The Juliette Society, Book III

by Sasha Grey

  Those standing begin stripping and pouring urine all over her. Placing the funnel between her lips. Then a line forms at her feet of all the people who were around her in the scene. Next, she’ll fuck each person one by one, covered in fluids. By the time the last person goes, the floor will be covered with puddles of urine, tears, sweat, and come.

  I decide not to partake in the fucking. Though I enjoyed her and the scene, sex isn’t what I came here for tonight.

  I head to the bathroom. My panties are wet. I wash my hands and head back out to the bar.

  While I was gone, a few new people have shown up, but one man in particular catches my eye. He’s near the bar area sitting in a plush red velvet chair, with a delicate woman perched next to him in a pristine white pantsuit.

  A small feast is set up in front of them as they take in the rest of the room’s activities. Are they voyeurs and this is their version of a romantic meal out?

  But there’s something about the way they’re enjoying the food, almost making a show of it. I was wrong. I thought they are voyeurs but I think they’re really waiting for their moment. When my eyes are on them, the man smiles at me like he was waiting for an audience.

  He picks up an oyster and a small knife, working the blade between the halves of the shell to free the meat. Removing the top, he places the half shell with the oyster on his naked lap, wedged between his cock and balls. The woman crawls forward and slurps the meat from the shell without using her hands. She returns to her place with juices dripping down her chin. He tenderly blots them away.

  He picks up another to repeat the process, but cuts himself with the shell and bleeds, but the woman is not scared by the blood. She takes his finger and presses the cut to her chest above her heart, leaving a perfect little crimson stain on her perfectly clean top, feeding him the offending oyster with her other hand while he leisurely strokes his cock beneath the table.

  They are making a show of it. This is what gets them off. The endless varieties of fetishes that exist in the world never ceased to surprise and delight me. There truly is something for everyone.

  The way they so obviously love food in an erotic way reminds me a little of the Japanese film Tampopo by Juzo Itami. I wonder if they’ve seen it.

  It’s not something I’ve ever thought about doing, or rather wanting to do—bringing food into my sex life in this way. Food to me is sustenance. It’s not sexy, though it can definitely be sensual. The creamy texture of a perfectly made cheesecake. The way a ceviche can almost make your tongue hurt when it’s too bright. The perfect savory crunch of crispy bacon and the smell of it wrapping you up in memories of a thousand breakfasts of your youth.

  Food is sensual. It can transport you back in time to the first time you tried a particular dish—or the last time. You remember what you were eating when your partner took you out to lunch to break up with you in a public place. You can’t forget the terrible blandness of the egg salad sandwiches at your grandmother’s funeral, but it was fitting because you loved her and she was gone and the day was tinged with dullness anyways.

  French fries shared with best friends in high school. Mom’s famous pot roast every Sunday. Fresh baked bread’s unforgettable aroma from the bakery you pass every morning on the way to work. It’s sensate and permeates literally every day of our lives. Some people overindulge, others obsess over having too much, and restrict themselves out of fixation or necessity. But we can’t live without it.

  And yet, it can be sexy as well. Who hasn’t had a chocolate-covered strawberry hand fed to them by a lover eager for them to swallow it and kiss the juice from their lips? How many of us have had warm chocolate sauce poured over our bodies and licked off? Maybe a cool shot of whipped cream from a can because that’s much easier to get out of the sheets in the laundry the next day. Hell, there’s even edible panties. We’re voracious, insatiable, starving for nourishment, for experience.

  But it’s not just about what we want in the bedroom, it’s also about what our partners want. Sometimes, things we’d never dreamed of trying, or wanting to try, become…titillating, when we think of doing them with someone who is extremely receptive or turned on by that very thing. If they’re that excited about it, that emotion can transfer to us. Have you ever been shy about being naked in front of a partner when the lights are on? And their attraction for you turned you on and made you forget all about your self-consciousness, didn’t it? It’s the same thing, though perhaps a little more extreme in this case.

  I head to the bar and ask the bartender if he has any eggs. Obviously used to requests like these, he hands one over without even raising an eyebrow.

  I lean in and whisper to his date and I can tell he’s indulgent but wary, and fair enough. He doesn’t know if I’m coming in here starting shit or going to attempt to overstep my bounds and take his date from him. Instead, the opposite is true. I want to give them an experience—mostly him, as it seems like he’s the true food fetishist at this table. He won’t enjoy it if his date doesn’t know what I’m going for, so I tell her what’s going to happen.

  Her eyes widen with delight, and she nods, indicating for me to continue.

  I crack the egg sharply against the tabletop and stick my thumbnails inside the fractured shell, carefully pulling it in halves before letting the white drip down to the shiny black tabletop, knowing it will make a mess for them to play with later, looking like semen for them to leave or flake off the table as may be their wont to do.

  With my fingers, I finish separating the yolk from the white, careful to keep the membrane intact. I make eye contact with the man before repositioning the slippery ball farther down on my fingertips and then tipping my head back and slipping it into my mouth.

  It’s cool with surprisingly little flavor, and gives on my tongue, flattening a little. I lean close to the man’s date, and slowly let the yolk slide from my mouth into hers, making sure to keep my lips soft and my teeth out of the way so as not to break it.

  She accepts it into her mouth with a sigh, putting on a bit of a show for her date, but nothing overboard. Maybe she really is into this as much as he is, I don’t know. I kiss her neck, leaving a wet trail with the raw egg on my lips.

  The man strokes himself faster and moans. My shoes make me a few inches taller than her, so I bend a little and caress her jaw, opening my mouth so she can deposit the yolk back inside. She moves slowly, letting the yellow ball peek through her lips for a moment before widening her mouth to let it slide inside mine again.

  It’s warm from her mouth or maybe mine, and now has the slight tinge of oyster from her meal I interrupted. She presses against me, rubbing her peaked little nipples against my chest, her exhalations increasing as though she can’t wait for me to give the yolk back.

  We do this a couple more times before I kiss her while the egg’s in her mouth again. I invade her mouth with my tongue as well, and I plunge it hard, capturing the yolk between my tongue and the roof of her mouth, tearing into the fragile membrane, pulling back before it can coat my tongue because this next part is just for them.

  I lead her around the table to kneel at his feet. He inserts an index finger inside her mouth and coats her lips with the yellow silkiness before kissing her, hard, thoroughly. Yolk drips down both of their chins, coating their kiss in the silkiness of it. She kisses a yellow trail down his body to his cock.

  I walk away from their table with a smile.

  EIGHTEEN

  I WAKE UP LISTLESS, unable to go back to sleep although I’m still tired. The sun has already risen, sending ribbons of light through the holes in my blinds, cascading onto the wall beside me.

  Thoughts of the conference have been preying on me, and all I can think is that whatever Mr. X is hiding has got to be huge. He’s threatening me because, on some level, he’s scared. But it makes me think about the things we choose to hide, the things we need to protect at any and all cost.

  What secrets would you be willing to die for, to kill for?

&nb
sp; I can’t really relate to this on a fundamental level. But if it wasn’t for me… If my sister or brother or best friend had seen or done something and needed my help…I mean, you hear them say that a friend will help you move, but a best friend will help you move a body. It’s a cute saying, but would you really commit to doing something so dark if a loved one called you in a panic in the middle of the night?

  So, maybe it’s not his secret at all, but one he’s keeping for someone else. I know things about people, co-workers, sources, bosses, friends, lovers, that could take them down in a well-placed article. But where’s the fun in toppling someone else’s house of cards when you can spend that time and energy building your own up instead?

  Somehow, I can’t see Mr. X as someone willing to put himself on the line in any way for someone else. Unless there was something in it for him. If it was a shared secret, maybe? Business partners, an investor. Men like him care about power. Men like him derive power from money. Hitting him in the bank account would hurt. I wonder if that’s it.

  Maybe it’s time to explore a little more of this place. Find out from someone other than a member what the lowdown is.

  I get dressed and head out. While refrigerators are stocked and needs are met, I’ve still seen few markets around the place. Maybe they’re fronts whose sole purpose is to lend an air of authenticity. I’m not sure. But this island isn’t the typical time-share. Someone’s got to know something, and the powerful people who play here aren’t going to be the ones to ask.

  I need to make sense of everything. People stay here, wallow in the decadence, but do they live here year round? How are their businesses maintained? In today’s era, where most of what we do is communicated in binary, I suppose one would be able to exist entirely online and be able to run a corporation.

  I walk down the street, looking at each villa as I walk past, but not making it obvious that I’m assessing them. Nothing here could possibly cost less than eight figures, maybe more, but down here I imagine building places like this would cost less with the exchange rate on the local currency.

  I’m thinking of what I saw when I landed in Honduras, the sheer poverty that was around. Countries devastatingly poor like this aren’t the exception, and it’s hard to say which is worse than another when you factor in the variables like GDP, women’s rights, human corruption, natural disasters, diseases. People die in so many ways in places like this, and the world keeps on turning as though it’s not happening.

  It’s difficult to focus on making the world around you a better place when you’re barely surviving in it.

  But look around the globe. America’s part of the problem simply because of tourism.

  We’re bargain hunters, always hungry for that deal, searching for the place where we can feel like we’re rock stars when we go to spend our hard-earned cash. And, we like to go to exotic places. So these countries oblige our greed. They create resorts in slums, luxury right next to poverty and no one caring. People brag about going to see slums of other countries so that they can go home feeling better about their lot in life, as though savoring their privilege. As though the grief and difficulties of the natives of those places provides them with some sort of sick, twisted inspiration to keep on trucking in their nine to five.

  It’s sick and rampant and we’ve all done it. Even here in this private place, set up to be the ultimate fantasy, you can’t even see outside the high walls. I guess seeing the regular people struggling along in their daily lives down here is a real mood killer.

  I head inside the little market on the corner I find, grabbing a fresh mango on the way inside as an excuse. A beautiful local boy, maybe seventeen, smiles at me and greets me with a shy but wide grin. I wonder if he’s a paid actor, hired to maintain the illusion that this is truly a world unto itself, or if he belongs to someone. Does he get abused here? Used here? Is he happy? What does he want from his life, for his life? Does he have the freedom to go after his dreams, if he has any, or is he trapped by a world not his making?

  “Miss?” His smile falters. “Are you all right?”

  I realize I’ve been staring. But it makes me think what it would be like to have a city that was run like a private fiefdom, operating beyond the law, outside of the codes that govern social, moral, and even sexual behavior. Or even somewhere like the Vatican, where all kinds of crimes and intrigues have gone on behind closed doors for centuries, and nobody is any the wiser or able to offer up any proof that they even occurred because the cover-ups are so damn airtight. Part of me panics for this boy, desperately worried about his future.

  “Are you happy?”

  He frowns as though puzzled by the context of my question, or at the words themselves. Has anyone ever asked him before? He looks around and I notice how clean the store is, as though it is a movie set, or like someone has too many hours on their hands and spends time polishing endlessly because that is their life.

  His lips part.

  “Catherine. Good morning.” The familiar voice comes from behind me just before I feel a hand rest on my shoulder.

  “Good morning, Mr. X. How are you today?” the boy asks, snapping to an alert interest, bordering obsequiousness.

  The slightest hint of annoyance crosses Mr. X’s features, but he ignores the boy and stares down at me.

  I’m confused for a moment that he’s taller today before realizing I was wearing heels during our last encounter and sandals today. “Morning,” I return, for it is morning. I’ll reserve the qualifier for later.

  “Have you thought any more about what I said?”

  “About writing a slanted article?”

  He presses his lips into a thin smile. “I do so like your directness. Yes, about writing the article that’s in both of our best interests.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, yes. It’s been difficult to focus on much else with the way you delivered your threat.”

  “That wasn’t a threat.” He tilts his head and it amazes me how he can turn on the boyish charm when it suits him. “And I know it affected your focus. I saw you the other night.”

  So I’d been right to continue on as though I was unbothered by his confessions.

  I shrug.

  “And what conclusions have you come up with, Catherine?” “I’m wildly curious about what it is, exactly, that I’ll be writing about in regards to this conference. I looked online and information wasn’t easily procured. I’m not going to lie, it bothers me. But,” I hedge, “I also know that going up against a man such as yourself isn’t something many people do. I get the sense it isn’t smart.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And since I already know of two women, Inana and Anna, who you’ve…gotten rid of? I’ll be watching my step very carefully.”

  “Yes. And good. Keep those pretty little toes inside the lines I’ve drawn for you and everything will be fine. You could be the next Gina Lollobrigida.” He gives me a radiant grin and leaves.

  Gina Lollobrigida was the actress turned photojournalist who scored the interview with Fidel Castro in the seventies. She’s lived a long and happy life, even dated Sinatra for a while, instead of turning into a tragic cautionary tale like some of her contemporaries. I’m sure Mr. X doesn’t care about her charitable work, donating millions to stem cell research and Italian American causes.

  He’s not saying I could be successful in transitioning to another career the way I would like.

  His point is that she’s still alive.

  Not wanting to be anywhere near him, but needing to get the hell away, I head outside and turn the opposite direction, walking as fast as I’m able while still appearing casual.

  It’s the perfect day in paradise. Birds are singing, the sky is a blue so pure it looks fake. The gardens are perfectly maintained, not even a twig out of place. The temperature is in the eighties and bearable. If this was a vacation I’d paid for, I’d be singing the resort’s praises on a review online somewhere.

  I stroll along, gently swinging my arm
s and keeping a pleasant smile on my face.

  Underneath it all, I’m wondering how I can get information from him about the truth—and write what I need to write.

  But I don’t even know what that is yet. How can I fight him when I don’t know what his strengths are, or what I can use to sink him with it? Because there’s no way in hell I’m writing his little one-sided ego-stroke, or alibi, or whatever it is he wants me to fabricate.

  I start to feel hot, so I veer off the path into a perfect little green space and rest on a bench, looking up at the sky as though I’ll find some answers there. It’s like I’m sinking through the ground with the water coming through the sprinklers in a fine mist.

  I never really wanted to be a reporter. I feel the weight of burden swoop in my stomach. It’s heavy and I need to purge it, give whatever it is to the world and let them be the ones to bring him to justice. I can’t, and that knowledge is starting to make me panic. I want to scream and get it out, make him suffer for ruining my escape from my past.

  My past. Of course it had to have been Mr. X who leaked the tape, but that means we’re more connected than I thought, share more history and mutual friends—if a man like him is capable of having friends. As a member, he could easily have been at the party in the mansion that night and filmed me having sex with DeVille. He’s sick enough to have released it to get me to agree to doing his article.

  But why me? What is it about me that he’s seen and fixated on?

  I don’t want this. I want to explore this life, but one where he’s not here orchestrating chess moves when I didn’t notice I’d wandered onto the board.

  I’m tired of the game.

  NINETEEN

  PAIN IN MY WRISTS SNAPS me from sleep with a jolt. Not pain. Pressure.

  Hands.

  Strange hands on my wrists, pinning them to the mattress.

  Two male silhouettes in the dark and the masculine scent of them both, musky and woodsy. Two men in my bedroom.