by Sasha Grey
But submitting this article means I’m finished—as a journalist and as Catherine.
It’s bittersweet, but mostly bitter. I’d wanted there to be a legacy of some kind. We all want to leave our mark on the world. We want our time on this rock to have mattered to someone—preferably to as many people as possible.
In my heart, there were so many visions I never got to bring into being. Artistic pieces with impact on the world. Intellectual ones designed to make the viewers think about the world they live in and take away a sliver of truth from it. Even if it’s only about themselves, for the best art is a mirror reflecting the best parts—or the ugliest parts of humanity, and makes us want to change into something better.
And now, this is it. This will be the last thing I give, the last creation with my name on it. An article filled with the evil deeds of a worse man. It’s stark and powerful and I hope it saves the people I’m sacrificing myself for.
I read it again for errors, tweaking a few sentences here and there for impact and flow, and then type up an email to my editor, attaching the document to it.
Before I can hit send, it’s everything I want, and yet the complete opposite as well. I wanted justice for those he’s hurt, but what I want and my sense of right and wrong argue with each other as to what is the best outcome.
This would be justice.
I don’t get to decide who lives and dies. I don’t have the right.
He didn’t have the right when he killed those other people.
I can’t let him win. I can’t let him continue on killing people—and let him ultimately kill me, whether literally or figuratively. I won’t let that bastard win. My hands clench into fists at the idea of making that a reality. I’m dizzy with the hope of not having to give everything of myself up, because we are who we are, and I don’t want to become someone else when I’ve just discovered who I am at the core of myself.
I’m wondering why, if this is what needed to happen the whole time, why I am the one who has to do it? I suppose I’m capable of harming someone. I’ve whipped and been whipped and hurt people and liked it. However, harming someone and taking their life is a completely different thing. And yet, I want him dead. I want someone to get rid of him but hesitate at the thought of being the one to do it.
Ah, but taking someone’s life for the right reasons, surely that’s the difference? He’s killing thousands, maybe millions more will die. This way I could solve the problem and keep my life.
Rattled at the prospect of taking a life, I delete the email. I leave the room, shaking and cold, lips numb with shock, legs stumbling and clumsy as I tear my way down to the house phone to make a call that will change everything, dialing like my fingers aren’t mine but stranger’s limbs they’ve sewn onto me and I’m learning to use.
I’m the Mismade Girl.
Like in the stage illusion, also called “The Mismade Girl”—which, strangely enough, was partially devised and performed by Orson Welles—in which a woman climbs into a segmented box and is sawed in four. The boxes are rearranged by the magician, and opened up again to reveal that her body has been reconfigured beyond the laws of physics and biology. The boxes are then put back in order, opened up, and she is revealed to be whole again.
Only I’m not whole yet. After everything I’ve gone through during the course of my journey in The Juliette Society, and all the ways my world has been turned inside out and upside down, I’ve been completely taken apart.
Who will I be at the end of this? How will I come out of my experience whole again, remade anew?
TWENTY-SEVEN
THERE’S ONE THING THAT CAN take any horrible thoughts I’m having and transform them into nothingness.
Sex.
The great equalizer.
Dominick and Anna are hanging out in the foyer, giving me space but sticking around instead of leaving. I’m glad for that. I don’t tell them what I’ve decided to do. They don’t ask, and they probably have more than an inkling, but right now I need to forget about that.
“Bedroom. Now,” I say, and they follow without words, following my lead as I strip my clothes off on the way, so we all end up naked when we reach the bedroom.
I push Dominick so he is lying on his back on the bed. He’s already hard, maybe because he’s about to be in a threesome, or maybe because Anna is crawling over the bed towards him, looking over her shoulder as she gives me a show. She straddles his legs and leans forward, licking her hand and rubbing his balls and cock, jerking him off with her wet hand.
I’m content to watch for a moment as Anna moves up and shifts her weight forward, positioning her pussy against the top of his shaft, and slowly slides it back and forth, leisurely, leaving his cock shining with her juices.
I gather her hair in my hands, sweeping it off her shoulders so I can kiss and nuzzle the nape of her neck. She shivers and presses down on Dominick’s cock, grinding hard now with little moans and pants. He grits his teeth and groans, looking me in the eyes over her shoulder. I wonder if his cock can feel Anna getting wetter against him because of the way I’m pulling her hair and nibbling her earlobe.
She reaches back, her nimble fingers seeking my clit, and she works it in time with her hips swiveling on Dominick’s cock.
“Kiss him,” I tell her.
She leans down and places her hand on his chest, the fingers splayed wide as her lips meet his.
But I only want her to do that so my lips can meet the ones between her legs. Bent with her ass in the air kissing Dominick, she’s exposed and spread and I lick her from behind. She jumps and gasps into Dominick’s mouth, renewing her kiss with a frenzy that tells me she likes the way I’m eating her pussy.
I like the way she tastes, but it’s making me ache and feel empty and I need something to fill me up. I wait, giving her more oral attention until her juices drip down my chin like a juicy peach.
“Anna,” I say, “I want you to get off and climb on top of Dominick again—but fucking his face this time. Facing me.”
Dominick, content to go along with the way I want to play this out, grins as he maneuvers her into the position I want them in.
I swing a leg over his body and guide him to my entrance, and I slam down on his cock, filling my pussy in one hard thrust just as Anna settles over his mouth. He moans up into her, and she likes that, swiveling her hips to take advantage of the vibrations. Her gasp puffs my hair out as her breath reaches my face. We’re close enough to kiss.
So we do.
I can’t see from here, but the way Anna moves, either she’s galloping against Dominick’s mouth at a brutal pace, or he’s nuzzling her so hard I’m surprised his neck can take it, but our kiss has a rhythm to it.
I’d always wondered what a threesome with Anna would be like.
Except I’d imagined myself with Jack and Anna forming a perfect circle, lying on our sides with our heads buried in one another’s crotches. I was sucking Jack’s cock, while he ate out Anna’s pussy and she was eating mine. We all had a taste of each other. We were all giving and receiving. We were like the snake that eats its own tail. Suddenly I need that more than anything else in the fucking world, and I tell them what I want, and we get up and reposition ourselves and do it. What’s sixty-nine plus sixty-nine plus sixty-nine?
It’s everything I wanted it to be. Our faces are immersed in one another’s laps, sucking, licking, nuzzling for dear life, and it’s so good. Anna adds a finger, curling it in that come-hither motion against my G-spot and those thin, perfect fingers of hers are making my hips buck wildly against her smiling mouth, making me suck harder on Dominick’s cock—not that he minds.
I taste him more strongly as pre-come oozes from his penis and coats my tongue with the earthy tang, always more concentrated than the come itself. Beginnings are always wilder and more vivid than the endings. Life more earth-shattering than death.
We move, driven by the things we’re receiving, which are the input as to what we give. We give the best of what
we get, wanting the person we’re lavishing with attention to feel as good as we do right in that moment. It’s gratitude in a circuit of pleasure, like a battery that is sustained through sensations.
It’s like I’ve always said: you should never have to think about good sex. Your body should just take over automatically when your mind completely relaxes and finally gives up control, letting your body become beautiful and find the release it instinctively craves.
This was exactly what I needed. The little swirls and licks and nibbles Anna’s doing feel so good, and I hope Dominick feels the same. I’m tonguing his asshole now while jerking him off with one hand, massaging his balls with the other, and he’s not complaining. No, he moans into Anna’s pussy, which makes her lick me faster, which makes me lick him faster, and we’re all hyping each other up, rewarding each other for a job well done.
Then I feel them repositioning us so we’re standing on the floor.
My cunt is on Anna’s face and Dominick’s behind me, and then all there is, is a cock slamming into me from behind while a tongue laps at my clit from the front. My knees almost buckle as their hands roam all over me, giving me the escape I truly needed, shattering my mind beneath the rhythm of our fucking.
They’re making me the star of the show and giving me exactly what I wanted. What I needed.
We’re not people anymore, just bodies. Perfect harmony of moans and groans. Perfect rhythm of thrusts and grabs and slaps.
It reduces us to perfect purity of pleasure. They want me to feel the best I’ve ever felt. I want the same for them. We’re aligned with the same goal.
And then I shatter again.
And again.
I’m lying in bed, draped with warm body parts and cool sheets. Anna and Dominick are sleeping, but I’m wide awake, contemplating my life as being this from now on. It could be.
It’s a good thought.
But I’m not happy with the way Mr. X is hurting people. How can you enjoy paradise when people next door are in hell? You don’t just want a ticket to paradise yourself, you want everyone to get in—and some people are right at the gate but denied and killed. This isn’t just about morality and doing the right thing anymore.
I’d always be thinking about the people who would die if I let him live.
But could I really kill someone? I don’t think so. I’d rather give someone the chance to turn their life around and make something good come of it, no matter the situation. We all love to root for an underdog, a comeback.
Regardless, I’ve got to do something and not because a faction wants me to, but because I want to.
Maybe there’s a way to get everything I want and more.
They say that the truth shall set you free.
Maybe that’s the way to get X to see sense.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I SHOULDN’T HAVE EXPECTED better from him.
I will maintain, until the day I die, that you cannot buy taste.
Mr. X’s place on the compound is set off by itself, on a street with perfect grass and inlaid tiles that probably cost more than most people will make in ten years. It’s a gaudy monstrosity of wealth without personality. Pillars, turrets; I’m half surprised there’s not a moat. If he could have plated it with gold, I’m sure he would have, creating a monument to his ego.
Then again, he’d likely need his own country for that.
I don’t bother knocking when I get to the door. He’s expecting me and it’s unlocked. I tighten my grasp on the present I’ve brought him, and encourage her to move a little faster.
It’s tough with her on her hands and knees like this.
Inside is worse than outside—another accurate metaphor for the man himself. Marble and crystal and leather thrown together in the most ostentatious combinations possible, as though a stylist from one of those toddler beauty pageants found some contemporary art pieces to design something that they think is classy because of expensive price tag. I doubt he’s read any of the books on his shelves.
I pause in front, curiosity rendering me unable to look away, like a traffic accident on the side of the road. I need to know.
I slide a leather-bound volume from the shelf and can tell by the pristine whiteness of the pages, and the stiffness of the spine, that the book has never been read. It’s probably never been held except for at this moment in my hand.
Pathetic.
I give myself a shake and put the book back where I found it.
If this half-assed, thrown together plan is going to work, I really need to rein in my bitterness and contempt, lest it show on my face and give the game away. I give the leash a tug and my companion crawls along behind me. As instructed, she doesn’t say a word.
Down the hallway I go, looking for an office. I know it will be the one at the very end of the hallway simply because those double doors are the only ones that are closed. The rest are open so I can treat myself to a visual feast of his possessions before getting to him, likely in an office, for the grand reveal.
He’s as dramatic as a teenage girl.
Knowing I’m probably on camera, I take my time, wanting to appear relaxed and mildly curious—and for him to get a good look at what I’ve brought with me. If I seem too dismissive, his feelings may be hurt—not that I give a shit about his feelings, but he’s more likely to be closed off and not give me what I want.
At last, I reach his doors and knock, noting that the wood polish is reminiscent of the orange oil from the conference. I enjoy it so much more than the lemon stuff I’m used to back home. This is sweeter, milder, lacking the acrid burn of the lemon version. If I make it out of here alive, I’m going to start using it instead.
I’m going to make a lot of changes.
I reach up and knock twice again.
“Enter.”
I push through the doors and struggle not to roll my eyes. His office is a slightly smaller version of Tony Montana’s in Scarface, right down to the gold ruffled drapes and the red carpet leading to the desk on a raised platform.
There’s no giant pile of cocaine that I can see, or machine guns, but the situation is as electric. The air practically crackles with the energy sparking between us.
His smile is tight. “Come in.” He beckons from behind the desk, sitting in a large chair—practically a throne, made of some kind of exotic wood and black leather.
The floor beneath the carpet I walk on is some kind of marble tile—Italian, I expect—and I can’t tell how large the pieces are. No lines or cracks mar the surface of it. Did they pull slabs this big from a quarry and ship it? Is there one nearby? If it’s one piece, the value of it would be astronomical.
I’m impressed at this despite myself, and when I look back at him, I can tell he noticed my interest by the smug smile on his face.
“I’m so glad you could make it,” he says, spreading his hands out like he’s giving a speech about inclusivity.
“I’m the one who called you to meet,” I point out, reminding him that despite his tacky office, I wasn’t summoned here.
His eyes flick to my submissive companion—a woman in tight, red latex from head to toe with a full black capped mask dulling all her senses, booties covering her hands and feet—but he doesn’t ask. I’m beginning to love that ego of his. I can tell he’s curious, but asking about her would put me in the power position.
He focuses on me again. “And here we are. Now, whatever shall we talk about?” He swirls liquor around in a heavy crystal glass.
I manage to smile, a genuine one, but only because I’m picturing the last time I saw him. “I’m not sure about you, but I’d like to talk about the fact that you’re a murdering little bastard. A coward who disposes of women.”
“My whore has a dirty mouth! Who knew?”
And this is why I’ve come.
His eyes burn like a zealot who’s come to believe his own lies. “You think you’re so smart and untouchable because of Penelope? She’s no one. She was friends with Inana as well, you know. Ah, yes
.” He pauses at my gasp. “I know you’ve suspected. Allow me to clear that up for you. I’m the one who killed Inana, and it wasn’t an accident. There wasn’t a scene that went too far. I didn’t do it for the secret reason some of them believe—that she was going to expose The Juliette Society. I did it because she was a vacuous little whore.”
I can’t clench my fists or he’ll see, but inside my shoes, my toes are cramping, I’m curling them so hard. I’m here for a purpose, but I need him to talk, to tell me everything so I can hear it all for myself and remember why I needed to kill him for everyone’s sake.
“I did it because she was Max’s and in love with him when she was supposed to be mine.”
“You can’t own people who don’t want to be owned,” I exclaim, for Inana wanted to be owned by Max as a kinky submissive, not without agency. “Maybe if you hadn’t viewed her as a toy to acquire and respected her—”
“Her what, her art?” He scoffs. “Her little hobby was taking up the time that was better spent with her on her knees in front of me.”
“And so you killed her and had them cover it up for you. Did you bribe them to do it? What other secrets are you holding hostage over other people? I can’t believe she’d willingly have gone to you if she’d been in love with someone else.”
He shrugs. “The only thing she loved more than money was cock.”
Maybe, but it wasn’t yours. “And the rest just went along with it. Max believed it.”
He smiles smugly and sips his drink. “He found another toy, soon enough. That’s the thing, Cathy. You’re all pretty, and entertaining, and utterly replaceable. You think Inana was the only one I’ve broken and disposed of?” He laughs. “Anna, Lita, Triselle, Donya. I can’t even remember the name of the one in Hawaii. She had lips that puffed out like a blowfish. They looked great around my cock. They looked great on her corpse. There was a Russian boy. Ivan… something. You’re all so fragile and worthless. No one cares about you enough to do anything.”