The Juliette Society(22)

‘Even if I did it, I couldn’t pretend to like it,’ he says. ‘I can’t pretend I even want to do it. I just don’t. Why would I want to hurt you.’

And I can hear in his voice that he’s not just upset and puzzled, he’s angry and fuming.

He gets into bed, all the way over on the edge of his side, and wraps the covers around him.

I’m left feeling frustrated, unsatisfied and deeply confused. I feel clumsy and dumb, so dumb, to even think that Jack would be into it.

We’re lying in bed. Together, but so remote, as if there’s a wall between us.

I start to hear Jack’s breathing getting heavy, but I can’t sleep.

I go into the living room, sit on the couch with my laptop, in the dark, and find the porn website Anna works for. I’ve been thinking about it all day, ever since she told me, and I want to see for myself how those marks got on her wrists and what she does.



I’m going to hold up my hand here and admit something embarrassing. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with internet porn. Porn movies, yes. Internet porn, no – two different beasts. And, yes, I do know it’s almost as impossible to avoid, but it’s just never been my thing. Maybe Kinsey was onto something after all with his little theory about women and visual stimuli.

When I think of internet porn, I think of video games, Star Wars figures, Marvel comics and science fiction, and all the things that geeky virgin teenage boys develop obsessions with as a cover for their one overriding obsession:

Jerking off to search terms on Google Images.

I think of geeky adult men who never outgrow their obsessions, just upgrade them. From toy cars to real cars, action figures to pussy-in-a-can. From Google Images to YouPorn.

I think of all the billions of guys, in every country of the world, who are jerking off to internet porn at the same time. Or maybe not even internet porn. Maybe just Kim Kardashian’s website. Jerking off over badly retouched and barely titillating photos of the Kardashian sisters. I think of all the billions of men ejaculating gazillions of spermatozoa simultaneously over images of Kim Kardashian’s digital ass.

I think, what a waste of good sperm.

What a waste of precious energy.

If only someone invented a way of tapping that energy at source. Or found a way to turn the billions of come-stiffened Kleenex tissues discarded daily into a source of fuel. If someone discovered how to do that, most of the world’s energy problems would be solved in a snap. No more wars for oil. No more carbon footprints. No more nuclear waste.

No more wasted tax dollars needlessly spent trying to achieve cold fusion.

Just billions of hot, sweaty guys sitting in front of their computer monitors with their pants around their ankles, furiously jerking themselves off over internet porn and Kim Kardashian’s ass, day and night, night and day.

Without ever feeling guilty.



So I guess what I’m saying is this, when it comes to internet porn, I’m on the fence. Not a user myself, but I can definitely see the potential benefits for everlasting world peace.

But this porn site, Anna’s site, even with my limited experience of the genre, must be the strangest porn site I’ve ever seen. Starting with the name.

Sodom.

Or rather, SODOM, all caps. Because the last thing anyone requires from pornography is subtlety.

Sodom. And not Gomorrah. Not because it’s too subtle, but probably because it’s too hard to spell and sounds like an STD. Because pornography and STDs, well, let’s just say they’re never going to be the best of friends.

So, SODOM. An acronym of sorts. For the words splashed across the home page, also in caps.

SODALITY OF DOMINANTS.

Whatever that means.

I’m looking at this website and I can’t make head or tail of it. This isn’t pornography as I know it or understand it. For a start, there’s no sex on display. None at all. At least, none that I can see. Just a gallery and a search engine.

I don’t know what to search for and afraid of what I might find if I do. I scan through the gallery instead. An endless scrolling collection of girls, in portraits that look like yearbook photos, all exceptionally pretty, almost every one college-age. I scan through the gallery looking for Anna, half-expecting to recognize someone else I know too.

I wonder how many girls there are like Anna who pay their way through college like this, in porn. If I’m the only college-age female who doesn’t. I wonder why pretty girls, whose looks give them such a natural advantage in life, choose to turn what they have to their disadvantage.

I think of Séverine. Who had everything, wanted for nothing, and how that wasn’t enough. Séverine, who, more than anything, wanted to be nothing.