by Sasha Grey
The phone on the desk next to him rings, and he holds a finger up for me to wait. His side is mostly murmurs of assent and exhalations, but a conversation seems to take place. He hasn’t smiled or relaxed much, which isn’t a good sign. Somehow, I’ve already managed to make a negative impression.
I mean, I’m not really trying to get the job, but it’s the principle of the thing. Inana worked here. I want to know I could work here. And if I could work at her old job even for a day, that would provide invaluable insight into her life and a few more of the people in it.
Suddenly, nothing feels more important than getting this job.
My interviewer is good at communicating a lot while saying very little, but I use the opportunity to look around the room, feigning a casual demeanor.
As offices go, it’s pretty standard, but I wouldn’t mind a few minutes alone with the contents of the desk, or the computer that’s in sleep mode right now with a screensaver of a black-and-gold logo turning slowly over and over. The desk, bookshelf, and cabinets are all a dark rosewood, or maybe mahogany. Like the rest of the hotel, there’s not a speck of dust or a smear in sight, but this room smells vaguely of roses, and something citrusy but delicate—mandarin?
He hangs up, appraising me with his hazel eyes, his gaze lingering on my shoes—which I suddenly wish were fancier, but fuck that. I square my shoulders and stare him down, not giving a fuck about my clothes. Maybe a little princess could prance in here looking plastic and shinier than me and match the scenery better, but I’ve got skills he doesn’t know about.
And tenacity to spare.
“And have you ever worked in a hotel, Catherine?”
“I’ve never worked in a hotel, but...” I trail off, taking him in, wondering how best to play this. I can’t tell if his accent is the byproduct of having been born somewhere in Europe and moving to the United States when he was young, or if it’s just a pretentious affectation, but either way, he’s obviously got a modicum of power and takes his job seriously. I keep my expression sincere but serious. “I want to work for the best. I was told this was it.” I shrug. “You won’t find anyone more hardworking than me.”
He squints. “You’ve never worked in this industry before?”
I shake my head. “No. But I know people. I’ve been around the political scene enough to be of use in the hotel industry.”
“How does that translate to here?” he asks.
I smile. “I know how to keep my mouth shut, no matter how weird things get.”
For the first time, he smiles back. “When can you start?”
TEN
TOMORROW.
I start work at the hotel tomorrow.
I’ll see what Inana saw tomorrow.
Speak to people she spoke to.
Do things she did.
Be who she was.
Jack and I text back and forth for a while, but he’s distracted and doesn’t talk for long. I try to give him some sexy Facetime in the tub, but he’s not into it, saying he’s exhausted and had an early meeting. His job keeps him busy these days, but I’d hoped he’d talk with me a little more now that we’re apart. Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder. He’s not really engaged when I tell him about my undercover operation, trying to make it sound both more exciting and less strange than it is. Maybe the campaign isn’t going as well as they hope, but something feels off.
We’re still young, but our relationship is not as ravenous as it used to be. Is this where the comfortable phase of our relationship has taken us? I mean, we’re both always tired now, and on different schedules, but what’s the difference between boring and bored, between paused for a nap and paused for a break?
I guess it’s all about intent. We haven’t been fucking four times a day, and that’s okay, too, I think. As long as the desire to is still there, and for me it is.
I know Jack loves me, and I’ve got nothing to worry about. He doesn’t worry either, and sometimes the certainty of his belief makes me feel a little less desirable than I should.
As though he thinks no one would be looking to lead me astray. It’s ridiculous to worry about something like that, but when have emotions ever stayed placid when passion is involved?
This quick vacation from each other will be a good thing for us both. Familiarity breeds contempt. Relationships need a little mystery to stay fresh, and besides, it’s just a few days. I hope he ravages me the next time we meet.
Sleeping in someone else’s bed always feels a little taboo. Even with clean sheets, you’re lying where they’ve slept, dreamed, masturbated, fucked. These days, if beds were sentient, they would need a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” seal to counteract the memory foam’s absorption.
Inana’s bed is disappointingly benign. Medium-firm, pillow top. I was expecting something sexier. Four-poster, restraints, crimson satin sheets to keep things spicy for her debauchery at home.
But it’s just a bed.
The kinkiest thing in her bedroom is me. The fact that I’m lying in her bed getting ready to go work her job tomorrow has got to be terrifically inappropriate.
Doing it while wearing her clothes? Even more so.
There’s a saying that’s not as common anymore, but most people will have heard it, even if they don’t use it.
Dead men’s shoes.
More specifically, waiting for them.
Sometimes, in the country more than a hundred years ago, people would hang boots over fence posts as a way to honor a recently deceased family member or hired man. Those boots could also be a sign that there was work available on the farm—at least one position per pair of boots had just opened up. I don’t know if the new guys scooped the old guys’ shoes off the fence on their way to replacing them on the farm, but it makes you think.
Predatory? Yes. Opportunistic? Certainly. But practical as well, in a less sentimental time.
Another explanation of the saying comes from good old-fashioned inheritance fights.
Your father or grandfather passes away, and what’s his becomes yours—unless other members of the family want what he had as well; then you’re fighting over “dead men’s shoes.” Things you want that don’t belong to you.
There are a lot of superstitions regarding shoes. Don’t put them on the table. Don’t wear someone else’s. Put things in yours for good luck.
Walk a mile in someone else’s to see their point of view.
In my case, it’s not shoes I’m in, but a dead woman’s nightgown.
Now, before you judge me, I have to admit I’m terrible at packing and I forgot to bring something comfortable to sleep in. I wanted to feel something against my skin that had been against hers when I slipped between the cool sheets on her bed. The short, silky baby-doll gown shouldn’t have fit me—Inana was much slimmer than I am—but it slid over my head and down my skin like a satin waterfall custom made for me.
There’s no television in her bedroom, and I sort of like the stillness. I wonder where her cameras went. Maybe they were taken as part of the short investigation. I like the idea of this being her quiet space for reflecting and dreaming. Daydreaming.
I deny myself as long as I can before reaching for her diary, which I left beneath her pillow for safekeeping today when I went to the hotel.
Maybe it wasn’t for safekeeping. It felt a lot like it was supposed to be there on her mattress, like it had been reunited with the place it was meant to be.
Did she keep it there? Did she try to hide it? Did she care if others read it? Maybe it was a conversation piece, like a coffee-table book set out for anyone who wants to pick it up.
I think Inana was the type of person who, if she let you into her home, let you have access to whatever you wanted. Her space was her sanctuary, and she wouldn’t have let you come into it if you didn’t matter to her. If you got past the door, you’d be comfortable raiding her fridge, borrowing her shower, reading her books, rummaging around in her closet.
She was open in ways I
wish I could be, but have never learned.
Maybe that’s why I’m white-knuckling her diary so much.
I open it up.
We look at rooms, but they look at us too.
Eyes with no eyes in places with no mind. In the night. Nuit. Notte.
I don’t mind.
Sometimes faces are hard to forget, so it’s better when there are only eyes. Less to see while they only see.
What is the purest kind of interaction?
Sound?
Sight?
Touch?
Some emotions are harder to hide, but with touch, you know.
Words aren’t needed. Looks aren’t needed. You can feel people’s emotions in their touch.
I wish I knew more things. How does sex feel to blind people? What fills their heads when their lovers are beneath them? How is that for their lovers, being with someone who communicates in such a tactile way? What about a deaf partner, for that matter?
Note to self: Find more diverse partners to experience these things, to possess them and know them.
I was a statue once. Stiff, proud, gleaming, bored.
Admired.
Ignored.
Featured, yet only another part of the background. The décor. A decorated decoration, lonely in a room where all the eyes were on me—even the ones in faces that weren’t there. The one face that was there but unseen.
Him.
I put on a show for him. It’s still for me, but more for him, and what does that even mean when we can never get close? The ultimate freedom I’ve searched for within myself, but don’t want with him. And yet, I’m stuck in his trap. It’s all his. He’s the spider and the web and the venom in my veins. But his aloofness makes me want more.
Is that all it is? All that glitters isn’t Gold.
Gold is malleable if you warm it.
But he refuses my touch.
Who was this man who didn’t want to be with her? Was he someone she pursued before her death? A lover, a boyfriend? Maybe he was married. If she was killed, could this be the reason why? Was this man connected to it?
There’s got to be more.
Flipping through the diary in search of more references to the same man might be quicker, but I won’t be able to get into Inana’s headspace as well if I do that, and context matters. Her words are everything, her art was everything, and I know she wouldn’t have left important details out. Just because I don’t see names doesn’t mean they’re not there.
I’ve got to read it in order. Every word is a link in a chain, and who knows what I might miss if I skip things.
Superstitious? Maybe.
Or maybe it’s being thorough. I take notes wherever lines rise to the top of her stream-of-consciousness writings as being more cogent than the rest.
But in the midst of that, she describes something she’s done that makes my thighs quiver.
During sex, everyone’s focused on the same thing. Fucking for an orgasm. Chasing that kundalini energy through your spine until you blow up out of yourself and become more than what you are.
Come hard enough and you’ll realize that our bodies are only half of what we are, maybe less.
We’re stuck deep inside, but the best way to feel connected to your body is to fuck someone else’s. And yet, that act in itself, when done right, is the thing that frees us from our bodies, shows us our souls. Reminds us of our essence so we can once again see the face of gods.
There are more than we even fathom.
Sometimes gods walk around in human bodies, fooling us into thinking that we’re the apex of evolution when there’s so much more staring us right in the face, watching, waiting.
Hungrily waiting for us to become more than what we are.
For them. For ourselves.
They used to call masturbation “self-abuse,” which sounds frighteningly violent to describe the things you’d do to some of the best parts of your anatomy. But if you’ve ever watched someone get themself off, it is intense.
Men in particular look so angry, their movements almost furious in their quest for release, that it makes me laugh how they seem to devolve into the apes we share ancestors with. It’s not sexy, and yet it’s so animalistic it’s hot. When someone goes that primal in front of you, on you, in you, you can’t help but respond in kind.
You become the grunting moans.
The nails raked down his back.
You turn into an animal with him, and devolve into something purer than the person you pretend to be every day.
Sometimes the most civilized manners hide men who are one step above primordial ooze.
There’s a golden god—nice to his friends, of whom there aren’t many— who is a billionaire industrialist and playboy philanthropist. The man is so wealthy he can buy politicians, swing elections, and manipulate laws with a checkbook. The sole goal of his pleasure palace, which caters only to the elite of the elite in an environment that offers absolute discretion, is to help further his influence.
I got to see it. I got to be it.
Inside a chamber as wealthy in experience as any bank vault is in material riches, I gave something for nothing to a man who has everything.
I gave him a spectacular show.
I fucked his best friend. I want to fuck his greatest enemy the same way, just to see his pupils swell with rage, jealousy, and interest.
Maybe next time I will.
But the door doesn’t open for everyone. The opportunity is as often not there as it is right in front of me. But I’m going to knock as often as I can until I no longer care about doors.
At doors of gold.
Was she being literal about fucking someone while someone else watched?
The idea is hot, but presents some logistical issues.
If I’m fucking someone, it’s not for a show—it’s because I am into fucking that person. How do you fuck someone to give a third person a show? Wouldn’t it feel fake and pull you from the moment? I’m not sure if I could come if I were worried about how things looked instead of how they felt.
But maybe that’s a part of it. Maybe the person watching doesn’t want to feel like you’re putting on a show for them. Maybe they want to feel like they’re seeing a personal moment—or hour—between two people. The voyeurism being hotter than the things the watcher’s seeing, or at least a huge part of the attraction.
It’s not like I’m not familiar with the way being watched feels. The awareness of someone’s eyes on me prickling gently at my skin. Any reasonably attractive woman knows exactly how it feels to enter a room and have every head swivel her way.
Sometimes you want that, you want the attention.
Other times you wish people would stop watching so you could hide in public, blend in with everyone else.
But Big Brother is always watching, even if the rest of the men in the room aren’t, and it sees past the messy bun, flip-flops, and oversized sunglasses. The cold eye of the lens doesn’t give a shit that your lips are chapped and you’re trying to hide under an oversized sweater.
There are no pretty, colored filters on life.
They say we’re filmed an average of a couple hundred times per day—and that’s just by CCTV, by security cameras in stores, traffic, bars, and restaurants.
You don’t even know how many people per day are taking intentional pictures of you, videos of you, when you’re out and about your business. Why?
There are a few reasons.
Emulation. I love your haircut and think it would suit me. I take a pic to show my hairstylist the next time I go to get my hair cut. Or maybe I love your purse—and want to remember what it looks like. Or your shoes, or skirt, or coat. Maybe your nails are cute and I want my manicurist to do mine just like them later today.
It’s not always a stalkery, Single White Female situation—imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even when it’s not about you. People see your purse and don’t think of it as taking a picture of you—it’s taking a picture of an object
you happen to have. They take your picture and never really think about you again. It’s not personal.
Except when it is.
It’s not always malignant. Maybe someone just wants to snap a shot of you manspreading on the train so she can post it online to anonymously shame you and your gender into behaving the way she thinks you should.
Maybe someone sees you eating a bagel on the bus like someone’s trying to take it from you and wants to laugh about it with his friends later—or post it online to anonymously shame you into being the lady he thinks you should be.
Maybe you’re one of those people who dance in public, or sing, or do something quirky that could go viral—the jackpot of instafame. Flash mobs, Banksy, celebrities without makeup. Celebrities without makeup losing their shit at waitresses. People want to capture that to take part in it.
Then there are the times when people want to take a picture of you for weird reasons you don’t want to know about.
Knowledge isn’t always power.
On the next page of the diary, there’s a sketch of something—a coin—scratched deeply into the paper in green ink, all by itself so it stands out. She pressed hard when drawing it, and I trace the emphatic indentations with my fingertips. It seems familiar, but I can’t think why. It’s got two faces on it, and they’re looking toward the edges of the coin.
There’s just something about it… Suddenly I realize: Janus, of course! The Roman god of gateways and transitions, who is visually represented by two faces turned in opposite directions, simultaneously looking to the past and to the future.
Janus has two strong contemporary links to sex and sexuality— one coincidental, the other deliberate. The most significant study of human sexuality since Alfred Kinsey’s landmark research in the late forties and early fifties, published in 1993, was titled The Janus Report, after husband and wife psychologists Samuel and Cynthia Janus.
After my flirtation with leather and denim at underground sex clubs, I recall discovering stories about the Society of Janus, one of the very earliest American BDSM groups, a San Francisco-based, pansexual, sex-positive support network founded in 1974 by a woman named Cynthia Slater. She chose Janus to symbolize the dual nature of S&M sex roles—the dominant and the submissive.
