The Juliette Society, Book II

by Sasha Grey

  The first present I ever remember receiving was a coloring book called Lives of the Catholic Martyrs—a horrifying thing to look back on, but these things really exist. I remember my parents parking me at the kitchen table, and I’d flip through the book, deciding which scene I wanted to make more vivid in its grotesqueness—though I never saw it as grotesque until later—happily humming and coloring with my milk and cookies.

  There’s nothing romantic about Jesus up there on the cross, and yet it’s romanticized almost to the point of being a fetish for suffering. I’m no Son of God, but if I died in a horrific way, I would hate for my life to be reduced to the method of my death instead of my message.

  Make it a heart, or a symbol of peace. Two hands clasped together, signifying solidarity and equality. Acceptance. But the Church cornered the market on torture porn long before the Internet made it accessible via a mouse click, and you know what sells better than tolerance?

  Fear.

  A happy Jesus smiling down at you from a comfy chair on a Sunday morning isn’t going to fill the collection plate with the people’s attempts to assuage guilt and buy their way into a clean conscience and a shiny halo. There’s no business in happiness. Guilt, on the other hand, is very lucrative—and it’s not like they don’t truly believe in the salvation they’re selling.

  At least, most of them.

  The Catholic Church is one of the greatest money-making machines the world has ever known, sacking its neighbors and taking all it could carry and store from the beginning. Their land was annexed over time, but they were paid handsomely for those “sacrifices.” They don’t even know their own true monetary value— hell, a few years ago, hundreds of millions of Euros were found just tucked away.

  Hundreds of millions.

  They’ve got money in every country, including some twenty million in the Federal Reserve, and they’re a religion, so, tax-free status.

  They get away with murder—sometimes literally, though not openly for some time now, unless we count the way they preach against contraceptives in Africa and to anyone else who will listen.

  And don’t even get me started on Vatican City.

  The Church has been the greatest force holding back progress as well—look at the way the greatest thinkers in the world were persecuted for daring to question things, put to death.

  Where do you think the superstition around Friday the thirteenth came from?

  Growing up being cinched into a pretty dress and uncomfortable shoes, marched up the aisle, and perched in an uncomfortable pew was bad enough. But then being preached to about hellfire and brimstone, saints and sinners, pain and power?

  It’s enough to make anyone turn to a life of S&M.

  The two aren’t that far apart.

  I still remember some of those images in the coloring book. My little brother used to draw the Stations of the Cross as a kid and spent a lot of time getting the blood and wounds right, because as they say, the devil is in the details.

  We all get introduced to—and fucked up about—these things from childhood, in some way. The idea that movies and video games are the cause of it? Screw that. Religion—particularly Christianity—is a far more powerful and persuasive instigator of ideas about sadism, masochism, sin, and the guilt of pleasure.

  Suppress, suppress, suppress.

  But the darkness doesn’t just swallow our transgressions—it remembers them. Hides them for us until we’re ready to remember them, or until we take a drink from a young model in an underground club that knocks our inhibitions down and replaces our “I shouldn’t” with “Why the hell not?”

  When I was younger, I remember tying my little brother up in a closet and leaving him there, after also attacking him with a pair of scissors and threatening to take his eye out.

  Don’t get self-righteous—he deserved it for being an unrelenting little shit that day. And I’d never have actually taken his eye out. It was one of those bluffs we make that go too far, but that we’ll never actually follow through with.

  We all say shit like that when we’re younger. Who hasn’t told a sibling—or been told by one—that they were adopted? We wield things like weapons when we’re kids. And this kind of cruelty, dominance and submission, is also (paradoxically) entirely natural in children, because they have no filter.

  Without correction, we gravitate towards this behavior. It’s survival—predator and prey. Look at the games we play as kids.

  They’re about the chase, about war, about domination of the weak.

  Kids are the worst bullies there are—and we’re all like that before being told we shouldn’t be.

  It’s not just dog-eat-dog, it’s Lord of the Flies.

  Are you Piggy or Ralph?

  Ralph or Jack?

  These are the questions we never want to ask ourselves, in case the answer is one we don’t like to think about.

  One of those characters dies. And if it’s a choice between being who I want to be, or being perfectly good and dying from a boulder smashing my face in?

  I’d still take Jack.

  Ironic, no?

  NINETEEN

  MY LITTLE BLONDE MODEL FRIEND is sitting alone at a table, and she waves at me with a comically big smile the next night when I walk into the club. I look behind my shoulder to see if she’s waving at someone behind me, but no, for some reason she’s adopted me as her new bestie.

  Call me sentimental, but a part of me warms to the kid. It’s got to be lonely here for her if she’s searching for friends.

  Then again, she did drug me with her drink.

  But if she’s drinking the same cherry-honey cocktail, maybe her pouty lips will be a little loose with information. I head to her table with a smile.

  “Hey, how are you?”

  She grins up at me. “I’m awesome! Where did you go last night? I missed you.”

  “Oh, you know. I was around. There are so many rooms in this place, it’s easy to get lost.”

  She sips her drink. “That’s for sure.”

  This is perfect. I can use this opportunity to ask more about Gold, try to find out his kinks. “So, you know that time when we met and you had gold on you?”

  She narrows her eyes. “Yeah?”

  I look around, making sure no one’s close enough to overhear before leaning closer to her. “What if I said I wanted to know more about that?”

  She slowly and deliberately passes her drink to me. I take a sip. She waits. I take another gulp of the sweet signature drink with who knows what in it. Maybe there’s nothing in it today but liquor, but I need to know about Gold.

  She takes back her drink and tilts her head, taking a leisurely sip. “I can tell you…or I can show you.”

  “Show me.” My heart pounds inside my chest.

  She seizes my hand with surprising strength and pulls me toward the far wall. At the last second, she presses hard, and a door I hadn’t noticed was there swings open. There’s an ornate number 37 etched faintly onto the door, but there’s nothing inside the room but a thick, velvet darkness.

  There’s nothing but her hand, guiding me along. I reach out with my other hand, but there’s nothing but air. She keeps us moving at a quick pace for what feels like longer than it probably is.

  “Stop,” she whispers, “and don’t make a sound. Don’t move from this place.”

  She moves behind me, pinioning my body—using it, and she works her hands up beneath my shirt, tugging at it.

  “What are you—?”

  Her fingers bite into the flesh of my hips. “I said no talking. You’re in or out. Decide.”

  “In,” I breathe, and she strips me of my clothes.

  My eyes squeeze shut before I realize a spotlight has come on directly above me. I blink hard, trying to adjust and see what’s out there, but I can’t see farther than a few feet—or maybe I can, but there’s nothing to see.

  I’d expected people, or a window maybe, not blank, dark space.

  Something warm and fluid dri
ps down my flank, and I turn to look at the model.

  She’s painting my body with liquid gold—paint, or maybe it’s real gold, I don’t know, but it’s warm and makes my skin tingle slightly. It’s pleasant, and I almost ask what it is before biting my tongue.

  No questions allowed.

  Goosebumps form on my skin at her gentle touch, but the liquid coats me well enough to keep my body heat in. A gleam enters her eyes when she covers my ass and pussy, but she doesn’t stop to make things sexual. Up and up the warm gold creeps, changing me from a woman into a gold statue.

  An idol to something. Am I to worship or be worshipped? Stand guard or be ignored?

  She twists my hair back into a bun and covers it as well. When all that’s left is my face, she takes a flat paintbrush and uses that to get the paint everywhere but the inside of my mouth and my eyeballs.

  Even my lids are covered, so that when I close them, I’m sure I look like a statue come to life. I shine so bright that I almost hurt my eyes, the light gleaming off every curve. She adds one more thing to my neck—a gold dog collar.

  The model fades back into the darkness, and I’m left alone, standing as still as, well, you know what, wondering what to do now.

  What would Inana do? What did Inana do?

  If it’s Gold who’s watching me from the hungry darkness, then he wants a show. He likes to watch. Statues are pretty but boring, and why? Because they do nothing but stand there. A statue come to life is interesting—depending on what it does.

  I make up a story for myself—I’m a statue brought to life, but I don’t know how. It doesn’t occur to me to see if anyone’s watching me. I’m a statue—I’m more captivated by the way my body can suddenly move, limber and fluid. Graceful and willowy.

  I stretch and sway, bend and flex, and am not even surprised when another statue comes out of the darkness to join me.

  He’s not like me. His body is bigger, ruder with muscles, taking up more space than I ever could. The fine hairs on his thighs and the heavier ones on his lower legs stand out, even coated with silver instead of gold like my paint.

  I must be worth more than he is.

  He must come to me and convince me to be with him.

  I cross my arms and raise my head imperiously, archly raising a brow.

  He steps closer, head tilting up and down to take all of me in before he lowers himself to his knees and trails his hand from my chest to my belly button.

  I startle at his touch and glare at him for what he’s done.

  A streak of silver is left behind where he touched. I’m offended and push him to his back.

  He’s easily overpowered, because he’s just quicksilver instead of liquid gold. I’m malleable when I’m warm, but he hasn’t done that yet.

  I step back and look over on the floor—a small container of gold paint is there, along with a syringe without a needle. I step to it and draw it full before easing it inside my pussy and squeezing myself full of the gold.

  I squeeze my legs together on the way back to where the silver man lies on his back on the floor. I straddle his face and squat, pushing with my innermost muscles.

  A stream of fluid lands on his face, streaking it gold, running back toward his ears.

  I stand and walk down his body, still straddling his torso until I reach his cock. Warm gold runs down my inner thighs and I smile and nudge him with a foot, indicating I want him on all fours. He may be bigger than me, but I am in control. This is all about me.

  I remove the collar from my neck, fastening it around his to prove a point.

  He’s my little puppy.

  I climb on, hooking my feet around him like a belt and slap his ass, leaving a gold print on the cheek. He crawls and I direct him in a tight circle before growing bored and standing. I leave him on his knees and grab the syringe, loading it up again.

  This time he’s the one who ends up with liquid gold inside him.

  I fuck his ass with that syringe until he comes on the floor with gold paint running from the crack of his ass down to his balls down to his knees.

  I spin in a slow circle and go still.

  The light turns off, leaving me in the darkness again.

  I jump when a robe is laid over my shoulders.

  “That was amazing,” she whispers in my ear. “He will be so pleased with you.”

  I don’t bother asking who she means. Inana already knew, and so do I, but I’m left with a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d forgotten all about Gold in there. I did it for my own experience, for my own thrill, and once again, someone’s come and claimed it for himself.

  They didn’t technically take anything, but it feels like I’ve been robbed. I wanted the experience for myself, but maybe that’s the exchange. Maybe we always end up unknowingly sacrificing something.

  How much will I give up? How much is too much for the experience of a lifetime?

  TWENTY

  “YOU.”

  The man singles me out of the crowd. “Come with me.”

  His eyes are dark and I like his hands, so I follow him through a pearly white door with ornate candleholders on either side of it.

  Room 328.

  The walls are a deep crimson, and it’s fairly boxy, but the ceiling is high—almost impossibly high. There’s a raised platform in the middle of the room, and it reminds me of an altar. He takes me to it, and I wonder what’s going to be sacrificed here tonight.

  My clothes are the first to go.

  When I’m naked, he coaxes me up onto the platform and maneuvers me until I’m sitting with my legs straight out in front of me.

  From a small drawer, he grabs a few lengths of rope, red to match the room.

  He gently moves my hands out of the way as he binds my breasts, a strangely constrictive sensation, but I can still breathe comfortably. It seems strange that he’d strip me only to cover me again, but then again, he’s covered me the way he wants, so it’s not that strange after all.

  It’s about control.

  The ropes aren’t rough, but the way they feel against my nipples is a huge contrast in texture. They dig in with a dull pressure, and I hope I end up with marks in my skin afterwards. Anna used to speak of her rope marks as though they were badges of pride. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the rope feels good. Solid, tough, like the strongest, longest fingers pressing against me.

  Next, he pulls out a shorter length of rope, also red.

  There are two tall candles lit nearby, but other than the fragrance of hot wax, they’re unscented. The candles are red. I’m noticing a theme.

  He uses the rope to tie my hands behind my back, looping it around my neck. It’s not tight, but when I try to move my hands, the rope tightens around my neck.

  I’m to stay still.

  My pulse kicks up in tempo.

  One last thing—a long piece of silk. He trails it up my legs, my torso, and covers my eyes. I’ve had fantasies of being blindfolded like this for ages. What’s he going to do to me when I can no longer see him? He leaves my legs free, and I wiggle my toes, noticing other things now that I can’t see.

  Rope has a scent to it, and this one could almost be made of sweetgrass; it’s sweet, natural, earthlike.

  The room smells like wax and heat, tinged with my arousal.

  Can he smell that sweetness yet?

  I hear the hot sizzle of a candle near my head, and jump when I feel a lick of heat on my thigh, unable to stop from crying out, reflexively moving my hands and choking myself with the rope.

  His hands stop mine from moving, and I can breathe again. He says, “What do you say?”

  Instinctively, I whisper, “Thank you,” heart pounding from fear but also arousal at how he’s taking care of me, taking his time.

  A drip of fire runs down my other thigh, and I jump and tense, waiting for the next one.

  “No.”

  “No?” I ask.

  “Relax.”

  It’s difficult to relax knowing
he’s going to drip more hot wax on my body, but the places he’s already done are sore but manageable. The wax has already cooled and hardened against my skin. I take a deep breath.

  “Tell me the things you want. Your desires.”

  “My desires? What I want you to do to me? ”

  “In general. And don’t anticipate the hot wax, or you’ll be punished more.”

  At those words, the sweetness between my legs blossoms, the scent of it filling the air like an exotic flower even though my legs aren’t spread.

  He changes that, easing them apart. He drips more wax on my inner thigh—higher this time, and I inhale sharply and remember his command.

  “I’ve always wanted to be blindfolded like this.” I pause, feeling a slight draft to my right and hearing something scuffle on the floor. Another person, perhaps?

  I wince as a river of wax drips onto my lower belly. “I want it rough.”

  Something hard teases its way between my legs, slicking itself in my juices before easing inside me—rewarding me for my confession, perhaps? I continue. “I want to be taken. I want my”—don’t say Jack, don’t think of him—”partner to fuck me, to make it feel good but to make it hurt too.”

  With every word, I’m being slowly fucked with mysterious objects, toys, and what I can guess to be a cucumber, or perhaps another phallic vegetable, I don’t know, but it feels good.

  My hands spring free—someone’s released them, and I’m pushed flat on my back, the thrusting inside me never ceasing, but it’s impersonal when I’m not being touched anywhere else.

  “I wanted to be hit during sex, too. Something, anything to show my partner had gone wild with me, on me, in me.” I shiver as someone sucks my fingers one by one, and when the person takes my whole hand into their mouth, fisting it, I tense, about to come.

  But the person stops and I whimper. I feel another trickle of burning, slow, hot drips from my hip to my belly.

  “I like being in control as well. I like knowing that someone’s helpless and that I’m the one making them that way. I want more. I always want more. I want sex to feel like a fantasy.”