The Juliette Society, Book II

by Sasha Grey

  Constant pressure on you from family and friends wondering when you’re going to get a real job, or at least stop talking about all the things they think are unrealistic for you to still believe in, as though you’re a teenager who still believes in Santa.

  Resentment from other people, because they don’t have a passion burning them from within, because you don’t have to do their job. Resenting you for wanting to be more. For wanting to make something beautiful, something powerful. They think they understand you, but they don’t. Not if they could give it up. Not if they never had a passion to begin with. Not if they think I can give it up. They’re like a different species to begin with.

  I have no idea how to communicate any of this to Jack without it sounding like a self-indulgent rant about how no one understands me. If You feel like this and others don’t, you can’t explain it, any more than they can explain how they were able to give up their dream. No amount of spa days with the girls or shoe shopping trips would make me the smallest bit happier if I still weren’t being true to my vision.

  And now Jack, the one person in the world I love and trust the most, is suddenly telling me to cut out a part of myself, for no real reason other than to do what he thinks I should be doing. I can’t believe Jack would second-guess my ambitions this way. My foundations have been shaken—has he truly felt this way all along?

  Whenever he bought me a film he knew I didn’t have and wanted, was he patronizing me? Was it something he found cute at the start, and then as time went on, he got more and more tired of the things I’d talk about, the plans I’d make? Was he faking it this whole time, faking his confidence in my abilities?

  Or did he believe, but now he’s sensed me becoming more confident, becoming stronger in myself and my identity, and he hates it, feels threatened by it and is trying to control and lock me down? I always thought he believed in me and was impressed with my independent attitude. I wondered why he wanted to set a date all of a sudden. We’re not even married and he’s trying to boss me around like I’m no longer his partner but a possession.

  Possessions.

  Was D’Annunzio right? Can we possess, but not be possessed? Is freedom from possession what one really needs for true independent success? It makes me sad because I want both. I want everything with Jack, but I want to be myself, not become an idealized version of myself that he thinks I should be. Could I even have both if I stayed with Jack?

  How can I even stay with someone who thinks I’m sick, wrong, that the things I need in one area of my life make me somehow embarrassing or less than?

  How dare he say that to me?

  And how dare I let these tears scald my cheeks.

  But even knowing that he’s the one with the immature hangup, I still cry myself to sleep, alone and feeling like I’ve done something wrong.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I’M NOTHING IF NOT RESILIENT, and the next day there’s still no apology text or call from Jack.

  So, fuck him.

  If he wants to punish me with his silence for having dreams and a mind of my own, that’s too bad, because I refuse to sit around rending the hem of my apron because my man chastised me. Maybe I’m just too much woman for him and he feels threatened by it.

  You know where I go.

  Only this time, something is different.

  When I get to the bottom of the stairs, there’s a line of light that catches my eye.

  A door I never noticed before is partway open, and I push inside.

  The walls are a meaty red, and it smells earthy to match, tinged with copper like blood. It brings to mind volcanoes and human sacrifices. The hallway is long with no doors—unless they, too, are hidden. I drag my hands along the sides as I go, feeling for a crack, a telltale notch, but there’s nothing.

  At the end of the hallway are two doors.

  I take the one on the left.

  It smells sickly sweet, like BBQ pork roasting on a spit. A-frames are set up with women and men tied to them. Lashes fly through the air, smacking flesh. A particularly lovely woman has a bit of a crowd. She writhes, and I catch sight of a tattoo of a man on the inside of her wrist. I can’t tell because it’s upside-down, but it looks like one of the Hindu gods—I don’t know which one. But I recognize one of the men watching her.

  Kubrick. He’s still the short, fat, Jewish, camp, and bald man I remember, though the beard is shorter now, just reaching his Adam’s apple. He’s in something strappy and black that shows off the curtain of downy white hair all over his body. He still looks like a sadistic Santa Claus, with the jagged label carved into his chest to prove it: SADIST.

  Kubrick was the one who created the Fuck Factory.

  “Are you telling me that’s how the Fuck Factory started? As an after-hours sex club in the Pentagon?”

  “I guess,” said Anna. She doesn’t say anything after that for a few seconds, as if she’s deep in thought. Then she says, “You know, the strangest people work in government.”

  Kubrick still has pretty good connections, Anna tells me.

  “You wouldn’t believe the kind of people that come here,” she says.

  I wait for her to tell me who but she doesn’t, and I don’t ask because I’m not sure I want to know. It’s not just the combination of those two statements that unnerves me, but the totality of everything she’s just revealed to me about the executive branch and what really goes on behind the closed doors of the government.

  Now I wish I’d asked. Because Kubrick being here at the same time as Bob and the rest of his political cronies is waving red flags at me like a matador on speedballs. How could I suppress something like this, let it go like it meant nothing?

  Kubrick’s big meaty arms are wrapped around Anna’s waist and he’s pulling her into him so her breasts smoosh against his chest. He has upper arms like ham bones and forearms like Popeye. On one arm, I can see a faded blue sailor tattoo; on the other, some strange-looking sigil or pictogram that, try as I might, I can’t work out what it is.

  I look now, but the same sigil is covered by a black leather cuff.

  He gives Anna a squeeze and says, “This one, she doesn’t know when to stop.”

  Did she push too far—herself or someone else?

  “Just look within yourself,” he says, “follow what your heart desires and your body craves. And you will find it.”

  I let the idea of danger go before because my desire to explore was more important than anything else in that moment. But what about Inana? What did she find? What am I going to find here, tonight, where the past and my present are bleeding together? What do I want to find?

  I duck away before he sees me or recognizes me and calls me sweetheart like he did before. Would he even remember me?

  This room is made for Kubrick and men like him—sadists.

  Whips and chains are the least of it.

  The scent of pork I thought I smelled?

  A man’s branding a woman in the corner with something I can’t see, but her screams are swallowed behind her gag while her flesh steams and smokes.

  I walk faster.

  There’s suspension in this corner, big frames with lines of thin cord hanging from them with hooks attached to the ends…only the hooks are sunk into the flesh of men’s and women’s backs, and they sway serenely back and forth, dripping blood to the floor with their eyes closed.

  It’s a bit too close to the Pain Olympics for me, and I duck inside the first opening I see—a darkened doorway, which isn’t always the best idea, but what’s worse than burning and needles?

  This room is silent, a stark contrast to the loudness outside, and I breathe easier when the door swings shut behind me.

  I just need a minute to think, to breathe, to be.

  I follow the hall and head into another room—this time on the right.

  A line of women stand with their hands against the wall like they’re perps being busted by a cop—but instead of a policeman, there’s a man in a suit, a little nondescript. He could
be a banker or a luxury car salesman, about to approve your loan or sell you a Ferrari, except for the fact he’s burying his face in the women’s asses one by one.

  And waiting as they strain and fart.

  There really is a fetish for everyone. You’d be surprised by how popular of a fetish pretty girls farting is—not necessarily in people’s faces, but that’s big, too. I don’t understand it. Is it scat porn lite, for dabblers? Same great scent with none of the calories? They find something fascinating about ladies letting it rip through cotton panties, lacy ones, nothing at all—watching that asshole flex and thrust out as she tries to let loose.

  Now in HD on Blu-ray.

  I wonder if they eat a special diet in preparation for scenes like this. Lots of cruciferous vegetables.

  It reminds me of the cake fart video that went viral a while back.

  Didn’t see it?

  Pretty girl. Naked from the waist down. A chocolate cake. Flatulence.

  Apparently it doesn’t count as a cake fart unless your asshole touches the frosting, but there you have it. The ultimate in decadent irresponsibility when it comes to Western culture and our wastefulness.

  Also, the chocolate cake and frosting seemed like a mistake to me—it ended up looking like she’d shit herself, but maybe that was part of the appeal, that taboo nature of our fetishes. If you’re going to go there, you want it to feel all the way wrong, not just dip a toe inside the hole. You want your face buried as deeply as it can go.

  In for a penny, in for a pound-cake fart.

  Why do the most powerful men like the weirdest things?

  The man waits on his knees in front of one woman until her tiny trumpet blast hits his face. He shudders and after a moment moves onto the next woman. An assembly line.

  Yeah, that was bad, but I’m holding hard to the humor of the situation after seeing the pain outside.

  And after being not totally turned off by it.

  I continue through another door and am struck by the utter sinu-ousness that an orgy comprises. It goes back to Strauss-Kahn and the orgies sans frontières — I cackle at the thought. I would imagine most orgies are “without boundaries.” Anything goes in the battle for pleasure and the perfect decadence. Where do the clothes go when an orgy happens? I look around for hooks or a closet and find none. Did these people come through secret passages where they didn’t need clothes, showing up fully naked and ready to fuck?

  Will they leave the same way? Will robes appear as though by magic, and other guests of the hotel notice a lot of people returning to their rooms cloaked in them, perhaps assuming they’re returning from the swimming pool? Would they see these people’s faces and envy the relaxation on them?

  I feel myself swell and ripen as I watch, and I wish I had a cock so I could sink it into somewhere wet and warm and soft. How would it feel to do that?

  To spear someone upon a part of myself and have her beg for more.

  Hands snake around my body and palm my heavy breasts, rub my nipples through the thin tank top I wear.

  I arch into the touch and press back against the stranger, grinding my ass into his crotch, but then I feel us switch places. Suddenly I’m him pressing against me, nudging my legs apart to pull my skirt up with big hands and cupping the heat of my pussy through my panties.

  Rubbing the wetness over my pussy and clit, and then back to slick my asshole.

  It feels good. I feel good. Swells of curves, and soft skin that smells like mandarins and roses.

  I want to fuck me. I turn to look at the man pressed behind me.

  He’s attractive, short, stocky, and his pale skin is completely covered with tattoos, like he’s wearing an ink suit. I don’t know if his body is pretty near hairless naturally or if he grooms, but the slivers of his pale skin contrast well with his black hair, styled in a neat fade. He’s exactly the type of guy Jack hates based on a single glance. My normally logical mate judges guys like this as troglodytes based on nothing more than shallow perception—an attitude that’s fairly recent. Jack’s all about what other people think as of late.

  Which makes this guy perfect.

  The perfect contrast to my perfectly suited up Jack.

  I launch myself at the stranger, attacking him with a kiss that makes him grip my biceps and growl into my mouth as though to say he’s the dominant and I am the submissive.

  He’s the predator and I’m the prey.

  He pushes me against the wall and I hold my panties to the side, and he thrusts up inside me in short, sharp jabs that make me pant.

  But it wasn’t because he wanted me that way, but because I couldn’t wait to do it anywhere else.

  In for a penny.

  Now that he’s slicked with my juices, I pull back and turn around, sticking my ass out in invitation. A bee without its stinger. Stick it in me, honey, make it sting a little bit.

  He’s not gentle, but I don’t want him to be. He’s taking something no one else but Jack has had. I want to punish Jack the way he’s punished me, and this is the only connection to him I’ve got—the last frontier, and it’s time for someone else to claim it and sever the tie to Jack.

  The pain flares, enveloping me, making a cocoon that separates us from everything else in the room as he thrusts in and out of my tight little hole.

  I breathe and bear down, rubbing my clit in quick little circles to mitigate the pain, transform it into pleasure again, and it works. Soon I’m grunting and crying out while he pushes deep inside in a way that men new to anal do.

  You can’t fuck an asshole like it’s a pussy. Not unless your partner is experienced at it. Even then, it’s different. It feels different, reacts differently. Tastes and smells different.

  But it feels good as well, and I grind my hips harder when he reaches down and hooks his middle finger into my pussy, palpating the G-spot with a skill that makes me shatter around his digits inside and outside of me.

  We collapse to the floor in a heap alongside the other bodies playing with one another.

  When awareness returns, there’s nothing but hands and mouths all over my body, and we’re surrounded, enveloped by the rest of the borderless people. It’s the most primal dance we’ve ever done, and unlike what happens on the dance floor, we’re all professionals at this type of dancing. The movements are innate, carved into our DNA when we were still evolving thousands of years ago.

  I’m where I was meant to be. It’s not wrong. It’s good. It’s natural. It’s home.

  I know this place. I reach out for anything hard, stroking it enthusiastically, pausing to slick my hands with saliva, with come, with anything that can be used as natural lubricant. People do the same to me, rubbing and teasing, touching and stroking, prodding any open orifice I’ve got until I’m full everywhere again, full and aching.

  Aching and throbbing.

  I want to touch everyone and make them feel the release I felt a moment ago. I wish I could morph into Kali, not to smite any enemies or bring anyone to justice, but so that I would have more arms I could use to get people off. I feel like I was created to bring pleasure and take it. To be a conduit of sensuality.

  Hands and mouths and cocks and I come and come and come in flashes of red and black and gold.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  WHEN JACK WALKS IN THE next morning to pack, I’m showered and ready for him. For the Hail Mary pass.

  “Are we going to talk about this?”

  He looks at me. “Are we really going to go here again?”

  I lie on the bed and spread my legs. Naked beneath my towel. “I am, Jack. Why does it bother you when I tell you I want something more intense—maybe just like the woman in the photos?”

  “Because it’s not right. I don’t want to hurt you. That’s sick.”

  I smirk and lick my fingers, rubbing them over myself. “Is it? It sounds a lot more like you’re trying to apply your idea of what’s wrong to a situation where it doesn’t apply. You’re fine with sex before marriage. Maybe she was into the t
hing being done to her—it’s called autoerotic asphyxiation, by the way—but then later thought, ‘Maybe this is a way to get some money from a man who would be desperate to avoid a scandal.’”

  “Don’t you say that about her! She’d never do something like that. She’s the victim in all this.”

  I shake my head, weary that it took me so long to put the pieces together.

  His distance.

  His worry about appearances.

  The way he wasn’t that worried when I told him I was coming here and would be away from him.

  “How long have you been fucking the witness, Jack?”

  He has the good grace to turn red and look uncomfortable, at least. “I never planned it, okay? It just happened.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “She’s different. You were always preoccupied with your stories, and she was there. She needed me.”

  “Wow, I’m impressed by your high standards. ‘She needed me.’” “She’s more compatible; she isn’t into the kinky things you keep trying to get me to do despite my telling you it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Some people like the darker side of sex, Jack. And that’s okay—it’s completely natural. Why can’t you do things I tell you it’s perfectly fine to do to me in bed?” I start masturbating right in front of him, because now the truth is out and I no longer care to hide. I want to drag him to my base level. “Is it because you won’t respect me in the morning, Jack, or are you more afraid you’re the one who will like it?”

  His entire body ripples from a tremor, like he’s a mirage, but I keep talking, provoking, goading, because his judgment is the thing making me feel dirty and wrong—not my desires.

  “Who the fuck are you to get in the way of what I want? I’m reclaiming my power as a woman. I’m not becoming less, I’m becoming stronger. Does that threaten you? Maybe that woman wasn’t a victim at all. Maybe you’re the one who insists on seeing us that way. Do you have issues with strong women who know what they want, Jack?”