by Sasha Grey
It’s only the female mosquitoes that feed off of blood. They also feed on nectar and water like the males, but need the iron and the protein found in blood for their eggs. They feed from us to create life. This inelegance of nature, the raw savagery of it makes me wonder how people can call it intelligently designed…and yet, the fragility of it all seems to give credence to that. You take one thing out and so much falls apart like a house of cards.
It’s why I don’t think humans will last forever. We’re much too destructive. L.A. looks like a weird growth, a tumor on the landscape belching smog into the air, killing any natural beauty. We’re not supposed to be there—there’s no natural means of life in a place that hot. But because we arrogantly decide that man trumps nature, we savage the areas nature tells us we shouldn’t be. We ignore the earthquakes and tsunamis and weather that kills. We ignore predators and poisonous things and a dearth of natural resources, shipping them in as needed which creates even more pollution.
Still, it’s as though people have forgotten that man is a part of nature, not above it or separate from it. We’re not even at the top of the food chain if you take away our weapons and tools and technology. Send a few humans onto a reality show where they’re on a deserted island, and it’s barely a day and some are breaking down sobbing that they miss their families, jumping at every bump in the night. We’re not built for the elements—we’ve created things that block nature from ourselves as much as possible.
We move to ridiculously hot places with no natural water supplies and crank the air conditioning until we shiver and need to put on sweaters.
We move to incredibly cold places with no food sources and wait for winter so we can truck supplies into them on roads made of ice.
We do everything we can to get rid of nature—hell, even tearing up yards and replacing them with rocks, and then we pack up the family into a shitty little RV and go camping on the weekends in the summertime, breathing in the fresh air for a day to remind ourselves how fortunate we are to be able to get away from it all when everyone’s on a treadmill of consumerism.
You want a motorbike so you can feel like a rebel and to be free, but then you get a giant one with all the bells and whistles so it basically looks like you’re riding a couch down the road. Perhaps this drive to accumulate is part of our evolution. It’s not unique to our species—think of that parable of the ant and the grasshopper. Live in the now or worry about the future—there will always be people who ascribe to both ways of life. We want to have and keep and glut and that’s okay. It’s part of our natures to want the things that we perceive as making us happy. At the end of the day, we’re all going to take that dirt nap. It’s unavoidable, inescapable. It’s life. It’s death. Balance.
Nature is a deadly thing, but beautiful as well, always seeking the balance we’re avoiding by thinking we know better.
When you think about it, in nature, it tends to be the females of the species that are the most deadly. If the males don’t get devoured after sex (praying mantis, most spiders) they end up with their penises snapped off and they bleed to death (bees). Lionesses are the ones who hunt—and there’s nothing deadlier than a mama bear defending her cubs.
Humans seem to be the only ones who have gone against their nature, cultivating women into pretty things, softened for men’s pleasure. We become yielding and dreamy, fantasies for them to sink their hard cocks into. The warrior women are only attractive when the men think of taming them. Few like the ball busting career woman who gets shit done. If they want to fuck her, it’s to see the transformation they’ve created. They want her hair to come out of that tight bun, the glasses to come off and reveal her beautiful doe eyes.
It’s about the chase and the challenge and as soon as it’s attained, it’s boring. It’s familiar. Safe sex is dangerous for relationships. Safe sex—by that, I mean the safety of predictability—kills. Routine kills. We let them chase us, paint our lips and faces, wear heels to make the view better for them as we prance away, a challenge to their evolutionary traits of capture and conquer.
We let people bleed the life from us, spending hours on things that don’t matter because we think we’re supposed to want that connection with someone else. We teach people to be ashamed if they can fuck someone without growing attached and wanting to breed with them. We mince and prance and shame others instead of taking long hard looks at ourselves and owning our choices.
I did something tonight that I never would have thought was a part of my nature, if you’d asked me a week ago, a year ago, ten. What else has changed within the depths of myself? If faced with other situations, how would I react? Can I count on the reactions I’d expect of myself, or is a new version of me being born in the dark corners of my subconscious mind?
If eyes are a window to the soul, then the subconscious is a window into our minds, and dreams are the key to it all.
Dreams have always fascinated me. I stretch out in the dark, remembering one recurring dream I had as a child. It was always the same; I was standing on a railway track on a sunny day. I wore a bright green dress that I didn’t own in real life, but it was my favorite in the dream. I think it was what one of the characters from one of my favorite television shows always wore.
There were bright sunflowers on the sides of the tracks, just outside of the rails, and I was trying to reach one more, even though my arms were already filled. I was trying to get them so I could give them to the birds to eat, and my little arms were hugging the long stalks as the heads obscured my vision.
I remember the crunch of the gravel beneath my little feet as I hopped from plank to plank heading to give the birds their treat that I’d painstakingly gathered. I always looked over my shoulder for a train, but none ever came and I was never truly worried one would come. Now, I’d be looking over my shoulder the whole time, panicky that a train was bearing down on me with a rumbling I could feel in my bones. But then, it was idyllic and peaceful and hazy around the edges in the way that only truly perfect moments can be, even if they’re just dreams.
Except for the way my teeth were crumbling out of my head, which apparently symbolizes regret or embarrassment, but I don’t know why I’d have felt that way at such a young age. Maybe it was that I was sick of my actual baby teeth falling out and leaving gaps that made me lisp, and it was bleeding into my subconscious because I hated it so much. But I’d carefully spit out the tooth fragments as they came loose, trying very hard not to swallow them. I’ve had dreams with teeth coming out that as an adult have been disconcerting.
Maybe children don’t see danger where they should, or feel regret like they learn to.
The subconscious mind is like the depths of the ocean. Things are always happening down there that we don’t know about. Things that form and shape us, for better or worse. Tiny ripples leading to big waves. Maybe I should feel bad about Mr. X.
But it’s funny, the things you can do to someone and not regret a tiny bit.
Does that make me a bad person? I’m not sure. The older I get, the more I learn of the world, the grayer words like “good” and “bad” become. What’s the difference between vengeance and revenge? Retribution and justice? Where’s the line when avenging someone goes too far and tips over into turning the hero into an anti-hero?
I take Inana’s diary to bed with me, stroking the cover as though it’s a pet, a familiar. My lover’s hand. I can’t bring her back, but right now I feel like if she were here, she’d be happy with what I did, calling it poetic justice for a man who gives so little thought to fucking others over.
TWENTY-FOUR
SOME DAYS YOU WAKE UP alert but peaceful, as though a veil has been slowly pulled from your eyes and mind. The lighting feels different. Your body feels different, as though every position is comfortable when if you tried lying that way at any other time, it would be terrible. You’re content to lie in bed and think about everything and nothing, maybe try to remember your dream and analyze it.
I wake up in the mo
rning like that and reach for the diary.
Inana’s diary is gone, but Anna is sitting on the bed beside me like she’s been gently waiting for me to wake up for hours, and all I can think is that the shade of gray her camisole is makes her skin seem extra peachy. It’s inane and I want to laugh but I’m afraid to even breathe.
Anna. My Achilles heel, the fatal blonde who I’d have followed to the ends of the earth. I just never knew that’s what I was doing. I didn’t know she was still alive and I didn’t know until this moment, seeing her now, that in my heart of hearts, I’d truly thought she was dead. My breath feels thick and hot, my throat constricting with emotion.
My journey was one Anna set me on, and now that I’m in deeper than I could ever have imagined diving, here she is, as if pulled from my dreams.
“I thought you were dead.”
Her eyes squeeze shut for a moment before she gives me eye contact again. “I am,” she whispers.
I reach out, tentatively, and caress her face. Solid, warm, real. She presses against my hand, cupping it with both of hers to nuzzle into my touch.
I sit up and I slip my fingertips down to her neck, gently pushing against the artery pumping beneath her skin. For someone who’s dead, her pulse is steady and strong.
“Figuratively,” I say accusatorily. “How could you let me think you were dead?” I tear my hand away when all I want is to pull her close and squeeze her tightly to prove she’s here and real and okay.
I stand and pace, not looking away from her the whole time, but unable to sit still with this, this, everything coursing through me. “Did you know that I mourned you? Did you know that I buried you in my mind just so I could move on and keep breathing? Did you know that for a while I doubted that you’d actually even existed, or if you were some delusion my subconscious had dreamed up?” Like Fight Club, but with fucking, for she’d led me directly into this crazy Fuck Club that was The Juliette Society, then left me in it to drown in decadence all by myself.
She gave me the noose to hang myself with, and now here I am in a compound with a man who probably wants me dead, depending on what I choose to do, what I choose to write.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers.
I crash into her, pulling her close, crushing her curves against mine in a hug I can’t make tight enough. My arms haven’t got the strength to convince me she’s safe and here.
And I wasn’t intending on making this sexual, but somehow my teeth find her neck and clamp down and she stiffens and my tongue shoots out to feel her skin, to taste her as well, because I can smell her and feel her and taste her and see her, but I still can’t believe she’s real.
But she moans and yields against me, softening beneath my touch. My fingers strip her of her clothes with nimble movements that make it seem like I’ve done this a thousand times before, or practiced, or maybe just dreamed of doing it.
I have.
And then we’re both naked, nothing but flesh and desire and relief and hunger.
She’s still curvy but her collarbones jut out a little more sharply than I remember, her shoulders a bit bonier beneath my roving hands.
She reacts to me like a cat, leaning into my caresses and practically purring, eyes closing as her breathing increases. I lead her to the bed and guide her to her back, climbing on top of her, framing her face with my forearms, bracing myself above her.
Her lips are full and softer than I imagined they’d be beneath mine. I arch my back and trace her nipples with mine, shivering at the simple pleasure of the silky sensation of her skin on mine.
We were always the same. Shapeable, moldable. And yet different. A still, calm, pool of water—and a crashing ocean.
I’m just not sure who was who.
But we belonged at each other’s side, supporting and caring. Bolstering the other, filling in the gaps where courage flagged. But somehow we did it apart. She got here and so did I. Our different journeys led us to the same destination like it was fate.
I slide a hand down her body and grab her hip before trailing it between her legs and delving inside the wetness I find there, rubbing it viciously over her clit.
She cries out, and as she moans my name, I swallow it, licking it from her lips, nipping at them as a gentle punishment for leaving me to pick up the pieces.
I don’t forgive her.
I never forgot her.
I’ll always forgive her.
Eventually.
I coat her lips with the wetness from my finger, my belly tightening when she licks it off while staring deep into my eyes. Aligning our clits, I rock my hips, setting a fast rhythm, not caring if she wants me to go faster or slower. This is what it is, it is what we are now that she left and I became this version of myself.
I kiss her, tasting her lips and pussy, and plunge my tongue deep in her mouth, claiming hers with mine before pulling back to look at her face.
She takes what I give her with that same smile, and soon I’m fucking her in earnest and tomorrow I’ll have bruises on my pussy but right now I don’t care, and my juices drip down to mingle with hers and it makes us slide around and around, and it smells like sex and sweetness and increases the heat with it but I’d set us both on fire with the friction of my hips before stopping now.
Her nails rake my back and she pulls me closer and the sharp points she digs in anchor me and suddenly I’m coming and coming with deep gasps that fill my lungs and make my hands clench around sections of her hair. Pulling them makes her shake and she cries out with the pain, coming with me.
I bury my face in her neck and let her gently trace my back with her fingertips, just breathing in the scent of her flesh and our sex.
Words elude me.
I want to do it again, more thoroughly, this time with her tied up in my playroom and giving me the answers I seek.
But I don’t need whips and chains and vibrators to get answers.
She owes me an explanation.
The whole thing has a surreal edge to it and I’m suddenly afraid I never woke up at all and this is just another dream, crueler than the last.
But when I pull back, she smiles, and the guilt in her eyes solidifies reality again. I know she’s truly here, for dream versions of those who wrong us feel no guilt when they wound us deeply enough to leave scars on who we are.
“I can’t believe you’re finally here,” she whispers.
Her whispers worry me. They’re so unlike the boisterous woman I knew who used to say the most outlandish thing.
There are dark circles beneath her eyes as well.
“Why are you here, Anna?” I get off her and wrap the blanket around me, leaving her the sheet. “It’s been years. You could have gotten in touch at any time.”
“I couldn’t.” She sits up, moving to rest against the headboard. “It’s complicated.”
“Tell me the truth. You owe me that at least.” I missed her so damn much, but with the orgasm and initial shock of her appearance wearing off, I want some answers. “I deserve some answers.”
“And you’ll get them.”
The man’s voice that says that comes from the door to the bedroom.
TWENTY-FIVE
DOMINICK STANDS AT THE OPEN DOOR but doesn’t come in.
I stiffen at the sight of Mr. X’s lapdog. Whom I willingly fucked on more than one occasion. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Anna sees who it is and puts a hand on my arm. “Catherine, he’s with me, with us.”
I shake her hand off me. “Is that what he told you? Because X had a different side of the story.” I cross my arms, feeling betrayed when she doesn’t seem surprised by my words.
Dominick doesn’t move from by the door. “X thinks I work solely for him but I’ve been a double agent, so to speak. The car accident was me, too—attempting to extract you safely when we realized what Mr. X was planning for you.”
Admitting he begged or bribed someone to crash into me on purpose does nothing to endear himself to me. I coul
d have been injured more seriously than I was—they’re called accidents for a reason. There’s only so much you can plan when it comes to something like that. The situation was not under control. Shards of glass, innocent bystanders, as it was I ended up banged up pretty badly. Too much could have gone wrong, and it gives me chills. And yet, his words penetrate the anger. “Extract me?” I turn back to Anna, wondering if she’d have fucked me if not for her agenda, whatever it is.
“Get you out. Not just the car, or the situation with him. We were going to save you by bringing you here. What happened to Inana almost happened to me.”
She’s being deliberately vague, but why? I remember Anna telling me she had a boyfriend, this one guy, who liked to treat her rough and leave his mark for others to know where he’d been. And that was fine with her too. “I love to feel them on my body,” she’d said. “As long as I can see them and feel them, I remember how they got there. I remember how he put his hands on me. How he fucked me. And I like to watch them fade. From red to black to green to gold. And when they fade away to nothing, I know it’s time to hook up with him again.”
I narrow my eyes at her, remembering her words, parroting them back to her now. “Out of all your boyfriends, you thought you liked him the best of all, because he was the only one who thought the way that you did. Who believed that ‘sex and violence are two sides of the same coin.’ Who not only believed it, but acted upon it.” Janus. Right there the whole time.
Her nod affirms it.
“That was X, wasn’t it? The one who used to mark you up?” I ask, not adding about how she was scared of him because I already know the answer.
She rubs her arms to get rid of the goosebumps I can see even from here.
“He thought he’d killed me. He went way too far in a scene and the faction stepped in, seeing their opportunity when he left me for dead and called them to ‘take care of me,’ the same way he’d done with Inana Luna.”