Sasha Grey: The Juliette Society

If I told you that a secret club exists whose members are drawn only from the most powerful people in society: the bankers, the super-rich, media moguls, CEOs, lawyers, law enforcement, arms dealers, decorated military personnel, politicians, government officials and even distinguished clergy from the Catholic Church – would you believe me?

I’m not talking about the Illuminati. Or the Bilderberg Group, or Bohemian Grove, or any of those corny plot devices used to advance the commercial agendas of disingenuous conspiracy nut jobs.

No. On the face of it, this club is a lot more innocent.

On the face of it.

But not underneath.

This club, it meets up irregularly, at a secret location. Sometimes remote and sometimes hidden in plain sight. But never the same place twice. Usually not even in the same time zone.

And at these meetings, these people… let’s not beat around the bush, let’s call them what they are, the Masters of the Universe. Or the Executive Branch of the Known Solar System. So these people, the Executives, they use these private gatherings as much-needed down time from the important and stressful business of fucking the world up even more than it is already and dreaming up ever more sadistic and devious ways to torture, enslave and impoverish the population.

And what do they do on their off days, when they want to relax?

It should be obvious.

They fuck.

I can tell you’re not convinced. Let me put it like this. Have you ever met a garage mechanic who doesn’t have a thing for cars? A professional photographer who never takes a shot unless the studio lights are on. A baker who doesn’t eat cakes.

So these people, the Executives, and let’s not mince words again, are professional fuckers.

They will fuck you to get one over on you. They will fuck you over to get to the top. They will fuck you out of your money, your freedom, and your time. And they’ll continue fucking you until you’re six feet deep and in the grave. And then some.

So what do they do when they’re not doing that? Naturally…

The other thing you need to know is this. Powerful people are like celebrities. They like to hang out together. All the time. They’ll tell you till they’re blue in the face that it’s because no one else understands what it’s like to be them other than people like them. The truth is they just don’t want to mingle with the lower echelons, the hoi polloi, the uncouth and unwashed who take particular pleasure in witnessing the downfall of the rich and powerful by the one thing that always, without fail, stops them dead in their tracks: sex.

So these people, the Executives, the professional fuckers, they’ve worked out how to have all the sex they want, and indulge their most wild and debauched sexual fantasies, without the scandal… they do it behind closed doors. And all together. In secret.

Henry Kissinger once said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. By that time, he’d been creeping around the corridors of power long enough that he probably knew exactly what he was talking about. This place is the proof.

They call it the Juliette Society.

Go ahead. Google it. You won’t find anything about it. Absolutely nothing. It’s that secret. But just so you’re not completely in the dark, a little background and a little history.

The Juliette this society is named for is one of two characters – sisters, the other’s called Justine – conceived (if that’s the right word) by the Marquis de Sade, the 18th-century French nobleman, libertine, author and revolutionary whose sexual adventures so outraged the noblesse oblige of the French aristocracy that he was locked up in the Bastille for obscenity. Which, in retrospect, was a really bad move because, sitting there in his cell, with nothing better to do than jerk off day and night, the Marquis was stimulated to create even more and greater obscenities. Just to prove a point.

During his incarceration he would write the greatest work of erotic literature the world has ever known. The 120 Days of Sodom . The only book ever written that outdoes the Bible for sexual perversion and violence. And almost as long. It was the Marquis, of course, who shouted out of the window of his cell in the Bastille to the crowds below that they should storm the place and so, inadvertently, started the French Revolution.

But back to Juliette. She’s the lesser-known of the two sisters. Not because she’s the quiet one. Oh no, far from it. See, Justine is a bit of a drag and a prude, a compulsive attention-seeker who plays the victim till you’re more than sick of her. She’s like one of those celebrities who harp on about the disease of drug and sex addiction, tirelessly promoting their virtue to the public by appearing on every rehab reality series going.

And Juliette? Juliette is absolutely unrepentant in her lust for sex and murder, and any carnal delight that she hasn’t yet tasted. She fucks and kills and kills and fucks, and sometimes does both at the same time. And always gets away with it and never has to pay a price for her indiscretions or her crimes.

Maybe now you start to get my drift. Maybe now you understand why this secret society, the Juliette Society, might not be as entirely innocent as it seems.

And if I told you that I’d managed to penetrate, pardon my French, the inner circle of this club, would you believe me?

It’s not as if I belong there. I’m a full-time third-year college student. I major in film. I’m no one special. I’m a regular girl with all the same regular needs and desires in life as everybody else.

Love. Security. Happiness.

And fun, I love to have fun. I like to dress well and look good but I don’t have an expensive taste in clothes. I drive a small hand-me-down Honda hatchback that my parents gave me for my eighteenth birthday and always seems to have random crap lying on the back seat that I never find time to fully clear out. I have friends who I’ve outgrown and find it hard to relate to any more and others who have stayed the course.

And, at this point, I’m not going to come across like such a smart-ass anymore. Now I’m going to start sounding all homey and humble. Because, in truth, the closest I had ever come to the seat of power was in my head.

I have this recurring sexual fantasy. No, it’s not about fucking an old billionaire in his private jet over Saint-Tropez at thirty-five thousand feet. I can’t think of anything that would gross me out more. My fantasy, it’s much more down to earth – more mundane and intimate than that.

A few times a week I’ll go to pick up my boyfriend after work and sometimes, when he’s there late and ends up being the last one to lock up, I fantasize about fooling around a bit with him in his boss’s office – but we’ve never actually done it. Still, a girl can dream, can’t she?

His boss is a senator. Or rather, a successful lawyer and would-be senator. And Jack, my boyfriend, is a staffer in his campaign office. As well as being an economics major. Which doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for us to get together because, by the time his day is finished, he’s usually so beat that he falls asleep on the couch almost the second he’s kicked off his shoes. Mornings he’s up early again for class and there usually isn’t even time for a quickie. And you know what they say about Jack and work and no play.