Sasha Grey: The Juliette Society

‘His cock twitches, as if it’s beckoning to me,’ says Anna. ‘So I sit down in front, and lick it the way you lick melted ice cream that’s dripping down the cone. I imagine I’m licking drips of cherry ice cream.’

And this is just foreplay, right, I ask.

I just want to be certain, because it all sounds so involved.

‘Yes,’ says Anna, ‘just foreplay.’

She says that even though she’s right on the other side of the door from him now, Marcus doesn’t make a sound. She can’t even hear him breathe. No little gasps of excitement to let her know she’s doing the right thing, just little twitches in his cock as it bobs away from the attentions of her tongue. Little reflex motions, the way your knee shoots out from underneath you when the doctor hits it with his little silver hammer.

So how do you know when to stop, I say, so he doesn’t come.

‘When he’s had enough, when he’s good and ready, the door opens,’ she says. ‘It’s kind of creepy.’

I imagine a door creaking open in one of those really old black-and-white haunted house movies that play on TV at the dead of night and there’s no one and nothing behind it, just an inky blackness.

‘That’s my cue to step inside,’ she says. ‘And I can feel my heart beat faster every time, even though I know exactly what’s going to happen and who’s behind the door.’

She steps inside the closet and she closes the door behind her. And now she can’t see a thing, because Marcus has plugged the holes with tissue paper so no light can get in.

‘It takes a while for my eyes to adjust,’ she says. ‘Even then, all I can see are shadows in the gloom that move like vapor trails and feel like hallucinations.’

‘How big is the closet? Doesn’t it feel claustrophobic?’

‘Big enough for my feet to be the only part of me that touches the sides,’ she says. ‘It’s scary how quickly I lose track of the space around me. And it’s also super hot in there, a steamy-wet dry heat like in a Turkish bath, because Marcus has already used up so much of the air, and I feel myself starting to sweat almost as soon as I’ve stepped inside.’

‘What happens next?’ I say, eagerly.

‘Then I feels his clammy hand on my breast. And you’d think that’d feel real creepy,’ she says, ‘but it actually turns me on. Really turns me on. Being touched like that, by someone I can’t see, in a confined space.’

It makes all the other stuff worthwhile, she says, the annoying preamble that Marcus insists has to be carried out to the letter.

‘And anyway,’ she says, ‘once we’re in the closet, in the dark, with the doors closed, and he’s initiated physical contact, there are no more rules. He’s not shy any more. Marcus fucks like a madman, like a beast, like a different person entirely. And the closet rocks on its feet.’

‘But how many ways could you fuck in a closet?’ I wonder aloud.

‘You’d be surprised,’ says Anna. ‘We must have gone through the entire Kama Sutra five or six times by now,’ she says.

‘One time,’ she says, ‘he was fucking me so hard the closet fell over onto its side. Onto the door. We were trapped inside. Marcus didn’t care. It turned him on even more. We fucked for hours. Then he punched out the top and we crawled out, naked and bruised.’

After they emerge out of the closet, there’s one final duty Anna has to perform. She has to wash him. So they move to the bathroom.

She says it’s a really old bathroom with a tiled floor and paint peeling off the walls from damp. And Marcus has one of those old-fashioned ceramic tubs that looks like a dinghy, with a shower hanging above it at the top of a long steel mast that extends up from a spout.

‘Marcus only ever takes a shower, never a bath,’ says Anna.

‘Why?’ I say.

‘He told me people drown in bathtubs.’

When Anna says this, I let the comment pass but I wonder if she realizes he was quoting Cassavetes.

Once they’re in the shower, Anna soaps and lathers Marcus, vigorously scrubbing his back, his chest, around his thighs, under his arms and behind his balls. But after she’s toweled him dry, he walks out of the bathroom without saying a word. Leaves her there alone, to dress and make herself up. And when she’s done, she lets herself out.

‘This is the way it always is,’ she says. ‘Without fail. And never any other way.’

‘Did you ever fuck in a closet?’ she asks, matter-of-factly.

I have to admit to her that, no, I never did. And, after hearing all this, I feel so depressingly ordinary.

We sit there under the tree for a few minutes, in silence. And a line of dialogue pops into my head that Marlon Brando says in Last Tango in Paris , one throwaway line that I’ve always loved from the monologue he delivers to his dead wife, as she’s lying in the casket in front of him:

‘A little touch of mommy in the night.’

And if that’s what Marcus likes, I’m fine with that. Because a lot of great men had mommy complexes.

I’m taking in everything Anna’s told me. I take a sip from my coffee and wince when I realize it’s almost gone cold because we’ve been here so long.

‘Did I ruin all your fantasies?’ Anna says. ‘I hope not. Underneath it all, Marcus is really rather sweet.’

Oh, no, I say. Absolutely not.

Now I want to know even more. Now it feels like I can read Marcus like a book and find out something new about him with every turn of the page. And I wish Marcus could teach me what it means to be freaky.

But then I realize Anna could teach me a lot about being freaky too.

The more I get to know her, the more I start to think of Anna as the best friend who understands you and everything that goes on inside you. I can tell her anything and she can tell me exactly how I’m feeling and why. It’s like we’re two heads with one brain and a shared consciousness. Sometimes she can even finish my sentences before I’ve started them.

We’re thick as thieves. And we complement each other perfectly. You could say we were made for each other. We get so close, so quickly, people say we could be sisters. I can’t see it myself. Anna has the jump on me in most things. She is everything that I’m not.

She’s the beauty. I’m the brains.

I’m the smart girl. She’s the popular one.

She just makes me laugh. She doesn’t have the filter between her brain and her mouth that most people have. She can look at some random guy in class and, apropos of nothing at all, will say cute inappropriate things like,

‘I wonder if he’s cut or uncut.’

And, ‘I’d say he hangs to the left.’

Or, ‘I bet his come tastes of lemon jelly.’

But she doesn’t think it’s at all inappropriate. Just something that needs to be said at that particular point in time. She’s so pure and uncomplicated and free in that way. Sex is as natural as breathing to her.

I’m so into Anna, and everything about her, that I contrive an excuse for Jack to pick me up from class so we can have lunch together. Because I want him to meet my new best friend.

Afterwards, I play our game.

What did you think of Anna? I say.

‘She’s nice,’ he says.

Do you think she’s cute? I say.

‘I guess,’ he says.

If you weren’t with me, would you be with her? I say.

‘I don’t think I’m her type,’ he says.

You didn’t answer the question, I say.

‘Yeah, I did,’ he says.

But is she yours? I say.

‘She could be,’ he says.

She has nice tits, don’t you think? I say.

‘Sure,’ he says.

Do you like her ass? I say.

‘Where is this going?’ he says, frustrated.

Well, would you like to fuck her? I tease.