I Knelt in Front of the Camera for a Stranger

It was Carolina, a coworker, who first told me about that site. She dropped it between laughs over coffee, like someone confessing to an harmless vice: a website where you connect by video call with people from anywhere in the world, perfect strangers who know absolutely nothing about you. Nothing, except what you choose to tick off on a list of fetishes before you go in.

I laughed with her at the time and changed the subject. But the idea stuck to my body for days, like a splinter that never quite hurts but that you feel every time you move.

That Thursday afternoon I got home with my body lit up. I can’t really explain it: there are days when any thought, however innocent, veers off toward the same place. The brush of my clothes as I walked, the warm water of the shower, the way the fabric fit between my legs. Everything was driving me toward the same thing. I felt as if my body were melting from the inside and my underwear were getting wet just from breathing.

I had no one to go out with. My boyfriend had been traveling for weeks and my friends were busy with their own lives. I sat on the bed, opened the laptop, and let my fingers do what my mind was pretending it still hadn’t decided on.

I typed in the site’s name. There it was, just as Carolina had described it.

I’m just going to see how it works, I told myself. Obvious lie.

The interface was simple, almost cold. I selected my gender and then stopped at the list of interests. It was long, arranged in columns, and reading it made my pulse race. I ticked boxes with deliberate slowness, savoring each one: masochism, exhibitionism, submission, tattoos. Every word I touched was like saying out loud something I had never confessed to anyone.

I hit start before I could change my mind.

***

The first thing I did was position the camera at a good angle, propped on a stack of books at the edge of the bed. Then I knelt on the mattress, with my back to the lens. I wanted the first thing they saw to be that: my back, the curve of my waist, the way the lamplight traced my spine.

I took off my jeans slowly, wriggling to slide them down over my hips, and stayed in my underwear and a thin T-shirt. My heart was pounding in my throat. I placed my hands on the mattress and started moving my hips in slow circles, still not knowing who was on the other side of the screen, or whether anyone was there at all.

The browser spun. Connecting. And then a voice came through the speakers.

—Oh, my God… what a perfect ass.

He said it in English, with a heavy accent, the rough voice of a man who clearly had not expected to find that when he opened the app. I didn’t turn my head. That was the point. Not seeing him made me feel more exposed and more free at the same time.

His reaction was all the fuel I needed. I started moving with more intent, rising and lowering, letting my hands travel along my waist until they reached my ass and squeezed hard. I put on a show, a slow dance meant only for that anonymous gaze. I could hear him murmuring broken things, stray words I didn’t need to translate to understand.

But I got bored of him quickly. That was another of the unspoken rules of that place: one button, one gesture, and he was gone. Absolute power over who I let watch. I hit “next” without a shred of remorse.

***

The second man was different. He looked about forty, or gave that impression, with a short beard flecked with gray and eyes that never left the screen for a single second. He didn’t start with any obscenity. He just looked at me, as if measuring something, and that made me more nervous than any crude remark.

—Turn around —he said, in slow, careful Spanish—. I want to see your face.

And I obeyed. That was the part that surprised me about myself: that an order from a complete stranger, spoken without shouting, without demanding, made me turn my body without thinking twice. I sat back on my heels, facing the camera, and let him see all of me.

—Very good —he murmured, and those two words ran through me like a current.

Very good. I didn’t know how much I needed to hear it until that moment.

—Do you like being watched? —he asked.

—Yes —I admitted, and my voice came out shakier than I’d expected.

—Then take off your T-shirt. Slowly.

I crossed my arms, gripped the hem, and lifted it centimeter by centimeter, watching him hold his breath on the other side. When the garment fell to the floor, I stayed still, waiting, offering myself to his gaze. He didn’t speak for a few seconds either. He just studied me, and in that silence I felt every part of my skin as if it were being stroked.

—Your hands —he said at last—. Touch your breasts. Not so fast. As if it were me.

I brought my hands up and placed them on myself, pressing gently, drawing circles with my thumbs exactly as he ordered. The idea that those were not quite my hands, but his through my fingers, drove me wild. I obeyed and, in obeying, burned hotter, a self-feeding spiral.

—Lower —he said, his voice getting thicker and thicker.

***

I shed the last garment and spread my legs in front of the camera, shamelessly, my heart battering my ribs. The air in the room brushed my wet skin and I let out a sigh.

—Do you like what you see? —I asked, regaining a little control, while I stroked the inside of my thighs with the tips of my fingers.

—I’m fascinated —he answered—. Please, don’t stop. Let me see you all the way through.

He didn’t have to repeat it. I brought my fingers to my mouth, moistened them while staring straight through the lens, and lowered them again. When I placed them between my legs, the sensation was so intense that I had to bite my lip not to scream. I started slowly, with small movements, playing with that first wave that rises unhurriedly.

He talked to me. He told me what he wanted to see, how to move, when to go faster and when to stop just before. And I followed him as if his voice were a thread pulling at my pleasure. Every time I did as he said, he let out a low approving groan, and that sound pushed me closer to the edge.

—Slower —he ordered when he noticed me speeding up—. Not yet.

I moaned in pure frustration, but I obeyed. I slowed down, let my hand go almost still, feeling my body protest, feeling everything inside me begging for exactly what he was denying me. It was delicious torture. I had never understood so well why surrendering control excited me until I surrendered it to a voice that didn’t even have a name.

On the screen I could see his hand moving, his arousal as obvious as mine. Knowing that I was provoking that in him, that my body had him just as trapped, gave me a strange, intoxicating sense of power. I was submissive and in charge at the same time, and that contradiction turned my whole body electric.

—Now —he said at last, almost breathless—. Finish for me.

***

Those three words were a key. I picked up speed, let my hand do what it had been begging to do for minutes, and the pleasure I’d been holding back suddenly flooded out. I arched my back, threw my head back, and felt every muscle tense and release in waves. Heat surged up from my stomach to the tips of my fingers, and for an instant the whole world shrank to that sensation, to the bedside lamp and to a man on the other side of a screen watching me come apart.

I let myself fall onto the mattress, exhausted, breath ragged and skin covered in a fine sheen of sweat. It took me a while to come back. When I opened my eyes, he was still there, watching me with an expression somewhere between fascination and gratitude.

I leaned toward the camera, close enough to fill the whole frame, and brought my fingers to my lips. I licked them slowly, never taking my eyes off the lens, enjoying the way he was left speechless.

—I hope you enjoyed the show —I told him with a smile, and heard in my own voice a boldness I didn’t know I had.

—I’m not going to forget it —he managed to answer.

—Neither am I —I murmured.

And I closed the camera.

***

I lay there in the dark for a long while, staring at the ceiling, the laptop closed beside me and my body still vibrating. I didn’t feel the shame I had expected to feel. On the contrary: there was something clean, almost liberating, in having shown myself completely to someone I would never see again, someone who couldn’t judge me at work, or tell my friends, or look at me differently the next day.

I had discovered something about myself that night. Not exhibitionism—that part I already knew. What was new was how much I liked obeying. How much it turned me on when a firm voice told me what to do with my own body, stopped me precisely when I wanted it most, granted me the ending as if granting permission.

I picked up the phone and wrote Carolina a message, brief, without going into details: “I tried the site you told me about.” She replied instantly with an emoji and a “and?” I smiled in the dim light and put the phone down without answering.

Some things I preferred to keep to myself. For now.

That night I slept better than I had in weeks. And the next morning, while I got ready for work, I already knew I’d go back in. Not that afternoon, maybe not even that week. But the splinter was still there, buried under the skin, reminding me with every movement that there was a place where I could be exactly what I wanted to be, without a name, without guilt, and without limits other than the ones I chose to set.