I Confess What Happened During Those Fifteen Days in Cambodia

I’m confessing because I haven’t been able to get it out of my head for three years. I’d spent months planning that trip to Southeast Asia, and yet the first three days on the coast were a succession of disappointments. The cheap paradise everyone on the forums talked about turned out to be little more than rooms with damp clinging to the walls and women who, after an overly rehearsed smile in the elevator, left me with surprises I hadn’t come looking for.

On the fourth afternoon I decided to head south, to a coastal town whose name I never learned to pronounce properly. The sand was white, the sea a transparent green, and everything cost less than a coffee in my city. I sat on the terrace of a small bar, ordered an ice-cold beer and a plate of fresh prawns. I was watching the fishermen haul in their nets when she walked in.

She was different from the others. Nearly five foot five, with real curves, without that fragile thinness I was already getting tired of. She wore a tight white T-shirt and denim shorts that clung to broad, firm hips. Black hair reaching halfway down her back. Skin the color of tea with honey. A calm, unhurried smile, as if she knew time was going to be on her side.

She sat two tables away, ordered a coconut water, and stared at the horizon as if she’d been waiting hours for something specific. I couldn’t stop looking at her. After my earlier disappointments, my skepticism was as thick as mango skin, but something in the way she moved made me hesitate. I paid the bill, approached with my beer in hand, and offered to buy her another drink.

—Sure, handsome —she said in tourist Spanish, her soft voice seeming to learn how to sound sweet in every language.

Her name was Channary. We talked about the heat, about the months when the monsoon changed the color of the sea, about the family she had in the north. After a second beer, I asked her, with the foreigner’s clumsy roundaboutness, whether she had the afternoon free. She smiled, not maliciously but patiently.

—Ten up front. Eighteen from behind. A full hour. But choose carefully first, darling.

—First I want to see you —I said, almost under my breath—. I’ve had too many surprises this week.

Channary didn’t take offense. She stood up, nodded for me to follow, and walked toward the bathroom at the back. I followed with my heart pounding, still unable to believe things might actually go well. She closed the door, leaned against the sink, and, without any theatrics, pulled her shorts down to mid-thigh. The fluorescent light outlined her with an almost clinical starkness. There were no surprises. Just brown flesh, carefully depilated, and a clean smell of cheap soap.

—Feeling calmer now? —she asked.

I nodded, my mouth dry, still staring at her. She pulled her clothes back up with the same naturalness with which she had lowered them, and smiled again.

—The afternoon, the night, or everything? —she asked from the doorway.

—How much for everything?

—One hundred fifty. Until tomorrow. But I’m warning you, darling: you won’t have the stamina for that much.

She was wrong.

***

We reached the hotel half laughing, half silent, electricity dangling from our fingertips. I closed the door, and she was already taking off her shoes in front of the bed. Almost in a whisper, I asked her to keep her T-shirt on, along with the dark thong she was wearing underneath. I wanted the contrast, that strip of fabric that kept me from seeing everything.

She nodded and began moving slowly for me. It wasn’t exactly a dance. It was something else. It was as if she were showing me each part separately, giving me time to memorize it. Her hips. The curve of her neck when she turned her head. The way she breathed more deeply whenever she noticed me tense up. She ran her hands over her breasts through the T-shirt, squeezing them brazenly, then brought her fingers to the edge of the thong and tugged it just enough to show me the damp shadow already beginning to appear in the fabric. I felt the rush of blood in my groin, and she smiled as if she could smell it.

When she knelt between my legs, I wasn’t the one who took control. She did, without raising her voice or making a sudden move. She undid my trousers with obscene calm, pulled out my cock with both hands, and weighed it as if she were choosing fruit. Then she ran her tongue slowly over the tip, just once, and the rest was a free fall. She sucked the head with her lips spread wide, wetting it all over, then lowered herself halfway, swallowing just enough for me to feel the heat tightening around me. She gripped me at the base with one hand and stroked my balls with the other, digging in her nails with the kind of precision that turns the body into an animal.

—Relax —she said, barely parting her lips—. We have all night.

I didn’t listen. I grabbed her hair and pushed. She closed her eyes, swallowed deeper, and for a second I thought I heard her moan around me. When she pulled away to breathe, her chin was shining and her cheeks were flushed. I’m never going to forget her, I thought, without meaning to think it.

—If you keep being this rough, you’ll last fifteen minutes —she said, laughing softly—. And I need my money.

I laid her on the bed. I kissed her neck, her collarbones, those heavy breasts beneath the thin cotton, the nipples already hardening. I pushed her T-shirt up, leaving her breasts bare, large and round, with dark, sensitive areolas that hardened at the first brush of my tongue. Then I moved lower. With my thumbs I pulled the thong aside without taking it off completely and looked at her from below: thighs spread, belly rising and falling quickly, that face that only moments ago had been charging me a fee and now looked at me with something resembling surprise.

I tasted her slowly. No tricks. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t miss the first flavor. Salty at first, then sweet, then something deeper I couldn’t name. Channary let out a moan that didn’t sound acted. I dug my fingers into the insides of her thighs, opened her wider, and moved from her clitoris down to her perineum and back up again. I slowly slid two fingers inside her, opening her patiently while I kept licking, and felt her contracting around me, soaked, hot, increasingly surrendered. I sucked on her clitoral hood, circled her entrance with my tongue, and made her arch her back against the mattress.

When she came for the first time, she didn’t say anything. Her stomach simply went rigid, she grabbed my hair with unexpected strength, and pressed my face against her until the orgasm stopped shaking her. Then, still with her eyes closed, she laughed.

—Son of a bitch —she murmured—. Nobody’s ever done that to me like that.

I didn’t answer. I climbed on top of her, spread her legs wider, and before entering her, rubbed the tip of my cock against her, coating myself in the juice still running from her. Channary gripped my buttocks and pulled me toward her in one sharp motion, as if she didn’t want to wait another second. I entered slowly at first, feeling the way she swallowed me, the hot pressure closing around my thickness, then went deeper until our hips met and we both moaned at the same time.

—That’s it —she said, her voice breaking—. More.

I gave it to her. I started fucking her hard, driving her into the mattress with every thrust. Her thighs slapped against mine, her breasts bounced with every movement, and the white T-shirt rode up until her torso was almost bare. I moved the fabric away from her chest and sucked one nipple while I kept thrusting in and out, and she scratched my back with one hand, wordlessly telling me not to slow down. The entire room smelled of sweat, soap, and open skin. Her pussy made a wet, obscene sound every time I filled her to the hilt.

Afterward I turned her over, put her facedown, and lifted her hips. Channary rested her face on the pillow, spread her legs wider, and offered herself without shame. I looked at her ass, taut and perfect, and slapped it, the smacks cracking through the room. She answered with a muffled moan, rolling her hips to ask for more. I grabbed her waist and took her from behind again, even deeper, feeling the ring of flesh squeeze me with every blow. My pelvis slapped against her buttocks, her cries disappeared into the bedding, and I could hear myself breathing like an animal trapped in a cage.

—Don’t stop —she said, panting—. Don’t stop, fuck.

I reached around with one hand and started rubbing her clitoris in the same rhythm as my thrusts. My other hand went to her breasts, crushing them against the mattress, and for a moment every part of her was a machine moving and trembling for me. She came again without warning, clamping down around my cock, squeezing so hard she nearly forced me out of her. I held on as best I could, digging my fingers into her hips until the spasms passed and she was left panting, drenched, her face buried in the pillow.

—If you keep being this rough, you’re going to break me —she said, half laughing, half trembling.

—That’s what I wanted to hear —I replied, and turned her over again so I could see her face while I fucked her once more, now with shorter, wilder thrusts, searching for the exact spot that drove her crazy.

Then she rose onto her knees, pulled me by the nape, and kissed me with her mouth full of saliva and her own taste. I felt her tongue enter like an order. She undid my trousers completely, licked my neck, bit my shoulder, and pushed me until I was lying on my back. She sat on top of me, my cock sliding into her again in one sharp plunge, and began riding me mercilessly, rolling her hips in circles, moving up and down until she drew a deep moan from my chest. The T-shirt clung to her body like a second skin, soaked with sweat, and every time she bounced I could see the weight of her tits, the tremor of her belly, the glistening between her legs.

I held her ass and guided her faster. She threw her head back, opened her mouth, and began saying filthy things to me in broken English, words I won’t repeat here because they still make me hard when I remember them. She told me to fill her, to fuck her properly, that she wanted to feel me trembling inside her. And the worst of it was that she sounded sincere—not a routine, not an act. It was hunger. Pure shared hunger.

I changed the rhythm again, forcing her to lower herself slowly and stay impaled, and from there I fucked her deeply, over and over, until we both began to lose the rhythm. She leaned over me, bit my lower lip, and stared at me with an almost feral expression.

—Look at me when you come —she said.

It didn’t take long. The image of her open mouth, her hair stuck to her forehead, her hips squeezing me like a hot trap, made everything inside me tense at once. My cock began throbbing inside her, and I held her tightly, thrusting one last time, then twice, until I emptied myself in a long ejaculation that left me trembling. Channary kept moving on top of me, milking out the last of it with her pelvis, and stopped only when she felt the final pulse inside her.

—That —she whispered—. Like that.

***

I’m not going to tell you everything that happened that night, because memory gets mixed up with desire and I no longer know what was mine and what was invented by the heat. I know I put her on top. I know she rode me until the T-shirt clung to her body like a second skin. I know I turned her over, spread her open, whispered things in her ear I wouldn’t dare repeat here, and that she answered with things even worse. I know that at some point, near dawn, she looked at me from the other end of the bed, exhausted, her pussy still wet and her legs spread as if she didn’t want to close them, and said:

—I underestimated you. Keep the money. I can’t take any more of you.

I laughed. I told her the money was hers, that she had earned it three times over. And I asked her a favor: the next day, would she send someone she trusted, someone who could keep up with me?

—All right —she said, dressing in silence as daylight began to filter through the blinds—. I’ll send you the best one I know.

***

She kept her word.

The next morning, someone knocked on the door while I was still in a bathrobe, trying to understand why my body hurt as if I’d run a marathon. Channary introduced me to three girls in the hallway. Three impossible bodies, three different smiles, three rates. I chose the one at the back: broad hips, heavy breasts, and a way of looking at me as if she already knew what I was going to ask before I asked it.

Her name was Soriya. And Soriya did something with her body that I still can’t properly explain.

I discovered it almost by accident. We were in the room, still half dressed, and I told her what I’d told the other woman: slowly, I had all day. She nodded, took off her trousers, and sat on top of me. She didn’t thrust. She didn’t bounce. She began contracting something inside, in small, slow waves, as if she had another body hidden beneath the one I could see. It was an internal suction, a pulse. Each wave rose from the base to the tip and then released. I held her hips, felt her milking me with her pussy squeezing and releasing, and my cock gave a brutal lurch, as if my body were coming out through its own root.

—Fuck —I murmured, gripping her hips—. What are you doing?

—It’s my trick —she said, smiling with her eyes closed—. What I charge for.

I didn’t last long. Channary had warned me in bed the day before: “If you find one who knows how to squeeze like that, be careful.” I pulled her off before I lost everything, turned her over, kissed the nape of her neck, and let my desire cool on its own until I could start again.

***

That afternoon Soriya and I had dinner on a terrace by the sea. We ordered lobster, shrimp rice, and ice-cold beers. In the middle of dinner she slipped her hand beneath the tablecloth, unhurriedly, and gently squeezed my thigh. Every time I raised my voice to call the waiter, she loosened her grip. Every time the waiter walked away, she squeezed again. It was a game without an audience, and I was the only possible loser.

Afterward we went to a street of neon lights, with music spilling from every doorway. In one bar, a girl taller than Soriya, nearly five foot seven, approached with two drinks in her hands. She had red lipstick and black hair reaching her waist. Her name was Bopha. Soriya looked at me, shrugged, and laughed.

—If you behave yourself —she told Bopha—, we’ll share.

***

The three of us went back to the hotel. I’m not going to pretend I have an orderly memory of that night. There were crossed kisses, hands where I hadn’t expected hands, the low light of a bedside lamp, and a broken air conditioner that buzzed the whole time. But there is one moment I do remember in detail, because it was the first time I understood that my body could feel things I had, until then, decided not to feel.

Soriya was straddling my face, letting me savor her slowly. She pressed her wet pussy against my mouth, moving her hips with cruel patience so I would lick her exactly where she liked it most. And Bopha, between my legs, had been staring at me far too intently for far too long.

—Have you ever let yourself be touched from behind? —she asked, her voice a little lower than necessary.

I shook my head. No voice came out. The truth was, I hadn’t even seriously considered it, except in that dark corner of the brain one enters only when very drunk and very alone.

—Trust me —she said, almost asking permission—. If you want me to stop, I’ll stop.

I gave her a nod. Soriya, above me, let out a soft giggle and pressed my wrists against the mattress, as if she knew I was going to need something to hold on to.

Bopha began with her tongue. Just that, for a long time. A patient caress, without demands, while Soriya made me forget where the rest of the world was. Then one finger, lubricated with saliva, circling the edge without entering yet. She kissed my perineum, licked my testicles, and when she finally pushed the first finger inside, I felt a sharp jolt in the center of my body that left me breathless.

—Breathe —she told me from below—. Deeply.

When she entered me, it was as if my body split in two. Not from pain. From something else. From a kind of pleasure I hadn’t known existed, coming from a place I had ignored throughout my entire adult life. Bopha found that inner point and stayed there, barely moving, simply pressing slowly, while her tongue moved up and down against me in a different rhythm.

And I, who never cry, felt something slide down my temple. It wasn’t exactly a tear. It was my body releasing something it had been clenching for years.

***

The orgasm was unlike any other in my life. It wasn’t a spurt and an ending. It was a long, disordered wave that lasted so long I lost track of time. Soriya sat up to look at me with a little-girl smile; Bopha kissed me softly on the hip, as if congratulating me on something I still didn’t understand.

—Your first —she said simply, her hair stuck to her temple—. Not your last.

Afterward the three of us slept sprawled across that bed that was far too small. For the first time in five days, I didn’t dream about anything.

***

I went home eleven days later, thinner, with a more sunburned face and the scandal locked away in silence. I’ve had other partners since then. One steady, one serious. None of them has asked my body what those two women asked it in a hotel room at the end of the world. And I, of course, haven’t dared answer on my own what they discovered, effortlessly, in a single night.

I’m confessing now because sometimes, in my own bed, when the light goes out, I can still hear them breathing.