The Juliette Society, Book II

by Sasha Grey

  I’m down to the third page when I find what I’m looking for.

  She’s lying on the floor in the thumbnail. The link takes me to an obscure gallery website with a video excerpt.

  Her hair’s mussed, like it was styled against a pillowcase by a thorough lover. Maybe it was.

  A single note is being plucked on a stringed instrument, but I don’t know what it is. Bass, maybe, but high up on the neck?

  The lights flash in a counter rhythm to the sound.

  The camera pulls back, revealing her body covered in a blanket of hands. The shot pans out, and you see the arms, but not the people.

  Oh, but what they’re doing to her.

  Ceaselessly kneading, rubbing, touching, hiding her body— everywhere except her pussy and breasts. They’ve made a reverse bikini with their touches, and she writhes, clearly desperate for them to get her off. But they don’t.

  It vaguely reminds me of Pryings, a famous Acconci piece that several filmmakers have paid homage to.

  They don’t stop.

  Her eyes go wild.

  I pause it, heartbeat kicked up in sympathetic frustration for her. All those hands and none of them touching her in the places she wants them the most.

  I find another clip of her online, from the premiere for some movie she was in that I never saw. Big budget, big director, but I can’t recall even seeing a trailer for it.

  She s wearing a simple blue dress and red-soled Louboutins. Her hair’s twisted back into a chignon and her makeup’s flawlessly done, but it somehow detracts from the vision of her. Like she’s hidden behind a layer of perfection instead of having her attributes accentuated.

  She’s smiling along with the interviewer, giving charming but flippant answers to his questions. Her voice is low-pitched and pleasant, with a sort of lilting cadence that’s vaguely hypnotic. She’s an old soul. She’s beautiful, and if I hadn’t seen the other video first, I might never have noticed that something’s missing from her eyes. Inana’s sparkle is dulled in this video.

  I find another interview and watch it to be sure.

  Again, it’s as though she’s breathing but not getting any air.

  I click back to the performance piece, where she radiates.

  Her movements are more languid, her eyes almost wild, but she’s somehow more relaxed than she seems in the other footage, which should be ridiculous. And yet it’s not. We’re most ourselves just before we come, the most attached to our bodies, reduced to the purest we can be. It’s needy, pure, and honest. Single-minded.

  Interrupt a woman’s orgasm, and you’ll feel the wrath of God— you can see it in her eyes if you dare to look. Because in that moment of pure, blank desire, when we’re stripped of everything else but that divine sensation—we’re also gods.

  Singular.

  Everything else melts away.

  And to watch this woman, so strong and sure, so gorgeously content and happy here, and then flip back to the other interview— it’s just wrong on a primal level.

  Inana was meant to be on a pedestal with light in her eyes.

  Gifts being brought to her, the high priestess.

  I go back to the first video, desperately wanting her to get off at the end of it, but it ends with her literal whimper, reminiscent of The Hollow Men by Eliot. The audience is supposed to leave feeling as unfulfilled as she is.

  I search the name of the video and find Inana Luna’s write-up about the video.

  “Witnessing an unmet need is jagged to the soul—especially when you know what that need is like, but worse when you see how easy it would be to fix. Humans know touch, they know need. Most of all, they know discontentment. This piece is about complete decadent excess that is empty and ultimately dissatisfying for myself and the audience. So close, but never getting the thing we all wanted: release.”

  She got that right.

  I flip between tabs, looking at her face, searching it for instability and answers. Before and after. Inana seemed alive during her search for sexual expression, despite her obvious “success” of before. She seemed happier afterward, not like someone who’d gone off the rails into harmful territory.

  What was it about that journey that made people so uncomfortable?

  Was it because they were jealous, or because there was something inherently wrong about it?

  Right now I feel the former, even though a large part of me has accepted the latter as truth—even if my core rebels at the thought.

  Success means different things to different people, the connotation more important than what the word itself denotes. It’s all relative. Happiness is relative. There’s a reason media and fashion are able to play our insecurities against us with the “grass is greener” marketing. If they shift the goalposts often enough, no one will ever have what they think they wanted, so there’s no reason to stop striving for the next big thing.

  Inana stripped it down to her body—her self—in a pure way that resonates with me. Her body, mind, and desires. Blowing limitations out of the water.

  And I think it made people feel uncomfortable the way any self-improvement does, because they start to wonder if their goals are meaningless. If the things they’ve been fighting for, working for, slaving for in a job they hate for so long have been the wrong things, and it could have all been so much simpler if only they’d gotten out of their own way and stripped away the bullshit.

  Or maybe she’s a slut. But what is a slut? It’s a judgment meant to keep women on their knees, which is really fucking ironic if you ask me. Stay on your knees, subservient for your masters, but God forbid you enjoy yourself while you’re down there with your mouth open. Where’s the line between art and trash?

  Art pushes boundaries, but it’s not infallible. It should forward conversation, thought, and social dialogue. There have been plenty of films made that blurred or crossed lines, but who decides where that line is? When asked about those boundary pushers, actors often say that it wasn’t the controversial act itself that made them uncomfortable, but the blowback—no pun intended—they faced afterwards by the public, by the critics. What they’d thought to be a powerful scene in the moment, and even afterward, was viewed as something tawdry and cheap. People tried to reduce it to shock value and an attempt to drum up a little controversy when the reality was anything but.

  The infamous unsimulated blowjob scene in The Brown Bunny, for example, but even that was only half-real.

  That happened, but there are other things that we don’t know are true. Did Tom and Nicole fuck in Eyes Wide Shut? Did Harvey Keitel really secretly come in Nic’s hair? I find it hard to believe it’s actually true. Real versus fake. Simulated versus true. Was it a fake blowjob on a real cock, or a real blowjob on a prosthetic dick?

  Even if it’s simulated, you’ve still sucked dick on camera, and that closes a lot of doors in Hollywood—while blowing others wide open.

  It’s a choice as to how far you’ll go. Where you’ll take it. Whether you want to be cast as the girl next door, or the one who steals her boyfriend.

  But more than that, this is what I want to know: Was Charlotte Gainsbourg’s prosthetic vagina modeled on her real vagina? If so, isn’t that kind of weird? Maybe she should find someone to market it. I couldn’t imagine ever using her prosthetic pussy as anything other than a coffee table ornament. Did Jane Birkin wear a prosthetic pussy in Je T’aime...Moi Non Plus? Did she have a “porn double”? Maria Schneider never wore a prosthetic vagina, I’m pretty sure about that.

  Vincent Gallo definitely used a stunt cock in The Brown Bunny and made everyone believe it was his own, while Joe Dallesandro displayed his manhood proudly and with no sense of shame. But maybe that was just a clever ploy by Andy Warhol to distract from how wooden his acting was. Actors having sex in movies want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to appeal to everyone, be as sexy as possible without jeopardizing any roles or alienating anybody. They want to make us believe that they’re pushing boundaries, but they haven’t got
the balls (or vagina) to really follow through. Violence is fine, but sex still

  And so they fake it.

  They can say that it’s because cinema is changing, society is changing, and to stay relevant, they’ve got to take more clothes off, kiss more passionately, grind a little harder. Maybe that’s true. But it’s putting a lot of energy into fakery, and a lot of special effects into making it the most realistic imitation they possibly can.

  But then, maybe make-believe is better.

  I’ve seen the Colin Farrell sex tape. It certainly looked real, but it seemed like he was faking it. Is it that a lot of male celebs have become so used to groupies doing all the work that they have no idea what they’re doing anymore with a partner who isn’t faking it because she’s just so damn happy to be there? Girls like that will never admit how shitty the sex was, or that he hadn’t brushed his teeth for three days beforehand, because that kills the dream.

  And the dialogue in Farrell’s tape was so corny, it made the pizza delivery boy in Eighties pornos sound like Samuel Beckett.

  Off script, such celebrities are usually terrible speakers with nothing interesting to say. Not all of them, but a lot. The smart ones stay quiet to keep the mystery alive. Look at Ozzy Osbourne. Can you honestly tell me you look at him the same way, like he is a rock-and-roll badass, after you’ve seen him doddering around in his house, shouting about dog shit with all the pep and none of the charm of your senile grandfather?

  That’s what I thought.

  It’s not a burn on him. It’s just that he should have kept things behind the curtain so the performances on stage were more believable.

  The actresses who smirk like they’re above getting a few fingers rammed up their ass while they swallow their lover’s load, who promptly do it behind closed doors on the casting couch, really need to stop. Who hasn’t been a whore for her dream at one time or another?

  Sticks and stones. Objective morality.

  I think that as long as you don’t hurt anyone, and you’re happy, then you’re doing all right.

  My inbox dings, and I check my messages.

  And smile.

  FIVE

  I’M WAITING FOR ANSWERS SURROUNDED by addicts.

  Brands define you in the same way that cattle are branded by the red-hot irons pressed to their sides. You start to identify with a certain product line as though it somehow matters whether you’re an Apple or Android user. And within those types, everyone is chasing an ideal, in competition with one another to have the latest and greatest.

  And yet, you can bond with someone based solely on having the same kind of car or phone that they have—or over the type of headphones they listen to their music with.

  Tiny white buds or huge black ones that look like earmuffs.

  You are what you eat.

  You are what you drink.

  Things give us status.

  Status is a marketplace we carry with our competitive natures, lining the pockets of those at the top who have true status and privilege we’ve never even fathomed. The ability to make or break people, nations.

  A product doesn’t exist that isn’t designed to ensnare our sense of need, and that hasn’t been raked over the coals of a focus group and engineered to suck as many dollars out of our wallets as it can.

  And if for some reason the targeting flops, a 2.0 version will show up in a few months with a new color, a new feature, and we can all forget about the last inferior model and the way it went horrifically sideways. Marketers count on short memories and eager hands to forgive and snatch up the next model.

  And yet, despite the fact that you’re a teeny, infinitely replaceable cog in the consumer machine, you still think you’re unique. But even if you’re sewing your own clothes, it’s still usually with material that someone else made, working off a ready-made pattern.

  Things end up being the same, like bearded hipsters trying desperately to be different—and ending up exactly like the rest of the special snowflakes trying to stand out in the exact same rebellion of identity.

  Have you ever noticed how celebrities all start looking alike—at least, the ones who go under the knife? There’s a reason for this.

  Let me explain. There exists an ideal beauty formula: the golden ratio for a face to be “perfect.”

  It’s based on math and symmetry. The more symmetrical a face is, and the closer to this ideal ratio, the more pleasing it is to us.

  But only to a point. True symmetry can feel too masklike and artificial. It turns out that our brains like a little flaw—as long as it, too, is pleasing. We like faces to have “character.” One of the teeth in our crush’s mouth can be slightly crooked, but not totally black. Tiny flecks of gold in a blue eye can be pretty, but a blown-out pupil? Hell no. When they meet a person with heterochromia—two different colored eyes—people even tend to prefer one eye or the other. Producers make those actors wear contacts to correct that unsightly and distracting problem. But it always worked for Bowie—hell they wrote roles for him.

  I bet you’re curious about your face now, and how close it is to the ideal ratio. Go look it up, but be prepared to be disappointed.

  Math is so cold. So goddamn heartless.

  They say Audrey Hepburn attained it.

  But celebrities, and anyone with the inclination and the money, carve away at their perceived flaws, aiming for that cold number of perfection. These changes generally have the same results, aiming for that ideal beauty ratio even if people don’t realize why they find that appealing. Smaller nose, bigger lips, stronger cheekbones. Nevermind the body enhancements that are now available.

  And it’s not just women getting them.

  For a price, fellas, you can have pectoral implants, calf shaving, and muscular sculpting done to achieve visual results without ever having to waste a moment setting foot in a gym. As well as wanting the best of the best, we all want it now, with as little effort as possible. It’s why get-rich-quick schemes still work. It’s why dodgy diet pills are still consumed by the handful—even though the side effects could include death at worst, and anal leakage at most mortifying.

  But if it gets you looking like a waif, stinky seclusion for a few weeks seems preferable to actually dieting and exercising for months on end. So, again, these people are all cutting and pulling and twisting and reforming themselves into something that ends up looking remarkably uniform—not that it will really help their careers. Look at Baby from Dirty Dancing. That one “flaw” that makes someone relatable can be the difference between a leading lady and last year’s one-hit wonder.

  But I digress.

  The glaring exception to the rule—the refuge, if you will, from cookie-cutter consumption—is at Starbucks, of all places.

  I’ve never known two people to drink the same beverage at Starbucks. It’s just another brand we all viscerally cling to, but a more personal one.

  Our drink orders.

  If you pay attention, people don’t even treat it as a separate thing from themselves. The baristas either throw out a name, or they’ll ask, “Who is the tall half-caf soy latte, extra hot, extra whip, with caramel?” and we just go along with it like cattle, as though we are our drink choice.

  Because we are our choices.

  Even the cup itself is a status symbol. You’re not one of the hoi polloi who wake up early and make their own beverages. You’re above that, too fabulously busy for something so basic. And the fact you go to Starbucks instead of another lesser chain says much about you. Even if you can afford the Louis Vuitton weekend bag, Cartier bracelet, and flamboyant Hermès handkerchief, that green straw is never uncomfortably plebeian, even for the elite. It’s a fashion statement; it ties fluidly in to your accessories.

  What is your drink?

  It doesn’t matter what mine is. All you need to know is that Inana’s sister and I ordered the same thing that day.

  Looking back, perhaps I should have taken it as a sign. It meant everything and nothing, wrapped up in a syrupy ca
ramel bow.

  But with that simple serendipitous detail, I knew it was her. It’s a rule: I always let my subject pick the meeting place so they feel comfortable and in control, and this time it’s just my hard luck.

  Sometimes the universe is generous with its signs.

  But you might not know what the sign means until later.

  She stands and stirs and I wait for the sugar in her hand, both of us glancing around the coffee shop, waiting for the other.

  When we realize we’re here to meet each other, we drift toward a table in the quietest corner of the coffee shop and sit across from each other, taking each other in. I’m usually pretty good at ascertaining someone’s age on sight, but she’s got a timeless youth that could place her anywhere from early thirties to mid-forties. She dresses conservatively, but with a chic, understated quality that makes me think she has money but doesn’t want to flaunt it. An insurance payout from Inana’s death, maybe? That would explain it. It would feel like blood money, spending anything, if you thought your sister had been murdered for your gain—even if you truly needed it.

  “Thank you for meeting with me,” I say.

  She nods and settles into her chair, accepting the business card I hand her. “I’ve done a lot of interviews, but I was intrigued by your message.”

  “I can imagine the requests have been unreal. Your sister was a very provocative figure. I looked up some of her visual pieces.”

  “And?” Her eyes harden. “It’s not pornography.”

  “No, please don’t get me wrong. Your sister was doing something unique and powerful. You can’t help but react to them in a visceral way.” I don’t really see the resemblance between them, other than their small frames. But when Lola sits back and plays with the ends of her hair, trailing her fingers thoughtfully over her collarbone, the gesture does it. Inana did the same thing in an interview when she was lost in thought.