad school days but fails to mention at his twice-weekly therapy sessions that he’s not just ingesting the doctor’s orders, but combining them with mushrooms and Ecstasy at an alarming rate. He throws parties and invites young money-hungry girls, some paid, some there for the free drugs. At a young thirty, he can hardly keep up, so he gets his rocks off by having them urinate on him. Plastic sheets and all. When the flowers are coming down and the girls get bored, he smokes a fat one before heading to the office. It’s no surprise that his office smells like patchouli, cigarettes, and too much perfume.
There’s Lucy, the pretty plastic darling, who got the job because of who her daddy’s best friend is. She doesn’t really want to be a reporter—she wants to be a star and be on television, but thinks she’s above being the weather girl. This is a stepping stone for her career trajectory, which will be derailed when she’s thirty-four and gets knocked up by one of the guys she features in a human interest story, and the network won’t want her back because it’s hard to retain dewy-eyed optimism when you only get two hours of sleep a night between breast-feedings. She works on a lot of fluff pieces. I hear she’s been privy to a few flower-flipping parties, and I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind feeling her big, firm breasts rub against my soft skin. I have this fantasy where she steps into the office late, as usual. I order her to strip her silk blouse off, leaving her plump breasts protruding from her expensive lingerie. I command her to give me twenty, which she can hardly do in her red-heeled Louboutins. She begs me to let her take them off, but I tell her she will need them. When she’s shaking and sweating, I make her undress me and grind her tits all over my body, flicking each nipple with my tongue, slowly, before consuming both of her glorious breasts in my mouth. I order her to grind her cunt on mine, and when I’m done, I call the rest of the office in to fill her up. I spit on her, and then I get back to work while she finishes. There’s something sexy about sexually degrading a cliché. I don’t think she ever fucks, and by the cemented look on her face, I can tell she needs it.
The best reporters are the ones you don’t really notice. They have a way of blending into the background like omniscient furniture. It’s about as startling as a lamp suddenly speaking to you when they remind you of their presence by asking a question, making a comment to keep you talking. We’ve a few of those here, and they are the ones I aspire to emulate because their stories are deep and valuable. Their words don’t just entertain;
they teach, strip back a part of reality and give you a peek behind the façade.
I want to do that as well. I want to be successful in my own right, but on my own terms. Breaking news about the latest celebrity baby name doesn’t do it for me, though that sells papers. We’re not an entertainment rag, but cute babies and celebrities sell.
And news is a business as well as a medium of information.
The strange story I find next might help me blend the two.
Inana Luna: Six-month anniversary of the provocateur’s suicide.
The article is three months old, but had me at “provocateur.”
As I read about the woman who disappeared, seemingly without a trace, something about the story resonates with me. Luna’s sister, Lola, is interviewed. I find an article from shortly after Inana’s disappearance in which Lola pleads for anyone with information to contact her, admitting that her sister’s lifestyle seemed unstable, but that she always kept in touch.
The writer included a few pages from Inana’s diary.
What is it about this? The tip of my tongue curls against the roof of my mouth. So familiar…
Flashes of Antonioni’s L’Avventura hit me, though it’s been years since I watched it. Black and white and tumbling ocean waves. That’s why this feels familiar, for it begins with a desperate search for a missing woman.
Anna.
But it’s hazy. Half-remembered.
Something primal crawls over my spine and caresses my scalp with goosebumps.
Antonioni’s Anna connected Claudia and Sandro, then vanished.
Except my Anna didn’t connect me to a person. She connected me to so much more.
For a moment, my senses are filled with the memory of her. The way she smelled, the way she laughed. Anna wasn’t a temptress; she was a bridge to a dark place inside yourself that you had to cross of your own free will.
People like her remind you of those places, those bridges lying in wait inside every bated breath.
People like Inana Luna. I care because she also reminds me of my Anna.
Sitting up straight, I open another tab and google Inana’s name.
There’s a surprising amount of information about Inana Luna online.
She was not just any missing woman, but one of some fame and notoriety—an exotic beauty who led a scandalous and controversial life, dedicating herself wholly to the pursuit of sexual pleasure, in any and all forms, and documenting her experiences with a relentless honesty.
It caused quite a stir—one she seemed to revel in.
Right up until she took her own life in her Nevada bungalow.
I go back to the article that had pages of Inana’s diary reproduced at the bottom of the page. Large, careless, scrawling script allows no more than a few words per line, but they’re easy to read.
The trouble with judgment is that we’re all woefully underqualified but too experienced, except when it comes to anything outside the box. Limitless limits. Even the word “limits” looks like people on their knees crawling after something like a human centipede. I don’t want to taste someone else’s limitation inside my mouth, feel it dancing in my body in a dance I never wanted to move to. I need my own means of expression. I’ll invent the language if the words haven’t been made for it yet. And when watching me, when seeing me speak it without sound, they’ll recognize themselves and know freedom.
I bite my lip and go back to an interview the sister gave shortly after Inana was found—after she insisted her death wasn’t a suicide at all.
When asked about the suggestion that her sister was a promiscuous wannabe actress who turned to pornography because she couldn’t hack it in Hollywood, Lola explained, “It isn’t pornography. She was an internationally successful model for major brands and magazines, but her art chose transgression as its medium, which most people don’t understand because of puritanical beliefs. She had representation by a major gallerist, and had several collectors around the world. She wasn’t spread-eagled for a random wrist manual, and to dismiss her based on that is demeaning to people who do choose that as a profession. Inana had a mission, and it was respected until her death. My sister was a free spirit and way more intelligent than most people will ever hope to be, but she was a good person. Just because someone’s expression takes a form you don’t understand yet doesn’t mean they’re sick, or damaged, or bad. It means people are judgmental. All this is detracting attention from the fact that my sister would never take her own life. She lived harder than most of us ever will. She’ d never have killed herself.”
The investigation into her death was closed pretty much immediately due to lack of evidence pointing to anything other than suicide—despite there being no note. In her case, with the way she documented everything in her life, I can’t believe she left no prose behind for people to read and understand her reasons. Was it the one thing that was too personal for even her to write about?
I didn’t even know her, and yet I can’t picture this woman choosing not to experience every goddamn second of life that she could. Some people wring every drop of experience they can from life and then lick the bowl clean. Inana did that—after mining the clay from the ground and sculpting the fucking bowl.
The sister’s eyes are hollow and shadowed in the picture included; someone wanted to make her seem like a shattered family member grasping at the straws of her sister’s tainted memory.
How this woman must hurt.
I have no experience with suicide, so my heart shouldn’t throb in sympathy for Inana’s sister, yet it does.
To escape it, I search for the pictures of Inana that led everyone to believe she was reckless and hypersexual. Hypersexual—isn ’t that what men are every day?
In two years’ time, she went from top model and ideal muse of photographers and filmmakers to a photographer of fine art self-portraits. From mannequin to goddess. Whether posing for herself or for someone else, she is a bitchslap to expectations of what eroticism should be. Looking at her portraits, I imagine she was trying to find her true being and essence. Slightly off-center, they’re dark, atmospheric, but almost whimsical in the way the nudity and poses are juxtaposed with quirkiness. They take you by surprise, and you shouldn’t find them sexy, but they’re undeniably captivating. As you’re staring at a gorgeous woman, there’s a tragedy mask carved from light staring back at you from between her spread legs. It doesn’t blend into the picture—you’re supposed to notice it. It’s supposed to feel jarring. You’re meant to feel the “sin” and react to it. In another, she cups her hands, which are shaped like a triangle, symbolizing the female form, broadcasting the power and mysticism of women, screaming at you that she holds the power, with eyes half open.
These aren’t lusty images. They’re art.
These aren’t tacky portraits for gossip rags to display with bold yellow type declaring “who wore it best.” These are legitimate, high-culture art pieces. These photos are made to show you something— and you’re supposed to shut your mouth while looking, because it’s in silence that the understanding shudders over your spine, and you realize your likes fall so far outside the lines that there may as well not even be a fucking box.
The need to be in her head at the moment when the camera flashes went off surges over me like a type of mania. A madness.
An insatiable need to truly know.
Inana isn’t the blazing bombshell I was expecting from the way people spoke of her, with pillowy lips and hungry eyes. She’s extremely tall, and muscular. No huge fake tits for someone’s dick to thrust between, angling their load at her vacant expression and bee-stung lips slicked with red lipstick. Her long limbs and wide, piercing eyes make her birdlike, and not of this Earth.
I click through photo after photo. With her history, there’s a wealth of pictures online for the vultures to leer at. Paparazzo captured her on countless occasions as she gracefully and easily towered over the short rock stars and actors whom she called her lovers. As public as her exploits were, a gr
oupie or one-track-minded model she wasn’t. With her fame and effortless beauty, I’m surprised I never heard her story until now. But there’s also a guilelessness to her, an open, raw vulnerability that makes my heart clench in my chest at the thought of anything bad happening to her. I want to protect a woman who’s already dead. I want to know her, crawl inside her head and learn the things she learned, see what she saw. Her life was so public, but also a mystery. She speaks like a poet in the rare interviews that are accessible.
I’m pretty sure I’ve already felt what she felt—or at least had a taste of it.
My mouth is dry with wanting more, and I swallow the feeling back with a mouthful of now cold coffee. Inana Luna.
Also showing up in my search of her name: the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility, and warfare.
Inana the woman was almost militant in her desire to redefine passion, to discover herself through sex. She was following her namesake in a way. Bold, unafraid to go places that scared her, that should have scared her. Birthed by Venus and guided by Aphrodite.
I don’t know if she was ever afraid of the journey or of herself, or scared of what she’d be at the end.
I need to know. In a way, finding out everything about Inana is like discovering what may have happened to me if I’d continued on my journey instead of deciding that what I have with Jack is enough. Sacrificing my own desires to protect the man I love, and to protect our relationship.
Part of me has always wondered what would have happened. This is a way to follow the yellow brick road while staying perfectly safe.
I return to the other browser tab, the Google search of her name, full of articles focusing on her fate, reduced from a bold life to grim details that are hard to reconcile with the eyes of the adventurous woman on a journey of self-discovery and expression that most will never dare to even think about too closely.
You know what I mean.
How many bestselling revolutionary lifestyle books have you heard about and thought might actually be the key to fixing your mundane life? If you could just Feng Shui harder, declutter one more room, juice your way into a shinier version of yourself, your problems would be solved. Your life would be absolutely perfect. Bigger, better, with more expensive shoes and brighter smiles, and more time to devote to those hobbies you never got around to.
