by Sasha Grey
He reaches me in two large strides and crashes into my body, making us tumble across the mattress and fall off onto the floor. “Don’t you talk about her.” He lands on top and pulls my hair, biting the skin of my neck, and I moan beneath him and tear at his pants, freeing his cock.
“All I ever wanted was you.” I open my legs, spreading them as wide as I can, like Anaïs opening hers for Henry Miller, but there’s not enough room between the bed and the wall, and I bend my knees, spreading like butterfly wings.
He shoves his cock inside me and my butterfly wings flap for him.
It’s so much, it’s everything, like getting fucked by a rockslide or a wildfire: dangerous and overwhelming and a lover unleashed.
“Is this what you want?” he grunts, rutting into me in time to his hot breaths.
“Yes.”
Every movement of his hips jerks me up higher, giving neat little friction burns all up my ass and back.
“You want me to just use you like you’re nothing?”
Yes. I claw at his back, at his biceps, at his thighs and ass— anywhere I can reach in an attempt to get him to give me more, to go deeper and harder and faster.
“Use you like a toy made to get me off?”
Yes. I imagine lying in bed at night, him coming in and fucking me awake. All I wanted was for him to lose control just once, because then I’d know he wanted me as much as I wanted him. There’s always been an imbalance of power in our relationship, because I’ve never truly believed this man could actually be in love with someone like me. He’s so conventionally perfect. And yet he’s been fucking someone else behind my back—someone who acted like a fucking victim. My perfect dream guy has finally caved in.
Well, I’ll be his victim all night long if that’s what it takes.
He grips my thigh hard enough that I know it’s going to bruise, and I moan at how it sharpens everything, honing the moment to a point of stillness where I can feel everything—even the stubble on my legs.
He thrusts harder and up until we’re against the wall and my head hits it over and over in tempo to the jabs of his cock slamming against my womb. I like that, too, the way it hurts, and I know I should stop for a minute and readjust, but everything else feels too good and all I can do is feel him stretching me, pounding me, battering my pussy hard enough to bruise it.
I want to shave off my pubic hair tomorrow to see if he’s left marks with his cock.
He pinches my nipples hard enough to make me yelp. “Do you like this?”
Yes, yes, yes, I’m going to come so hard on your cock and you’ll feel exactly how much I like this and how could you not like something your lover likes this much? How can you not like something that makes my pussy milk your cock for every last drop of come?
“You want me to treat you like a slut?” He moves my arms above my head, fucking harder, and I watch the way he watches my tits bounce.
He loves this, too. I smile up at him.
He tosses my hands out to the sides and pushes up away from me, staring down with a snarl. “You like it when I fuck you without love?”
Wait, what? No, that’s not it, and I open my mouth to tell him, but he slides his hips to the side and I come violently, like I’m possessed, and I can’t talk it’s so deep and complete, and I’m lost to the roaring of my pulse, the way my pussy clamps down on him like it never wants him to be separated from my body.
I come to when he pulls out of me and his come dribbles to the floor in a sad little puddle.
Fuck without love? Is that what he thinks was happening?
“Jack, wait. That’s not what happened.”
“That, Catherine, it was.”
“You’re leaving me for her, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Because I just can’t look at you the same way anymore.” He stands and tucks himself into his pants on the way to the door, not looking back at me once.
I sit up and slide back, wishing for a cigarette, because this is one of those moments in life where you need smoke to swirl, mirroring your thoughts.
Until the last bit, it was everything I wanted it to be. Until he ruined it. Afterward, though satisfied, I’m left with a feeling of sickness and disgust. Why do I need to be the one to make up?
Women don’t need to be soft and yielding.
I feel no shame for wanting what Jack just gave me.
What he almost gave me and tried to take away.
I refuse to let him make this feel wrong or dirty. It’s goodbye.
If anything, I feel disgusted that I’m supposed to feel ashamed for wanting the things I want. He’s judging me for something that makes me feel good, when I’ve asked him for it repeatedly, and he treats me like I’ve asked him to commit a crime against me. Any guilt I might have felt for doing anything in the clubs below us dissolves, because he’s the one who cheated on me this time.
There was no exploration, only abandonment.
I don’t know if he’s going to try to bring Gold down, but I do know he needs time to cool down. His anger is sullen and feeds upon itself like a human centipede. I’ll wait for him to remove his head from his own ass, and then we’ll talk.
I’m tired of being made to feel like what I want is wrong. Like I’m a silly little girl who doesn’t know her own mind, when Jack doesn’t even realize that the world isn’t black and white—that morality isn’t absolute.
Can we ever have just the good without the bad? Can I have the rush without the crash? Is this the rush before Jack brings things toppling down?
It reminds me of D’Annunzio: “Wherever were all his vanities and his cruelties and his expedients and his lies? Where were the loves and the betrayals and the disillusionments and the disgust and the incurable repugnance after pleasure? Where were those impure and rapid love affairs that left in his mouth the strange sourness of fruit cut with a steel knife? He could no longer remember anything.”
TWENTY-SIX
I LISTEN TO THE MESSAGE on my phone, unable to place the voice at first, but eventually I realize that it’s Lola, asking for an update and wondering if I’ve seen the news. I go online, wondering what she’s referencing, when I realize that Maxxy the missing pop star has been found. She’d sneaked off to rehab to kick an undisclosed substance abuse problem, but hadn’t wanted anyone to know about her addiction because it’s so taboo these days to admit that you can’t handle a life most people think they’d kill for.
People on Twitter are already tearing her apart, talking about #FirstWorldProblems and #PoorLittleRichGirl and #CheckYour-Privilege. I’m so over the language of the social justice warriors. Who cares if she’s famous—she’s trying to get better, and all they’re doing is trying to tear her down.
Ironic, since they’re all about calling out microaggressions and building women up.
I turn the TV on to listen to the soundbite they’ve been playing on all the stations, from the looks of it.
Maxxy smiles beatifically from behind a podium at the press conference. “Being honest is more important than my ego—and potentially helping my fans with similar addictions was more important. I care about each and every one of you. We all need to get better and do better.” She reaches up to tuck a lock of glossy hair behind her ear, and I see it: the tattoo on her wrist. It’s the same one I saw the other night on the woman being flogged.
Maxxy was at the hotel when I was.
Maxxy isn’t the squeaky-clean pop princess everyone thinks she is. I wonder if she even has an addiction, or if that’s just a story she’s decided to roll with to tarnish her image a little to help her transition from bubblegum to something a little stronger in time for her next album. Street cred can be bought after all.
Is she another woman getting sucked into something that’s biding its time waiting to chew her apart, suck the marrow from her bones and spit her out like she’s not even worth swallowing? Is she another victim in the making, like the girls who brought Bundy’s businesses crashing down?
Or is she a new bre
ed of player, someone with steel inside her? Someone The Juliette Society doesn’t see coming, but grab onto and try to keep hold of any chance they get? Is she someone strong enough to come and go whenever she pleases, never once realizing that that is the greatest privilege of all when it comes to that club?
Is she like Anna?
Is she like Inana?
Is she like me?
Where do I fit into it? Am I the tale, or the person telling it? The paper, the pen, or the writing?
Maybe I’m none of those things.
I wake up with a gasp, cramped from sleeping on the couch with the blanket bunched up around my throat. Annoyed, I toss it to the ground and check my phone.
My fiancé left me for a damsel in distress, so I do what every woman my age would do:
Get drunk and make poor choices to celebrate my freedom.
I’m in a room deep inside the bowels of the Janus Chamber, on all fours in the same cage Anna was in—or one that’s exactly like it.
The slightest movement, and my skin touches the cage. When that happens, I get a jolt of electricity through my body—and inside it. When I got here, a man asked for volunteers, and because he had eyes like the sea after a thunderstorm, I said yes.
Now my labia are clipped apart, and there’s a silver butt plug inside me—and it’s hooked up, too, only they vibrate instead of shock, and they don’t stop.
Not after the fourth orgasm. Not after the fifth.
I’m sweating, and my even my fingernails are painfully sensitive as wave after wave of sensation courses through my system, confusing my senses. For a while I think I black out, and I come to leaning heavily against the bars of the cage, rivers of electricity arcing through me, but at this point I can’t tell if it’s pain or pleasure because they’ve become the same thing.
I’m hot and cold all over, inside as well, shivering with release and need all at once. Experiencing the same things Anna did.
I realize there are people around the cage, watching, drinking, never taking their eyes off me, as though I’m the best program they’ve ever seen.
I feel better than I’ve ever felt, and when they finally release me from the cage, I’ve lost all concept of time and am sure I will shock anyone who touches me, I’m buzzing that much.
But I don’t, and the crowd moves on as another girl is placed inside the cage.
I go back to the club and drink until the world spins, but it spins me in the right direction, because somehow I wind up in a room with a young man whose lips are a little too red, as though someone tried to suck them from his face and gave up partway through.
He’s beautiful in a vulnerable way.
I’ve been the ultimate submissive tonight. It’s time to flip the coin.
He’s vulnerable because I’ve tied his ankles and wrists to the bedposts and am marking him with a rod. Arms, thighs, belly. I’d do his back, but his erection wasn’t comfortable and I didn’t want to make him keep lying on it.
What I’m doing is meant to hurt him, but I’m not cruel. Not like some people.
Line after line, I enjoy seeing the redness spring up against the white. He’s like a tiger or a zebra I’m creating one slap at a time.
He smiles, and tears of joy and relief leak from his eyes, but I know he won’t say a word, because I ordered him not to. It feels strange to be the one giving orders, and yet I’ve taken to it. Something about it is strangely comforting.
I want to discover what his limits are.
The lines I make on his skin are warm on my tongue.
I go further, lose myself in the surrealism of the scene, in the sadistic person this man wants me to be, taking joy in causing him pain. I turn into claws and hurt and teeth and sharpness, and I’m a razor’s edge away from flaying the meat of us both from our bones just to see if we’re the same inside when Max steps into the room and pulls me off the man.
I can tell from the look in his eyes that he’d underestimated me, but that I’ve not only redeemed myself—I’ve impressed the shit out of him.
Look what we made me into, Jackie boy.
And yet I still feel a little…untethered from reality as I walk outside and get in my car, turning down Gold’s offer to let me stay in one of the suites instead of driving back to Inana’s.
What happens now? Am I to end up unhappy and alone, like Claudia? I thought I was leading-lady material, but Jack’s given up on me as though we haven’t spent years together. If he wasn’t it, who was my Tommaso? Anna? Inana? How long have Jack and I been going through the motions, trapped together by what we thought was love, was right, was a fit? I used to believe in it with no room for doubt. But cracks formed in the brittleness of who I thought I could be, should be, and now there’s air and light and freedom leaking into me and I want more and more. The good and the bad of it on my terms—it won’t all be good, but how will I know if I cut that part of myself off completely, suppressing it forever and living a life where I’ll always look back and wonder what I might have been if I’d known more about myself?
I was doing this to get it out of my system. Is it wrong that I discovered that this is who I am and don’t want to give it up? Shouldn’t your partner accept who you are deep down? Isn’t that what love is?
TWENTY-SEVEN
I GET ONE OF THOSE “just checking in” e-mails from my editor, which isn’t as innocuous as it seems. Normally I’m around the office a lot more than I have been—even when doing other in-depth pieces, I’ve at least made an appearance.
Funny how I don’t seem to give a shit if I get fired, but that seems like textbook unhealthy behavior and I refuse to spiral. That feels like validating Jack’s judgmental pearl-clutching.
I know damn well he enjoyed the other night as much as I did until he left, going back to whomever the fuck he left me for. Maybe he was right to leave—he doesn’t know me anyway.
I feel like I’m just getting to know the real me, so how can I be mad about Jack breaking up with me? Already it feels like months ago instead of days.
I reply with a canned “I’m on it, hot lead, sensational story” response I know will buy me another week or two.
I send and refresh my inbox, sighing at a new e-mail from an unknown sender. People write in with the most boring shit that they think should be a headline. Tattling on neighbors, ratting out exes, trying to impress new lovers or old friends. I almost don’t click it, but my editor’s e-mail has shamed me into feeling neglectful, so I open it.
It’s a picture of Inana when she was alive, obviously involved in a similar scenario to the one I participated in for Max. I recognize the place, if not the particular room, and wonder if Inana had had a scene with someone like Bob, only they’d squeezed too hard or gone too far and then framed it to look like a suicide.
Had Anna ever been to La Notte? Is that where she met Inana? Was it another place entirely?
How similar are we all at the end of the day? Plucked from our lives and dropped into this maze of The Juliette Society, never to find our way out—or in, unless they want us to. We had to pass the tests to get inside.
But the picture in my hand isn’t a picture. It’s more than that—it’s a key. It’s an answer that raises even more questions than before.
I squint and zoom in to the spot just above Inana’s left shoulder. It’s the view of a two-way mirror looking out, onto the VIP club below La Notte—I recognize the bar from this angle, even though the people there are faded like ghosts and insubstantial.
I feel like if they were in the room beside Inana they’d still appear washed out next to her.
But the picture. The window. The mirror. It’s a doorway, and now I know exactly where to go now to find what comes next for myself.
Thanks to Inana. Her slim body is bent into a pose that show-cases her flexibility. Her skin is radiant. She was radiant. No matter how she went out of the world, while she was in it, she blazed exactly the way she wanted to.
I almost miss the words on the wall behind In
ana, I’m so focused on the contortions of her body in the picture and the bliss on her face and the fact that I can get inside now because of this photograph.
Audàciààimë Pëdite.
I know I’ve seen that before.
Vertigo slams into me full force and I stumble.
It’s been beneath my feet the whole time.
And yet, I’d assumed it was only a similarity, not the same thing.
How could it have found me again?
An inscription is carved around its upper lip, and stained in red like a tattoo:
AUDÀCISSIMË PËDITE
The ogre’s mouth is open wide, as if it’s laughing or screaming, I can’t tell which. Or maybe just screaming with laughter at some private joke. The ogre is looking at me, laughing at me, as if it’s recognized someone who doesn’t belong. Part of me feels like I just want to run inside its mouth and hide, no matter what I might find in there, in the pitch black, just so I don’t have to meet its gaze anymore. Because that’s where the path leads, into the mouth of the ogre. That’s where it ends.
This place isn’t like The Juliette Society.
It is The Juliette Society. The Janus Chamber is their safe club where there’s no threat of discovery.
It’s for them. It’s full of them.
It’s their elite playground, and I’ve been dancing through it, thinking it was something like it, something safe, as if I were the one in control because I found my way to it instead of it finding me and coercing me into doing things I didn’t want.
Whether I’m the prey or the hunter doesn’t matter when it’s their world I’m moving in. Their lines I’m coloring inside.
How many places like this are there in the world?
Why didn’t they tell me from the start if we’re somehow the same? I lived it, gloried in it, and they accepted me. Why didn’t they just open the door instead of sending this picture now?
Why would someone send this to me? It’s more than a photograph, it’s a map to where I wanted to go—but it’s somewhere that somebody else obviously thinks I should be as well, or they wouldn’t have given this to me. Maybe this is the invitation that will take me to the depths I’ve never imagined.
