Anal

I went in thinking I’d stop at any moment. That I’d say enough, that this wasn’t for me. Fifteen minutes later, I was crying out the opposite.

From the darkness I watched them through the fence of plants. He was small and quiet, but what he was hiding under his pants took my breath away that night.

I had denied it to him for months. That night, in a hotel room that smelled of cheap disinfectant, I decided to stop telling him no.

She gave me a hundred euros in tip for a three-kilometer ride. It took me two days to understand the money was only the beginning of what she wanted.

I lowered my eyes every time she came into the shop, pretending to count screws. What I never knew was that she was studying me too.

I recognized her at the bar by the way she moved. She was my ex-player’s girlfriend—the one who cheered behind the bench—and that night no one was holding her back.

Three nights of messages with a stranger, and when he asked if I was alone, I chose to tell him the truth about myself right before giving him my address.

I’d been crossing paths with him in the water for months without saying a word. That Sunday, when his hands brushed my waist on the ladder, I stopped pretending I didn’t want him.

I look at myself in the mirror in my garter belt and fishnets, and I smile: I lost the bet, and I know exactly what he’s going to ask of me this afternoon.

When the director’s assistant handed me the bag with the lingerie, I knew there was no turning back: that night belonged to every man in that room.

I’d spent weeks holding him off with a smile and a “not yet.” That night, when his hand found mine, I knew I didn’t want to wait anymore.

I had never been with anyone like him. When he opened the door and I had to look up at his face, I knew that night would no longer belong to me.

Mariela recognized that hoarse voice before she even turned around. The true owner of the office had returned, bringing all the old rules with him.

I wore a white dress for a night with my boyfriend that never came. At 3 a.m., the only one who answered my call was my tenant.

I went looking for a bar job at a roadside club. Three weeks later I was serving drinks in a thong, heels, and a new name: Adriana.

She walked down the carpeted corridor with her heart racing: behind that door waited the man she had spent half her life imagining.

I told him he’d left a T-shirt behind just to get him to my table. What he found that night bore no resemblance to the wife he left.

I got myself made up like a goddess to spend the night on camera. When the doorbell rang, it wasn’t the delivery guy: it was him, real and with the whole weekend ahead.

She came home every morning smelling of American tobacco and new perfume. I kept silent and hid my suspicions—until the night I followed her.

At forty-nine I thought I’d seen it all, until that soaked stranger took off his shirt in my patio and I knew the afternoon wouldn’t end with gardening.