by Sasha Grey
I can feel my orgasm surging, building up inside. He shifts his weight and I can feel his cock move inside me and I’m going to come so fucking fast and I tell him that.
“I want to feel you come on my cock,” he says, staring deep into my eyes.
I nod, licking my upper lip, tasting the saltiness of the thin sheen of sweat forming there and also him, still lingering in my mouth.
I’m going to come.
“I know,” he says, and I must have said the words aloud again, but it’s crashing over me in waves now.
Jack.
I’m coming, Jack.
So good.
I shudder and my hips buck and Jack grits his teeth and groans as my pussy tightens its grip on his cock, and I feel my limbs shake with the ache, with the release, but we’re not finished yet.
Jack’s still hard and inside me and starts thrusting hard, perfect stabs of pleasure radiating deeper than the clitoral stimulation did.
But the idea of Jack buried balls-deep in my cunt is almost as good as the actuality, and I stare down at it between us, watching it go in and out, my juices flowing harder, drenching my thighs and his balls as they slap against me.
I want to drown in the come we make together, feel it coat us like massage oil as we slide across each other’s skin, because making love happens with every inch of our bodies, not just between our legs. Slathering each other with come. Modern art. Modern fucking art.
I grab his ass and grind my hips, wanting him to come so hard he can’t see so that I’m the first and only thing he sees when he gets his vision back.
He growls deep in his chest, so male and turned on that I feel another orgasm unwinding my spine from within, and as he pounds harder, faster, deeper, it’s torn from me like my mind’s coming loose from my body, and I scream his name, shuddering around his cock.
A moment later I feel his cock twitch inside me, filling me with his hot come in thick spurts. His hot breath puffs against my neck when he pulls me closer and squeezes me tenderly, possessing me more with that simple gesture than with anything else.
I’m snuggled up next to Jack in bed, listening to his steady breathing, but I can’t sleep. The diary’s burning a hole in my mind, but I don’t want to lose myself inside it right now. Some part of me wants to prove that I’m not obsessed with Inana yet, that I can take a break from the diary, so I slip from Jack’s arms and pad into the living room to pop in a DVD.
LJAvventura. It’s been niggling at the back of my mind for days, and I can no longer put it off.
For a while, I drift inside the visuals of the coast, the sea, the rocks. Everything seems more dangerous, but also more beautiful. I always rooted for Claudia. Monica Vitti was always a favorite of mine, and I couldn’t help but want her to find a goddamn happy ending, though those aren’t ensured or expected in serious films that mirror life.
Things rarely end up with neat bows.
Sandro tells Anna that words create misunderstandings and wasn’t it enough that he cares for her?
Guess the Five Love Languages weren’t popular back then.
He’s got a point. Even now, couples continue to put arbitrary parameters on their definitions of love and relationships. Is monogamy natural?
No.
We’re part of nature as well, and it goes against our biology—as well as our physiology—especially when it comes to reproducing. Men are hardwired to spread their sperm far and wide to impregnate as many females as possible to ensure that their genes are the ones to survive. Women are hardwired to want a mate who is bigger and stronger than the rest, hence why so many are attracted to the bad boy or the asshole—it screams back to the time of our ancestors, when those were the ones we thought could protect us and our future progeny from the very real dangers we faced.
Social monogamy is real, but oftentimes the children of supposedly monogamous couples aren’t really the offspring of both partners.
The ladies looked elsewhere.
We’re living in an artificial world. If we eschewed all of the things that aren’t natural—air travel, makeup, synthetic fibers, spray cheese—our lives would be reduced to that of a granola cruncher living in a yurt in Tibet.
Monogamy can work, but it’s a choice. We have to define for ourselves and our partner what it is we want from a given relationship, and then honor those definitions.
And yet, Claudia and Sandro were pretty eager to get together the moment Anna was out of the picture.
But it’s not like she left. Or did she? The way it’s written, we don’t know if Anna ran off or was taken. If she’s dead or alive. But that’s not even the important thing. We’re not meant to care about Anna— we’re meant to care about Claudia.
It feels more like a Hitchcockian device that we’re meant to believe, and as soon as we do buy into that idea, something bad will happen. I became protective of other people’s truths, but was I really protecting them, or serving myself? Everything I do brings me closer to Anna. If I had continued searching I would have tarnished myself and brought everyone’s private predilections into the public eye. Most of us chose selfishness over selflessness.
I turn the movie off, feeling tainted by my own past, and pick up Inana’s diary again.
Here is another woman who burned like a meteor. She was never destined to be ordinary or to fit into society as a drone working from nine to five. I’m unable to reconcile the act of suicide with the woman in the pages of the diary, but maybe that’s because she reminds me of myself. The similarities between what Inana wants and what I want give me a mild jolt.
I need to get inside the woman’s head a little more. The best way to know her is to be her. In doing so, maybe I can know myself in a safe way, an acceptable way.
There’s a quote underlined several times inside the diary. “I must explain this to her. If she loves me well enough she will understand. All things are possible in love. I will explain to her that I possess her at will without the loathsome absurdities of sex.”
I search for the quote online and find it’s from a book, Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath. The title reminds me a little of the infamous Witch Hunter’s Bible, but I go back to the quote, reading it twice more.
Are all things possible in love? If someone loves you well enough, does that person truly understand? What if the things you want are slightly outside his or her realm of comfort or understanding?
Inana had fans, and yet a lot of them—as well as some friends— abandoned her when they learned about the new mission of her life. How is that friendship, love? Love is patient, love is kind. Love doesn’t judge you when you embark on a public journey into BDSM and sexual expression and document it. Was her image so set as a muse, a representation of fashion houses, that they didn’t want to lose the power she brought and gave?
Everyone’s so goddamn ready to crucify each other, you’d think we lived two thousand years ago.
T Swizzle jumps from country to pop, most likely to launch that album even bigger, and some people scream that she’s selling out. I think maybe she just got tired of being inside a big old sequined country box. But sometimes growing the way we want to, instead of the way someone else wants us to, seems like a crime.
The memory of Jack’s horrified face flashes to mind, a memory I’d suppressed. He didn’t understand when I wanted him to go further. To be wild with me.
To hurt me.
It turned him on to think of being with me and someone else, but when it’s just him and me, he holds back—even when I beg him not to. There’s no way he’d actually participate in a threesome with me—especially with another man. He’s too straight-laced for that, and that’s fine…for him.
I’m Inana without the journey—or rather, I put a foot through the threshold, then tried to take it all back and pretend I never did it. Pretend it didn’t change me on a fundamental level. But knowledge acquired cannot be undone. And so, while living with Jack, seemingly content with the quiet domesticity of our lives, there is still
something churning inside me: unanswered questions that trouble me, an ache to further my sexual experimentation and needs.
Simply admitting that to myself feels like a festering boil has been lanced, and some of the pressure is eased. I’m torn between the two versions of myself, the one that I am and the one that I could be. I adore Jack, crave the security and stability our relationship provides, and have made a conscious attempt to suppress my sexual desires for the sake of maintaining our connection and some kind of normalcy. Christ, his face when I asked him to hit me. I’ll never ask him for something like that again.
I couldn’t risk him misunderstanding, shrinking away again. I feel his love in words and caresses, but I want to be caressed and longed for the way Sandro looks at Claudia.
But at the same time, I still have the same feverish, hypersexual recurring dreams—a part of myself I can’t deny.
It’s not the same dream anymore; it has shifted to a point in the future, to a place inside myself that I don’t recognize, to sexual scenarios that are darker and more intense—and that scare me, if I’m honest.
I dream I’m there again, and things make a certain stark sense. There’s a perfect moment when you’re on your knees in front of someone who can destroy a life, a business, a country without a regret, and the things you’re doing with your mouth can make them forget how to breathe. Your roaming tongue stills theirs.
I’m talking about power. Real power.
Four years ago, if you’d told me I’d be masturbating in public, I’d have looked scandalized along with the other pretty pearl-clutchers.
But unlike them, I’d have had an interest that burned the inside of my skin, making me blush for a different reason. I’d have been dripping at the thought of doing something so audacious. So free. It’s not that I was ashamed of my desires, even then. It’s more that I thought I should have been, and that I was a little broken inside because shame flitted just beyond my fingertips.
I’ve been wet in public before, cold arousal lying against my crotch from panties I’d soaked earlier kissing Jack goodbye before running errands. Even better were the times we’d fucked and then I’d go out and his come would seep from my pussy, slicking my panties.
But the inappropriate thoughts coursing through my veins always made my “shouldn’t”s rear up in outrage.
I shouldn’t go grocery shopping before changing clothes.
I shouldn’t like the heaviness of the damp fabric between my legs.
I shouldn’t smile at the men who leered.
I shouldn’t imagine how easy it would be for a stranger to glide up behind me, lift up my skirt and slide inside my pussy, using the wetness he had nothing to do with creating, to fuck me over the pork chops where anyone could see—not that he’d get the pork reference.
A stranger using Jack’s come as lube to fuck me in public.
In my dreams, I’d shed so many goddamn shouldn’ts, like a snake rubbing against a rock to rid itself of too-tight skin, that I glowed. I was sleeker, faster, tighter.
Happier.
Making love doesn’t do that. Fucking does. Anyone who tells you sex is only physical is doing it wrong.
In real life, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve sort of…dulled. Now, sitting on our couch, remembering how it felt to be overwhelmed by possibilities, I shiver with dark delight and continue rhythmically squeezing my thighs together, muscles rippling over my clit.
Look, Ma, no hands.
Everyone’s wound tightly these days, twisting themselves up into Gordian knots to protect themselves or to convince themselves that they’re more complicated than they really are. Deep down, we’re pretty fucking simple. We all just want the same thing at the end of the day:
More.
Maybe I can’t have more of it without jeopardizing what Jack and I have built, are building.
But Jack’s going away on a trip with DeVille for a week, which means I have one week to immerse myself in Inana’s life and try to feel the things she felt. To dive in before shaking the droplets of interest from my skin like a wet dog.
And then I’ll let it go.
EIGHT
NEVADA.
When most people think of Nevada, certain things come to mind. Sin City, twinkling in the desert like a sparkly tumor, malignant with its hunger to take all you’ve got. Sure, it’s hungry, but it’s like a cockroach, it’s going to outlast us all because of its innate resilience—because nothing should be sustainable in such a harsh environment. If the water dried up for good, how long would it last?
And yet the show goes on decades after its prime, only now slathered in bronzer, with a few extra pounds changing the silhouette of its sequined jumpsuit into something the girls don’t scream over anymore, but that people will still overpay to see.
Some cities in America are designed to trap as many tourists as they can, shamelessly, unapologetically, effectively. But some take care of their marks better than others, recognizing the symbiosis needed to survive, so they protect their livelihoods. I’ve only gone to Vegas once—and that was enough for me. I saw a few concerts, lost some money, and fucked Jack in a fancy hotel with windows that didn’t open.
The whole place felt like it was starving. You walk down the strip trying to dodge the barkers who try to herd you into their place, handing you seventeen hundred flyers you don’t want. You don’t want to look like a tourist, but the place is designed to be overwhelming, bombarding the senses into going along with whatever they’re trying to sell you. The glittering lies are there to entertain you and cover up the ugly truth: The sequins hide the flaws like a past-her-prime stripper coating her stretch marks with extra body glitter.
No eye contact is best.
But even dining out is brutal if you don’t go to five-star fancy places. Buffets rule the world there to take the sting out of the cost of everything else. Who the fuck ever needs that much food? And yet I’m sure people would have gladly moved their chairs directly to the buffet tables and devoured until they made themselves sick, trying to make up for their losses at the craps table.
Balance doesn’t work that way. Some losses can’t be equaled in free breakfast sausages, but people are damn sure going to try.
It revolted me after a short amount of time.
I drive through it now, trying to see the beauty of the place, and the lights are pretty, but remind me of those predators that lurk in the depths of the ocean, using their shiny bioluminescence to lure in their prey. The prey gets a show, the predator gets a free dinner. It’s malevolent in the most beautiful way. It’s nature at her most gorgeously savage. Innovative.
Inana moved here about a year and a half before she died, and while she lived with a showgirl kind of quality, I can’t see her loving it for long. She was all about truth and limits, and I don’t think she’d have been able to get past the rot beneath the slick paint job.
The sheer opportunity for decadence was probably what lured Inana here in the first place. In places like this you can get away with more because it’s expected. Locals play up legends and myths, dressing bigger, better, bolder for the tourists—the ones trying to scam you do, anyway.
The ones trying to make a buck aren’t the only ones who make wildness possible. Because of the tourism, because of the number of people moving there to try to make it big in show business, you’ve got a huge rotating population. Other cities, too. LA, New York, and New Orleans have this transience to them that can make every day feel new—and also temporary, like things won’t last.
That’s as good or bad as you make it. Vegas has a short memory and lets you be as freaky as you want to be in ways you couldn’t get away with in other cities. It can take you in and suck the marrow from your bones, leaving you haggard and disillusioned before your time. Cities like that won’t remember your name, but they’ll remember your flavor—has-been, never-was, model-actress, hooker-waitress. You taste just like the pretty little things it devoured yesterday.
But there’s something
worse lurking in Nevada than past-their-prime performers and predatory pushers. Harder than the city itself that fucks you without remembering your name. Something no one’s talking about.
Asbestos.
Once used for soundproofing and insulation, among other things, we abandoned it and banned it when we realized it was literally killing people who breathed it in. But, you know—slowly. Anyway, it’s dangerous as hell.
What’s this got to do with Nevada? Turns out, the whole place is lousy with naturally occurring asbestos, blowing in the wind like malignant dandelion fluff.
It’s not a secret; scientists have been trying to raise awareness about this for years, to the incredible resistance of the government. Tourism is their gravy. How many people would still flock there every day if they knew they were breathing in fibers that could potentially irritate their lungs into mesothelioma in a decade or two? It wouldn’t kill the tourism industry—pun intended—but it could hurt it.
And in today’s economy, you’re damn right any news that could potentially harm income is immediately downplayed as much as possible. And the government gets away with ignoring it by falling back on the standard “More tests are needed,” which is basically its version of the entertainment industry’s “The check’s in the mail.”
Maybe it’s easier to ignore because it’s naturally occurring instead of an evil corporation doing the screwing—you can’t sue Earth, even though our planet is constantly trying to kill us.
Earthquakes, floods, fires, tsunamis, volcanoes. It’s a thrill a minute on good old planet Earth.
But here I am, flying down the road in my car with the windows down, breathing in the early evening air anyway. Knowledge is power, but becoming paranoid about the things that could kill us is ridiculous. We’re dying from the first breath we take when the doctor slaps our ass anyway. I crank the radio and sing along obnoxiously loudly with the music, feeling strangely optimistic about things, like I’ve driven across the border into another life.
