College

I told him I wasn’t going out that night. Then he knocked on my door with a pink dress in his hand and a smile that already knew he would win me over.

I left home with my thong folded in my pocket and three phrases I didn’t choose written on my skin. Each class hour drove me closer to the edge, with no permission to finish.

I thought I was just going to have fun and make a little money. I never imagined that night would lead me to the desire I had been begging for.

Before, she argued politics and read the classics. Now she sits on his lap and waits, smiling, for the next whim of the man who transformed her.

I sat in that chair pretending to be in an emergency, but beneath the bra-less top my body only obeyed a voice not in the room: my master’s.

I came back from the bar with a beer in my hand and saw her dancing with him. Nothing happened... or did it? The question sank in, and to my shame, it turned me on too.

I promised I’d only tell true stories, so here’s how my mom found out about my older boyfriend... and how I accidentally found out what she really did.

Fresh out of the shower, I looked in the mirror and realized I couldn’t keep waiting. I took a sheet of paper and started writing down everything I’d wanted for years and never dared to do.

Dommes squeeze, ring, burn them. We barely lick. The first time I looked at a pair up close was in a student flat, long before I knelt before anyone.

At eighty-seven, he thought he’d heard everything. Then she knelt on the other side of the grille and started telling him what she did when her husband traveled.

I’ve always hated public bathrooms, but that day I had no choice. What I never imagined was what I’d find when I ran back for the phone I’d left on top of the water tank.

The first time I heard her through the partition, I froze, holding my breath, pretending to be asleep while she believed she was completely alone.

We went up to hang the laundry under any pretext. Among the water tanks on the rooftop, I discovered she was as impatient as I was to stop pretending.

I found her panties on the hallway floor, with a note on top. From that night on, we played a game neither of us wanted to end.

That Thursday I didn’t have classes and the morning was mine. I turned on the water, closed my eyes, and let myself go... not imagining boots would appear in the window.

I knew he’d wanted me for months, and I wasn’t going to stop until I had him in my bed. What I didn’t count on was who would catch us afterward.

I had never smelled another woman’s desire until that afternoon, standing in the hallway with my flatmate’s soaked garment in my hands and my pulse racing.

It began with a twisted ankle on the court and ended many weeks later, one night when her house was empty and there was no longer any reason to hold back.

I first saw her cheering from the stands, with wet hair and that easy laugh. Ten days later, behind the fronton, she taught me something I’ve never forgotten.

We’d met to review for finals, but by six o’clock the books were closed and no one wanted to leave. What came after still makes my pulse race.